The Data Society research programme aims to advance the studies of digitalisation and datafication as pivotal change agents. We seek not only to understand these change agents but also to apply this understanding to effect positive social change. The programme focuses on the social and cultural issues arising from data-centric technological development.

There are advantages and huge potential but also possible harm and great challenges with digitalisation and datafication: the program researchers tackle the complex issues of our data society

Maria Engberg, Director

Our research

Digital technologies are increasingly present in everyday life, forming part of the way we live and experience the world. The need to understand digitalisation and datafication in ways that are not uniquely through a technological lens is growing.

The Data Society program consolidates and develops research that addresses the societal challenge of digitalisation across society. It is an interdisciplinary program that comprises researchers from social sciences, humanities and technology, as well as the arts and design.

We critically and constructively engage in and advance research on aspects of digitalisation and datafication, today and for the future. We engage in multidisciplinary studies that investigate how these processes play out in people’s everyday lives, in communities, and in private and public organisations and institutions, with an initial focus on digital culture, datafied health and digital civics.

Our research questions include:

How do processes of digitalisation appear and operate at different societal levels, causing different and sometimes conflicting expectations and experiences?

What digital methods can be developed to open up new fields of study and develop deeper understanding of how digital technologies operate to structure the world around them?

In what ways can our research build on as well as challenge existing solution-driven practices to how we create a sustainable digitalised society?

Our objectives:

  • construct a cross-disciplinary theoretical trajectory that moves beyond disciplinary boundaries;
  • advance and develop methodologies that bridge social sciences, humanities, and technological sciences; and
  • explore and develop new forms of practice-based research and contact zones for collaboration.

Researchers, publications and projects

Data Society is an interdisciplinary programme that comprises researchers from a wide range of academic fields within social science, humanities, technology and the arts and design.

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Research projects

Our projects address wide-ranging questions that cannot be addressed within one discipline or with one set of methodological approaches. Some of Data Society's research is conducted by teams or individual researchers within the faculty financed research time. These are our current projects with external financing.

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Advisory Board

The Advisory Board will help us continuously strengthen our position and outreach nationally and internationally. It consists of two external members: Professor José van Dijck (Utrecht University, NL), and Professor Sarah Pink (Monash University, AU), and two Malmö University members: Dean Andreas Jacobsson (Faculty of Technology and Society) and Dean Rebecka Lettevall (Faculty of Culture and Society)

Watch previous seminars and events

Video from previous Data Society events and seminars

Data Society seminar series

in English

February 25, 2021 - Interpretive Sociology and Computational Methods - Simon Lindgren

January 14, 2021 - Data Society meeting - presentations & live cartooning of DS ongoing resarch

October 15, 2020 - Participatory engagment in museums -  Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt

Framtidens berättande / Storytelling of the Future seminars

a collaboration between Malmö University's Data Society and Region Skåne's department of culture

 

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