The Data Society research program aims to advance the studies of digitalisation and datafication as pivotal change agents today. We seek not only to understand these change agents but also to apply this understanding to effect positive social change. The program 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.

Digital Civics

Digital civics concerns the research-based activities of designing, developing, and evaluating personal and community based digital technologies and services to support new forms of civic engagement and support local communities. The theme has a strong focus on inclusion in a digitalised society as well as an insistence on participation.

Datafied Health

Datafied Health refers to how data-centric technologies affect and become entangled with processes and practices of health care and self-care across different organisational, social and cultural levels. The projects engage in producing accounts of how datafication of health takes shape in different social and cultural contexts, and across diverse social practices.

Digital Culture

This theme explores the ways in which digital systems constitute new social and cultural formations, and addresses one of the most urgent and elusive contemporary issues: the relationship between the rise of digital technologies and culture in its broadest sense. Central questions concern issues of epistemology, policy, audience and literacy developments, as well as the impact of datafication and digitalisation on cultural heritage and forms of cultural expression.

Researchers

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.

Researchers at Data Society

Research projects

Our projects address wide-ranging questions that cannot be addressed within one discipline or with one set of methodological approaches. Most of our projects are connected to researchers. You can find projects with external financing here:

Current research projects at Data Society

Publications

Our publications

Advisory Board

The Advisory Board will help us continuously strengthen our position and outreach nationally and internationally. We will announce the members during 2020.

Upcoming conference: Behind data and algorithms

A conference about the actors, logics and cultures behind digital technologies. The conference is co-organised by Malmö University's Data Society research programme and the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society. Date: 23–24 April 2020, Malmö.

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News and events

Lecture, 10 October

Thermopolitics of Data: Cloud Infrastructures and Energy Futures

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