What do data portals do? This initiative explores digital methods and approaches for studying data portals as online devices.
This includes gathering an international research group on data portal studies, as well as developing a prototype tool and open source software library for repurposing data portal metadata in order to examine public sector datafication and the configuration of portals as sites of participation around public data.
A new challenge that the COVID-19 pandemic has ignited is testing – and not testing – for the virus, as a central concern among the population. Much of the debate has focused on the merits of different types of tests and testing infrastructures (PCR; anti-body; symptom-based testing through apps). However, equally remarkable about COVID testing is the locations in which it takes place and is expected to place, in everyday places beyond the laboratory, like the home, and the parking lots of superstores.
This two-day online workshop consisted of conducting a collaborative analysis of Twitter data relating to COVID-19 in order to facilitate a dialogue about the social life of testing, across expert – lay distinctions. The aim was to draw out from Twitter reporting on COVID-19 testing a social understanding of COVID-19 testing as everyday situation, and, potentially, as tests of society. We are also interested in developing and documenting approaches to curating and infrastructuring environments for collaborative interpretative data analysis, given the unusually large Twitter datasets that have been gathered across our institutions.
Citizen-generated data (CGD) expands what gets measured, how, and for what purpose. CGD initiatives cover areas from cartography to government policies, public services, or environmental research. As the collection and engagement with CGD rises in relevance and visibility, public institutions can learn from existing initiatives about what CGD initiatives do, how they enable different forms of sense-making, and how this may further progress around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This report examines different approaches to doing and organizing CGD, as well as how governments already engage with these types of initiatives. It identifies several concrete benefits for implementing and monitoring the SDGs, underlining the importance for public institutions to further support these initiatives.
A gathering of digital methods recipes and “how-tos” for research, teaching and collaborations from across the Public Data Lab.
Responding to the World Health Organisation’s warning that misinformation related to COVID-19 constitutes an “infodemic,” this project studies conspiracy theories as a particularly seductive kind of misinformation.
Infodemic: Combatting COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories is using methods from digital humanities and cultural studies to understand how and why conspiracy narratives circulate in different platforms and online spaces during the crisis.
The methodologies include analysing the historical roots of the conspiracy theories now circulating, how they have mutated during the pandemic, and how they contribute to both community and division. The latter practices constitute a foundation for looking at who has been promoting and spreading them, what form they take on the various social media platforms, and why some theories have gained more traction than others. The project will also assess the effectiveness of the varying interventions by social media companies.
The Digital Test of the News workshop brought together digital sociologists, data visualisation and new media researchers at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick on 8 and 9 May 2018. The workshop is part of a broader research collaboration between the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies and the Public Data Lab which investigates the changing nature of public knowledge formation in digital societies and develops inventive methods to capture and visualise knowledge dynamics online.
