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. 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.

Total hits: 8

Norm-creative crisis preparedness – Co-designing methods for supporting crisis preparedness and responses before and during pandemics

During times of crisis daily needs may become challenges, social functions and infrastructures can cease to operate, and...

Virtual conferencing to promote research and scholarly exchange during the current pandemic and possible future disruptions

In this pilot project researchers at Malmö University and Georgia Tech conduct preliminary research, design and tests to examin...

Knowing From Somewhere: On Modes and Sites of Knowledge Production with Hacker Communities in the Field of Internet of Things

The post-doctoral project Knowing from Somewhere highlights the intersection between the expansive technological field of...

Reading Between Media

More and more texts are read via digital media which changes the very way we read. Modern media interfaces such as apps,...

Digital Culture

The cultural department of Region Skåne and Malmö university collaborate in the project whose aim is on research and competence...

Re-humanising Automated Decision-Making

Processes and technologies of automation are increasingly transforming and challenging everyday life, organisations and...

Behind the Algorithm

Algorithms are on the agenda today. It is argued that thinking within the field of social media and communication has taken an...

Beyond Mixed Methods: Methodologies for Data-saturated Worlds

Digital technologies and novel forms of data are increasingly forming part of and changing how researchers in the humanities an...

Publications

Our publications

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)

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: 30 September - 1 October, Malmö.

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News and events

Event, 1 October

Data Society Research Seminar: Participatory digital ethnography with immersive...

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