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DRS co-founder Mariëlle Wijermars has been awarded a University of Helsinki three-year project grant for ‘Strategies of Persuasion: Russian Propaganda in the Algorithmic Age’ (2019-2021). The project will be launched in January at the Digital Russia Studies seminar. For more information on the project, see the projects page.
DRS co-founder Daria Gritsenko has been awarded a grant to lead an international workshop series “Algorithms in Context”. The project idea has been developed together with DRS researcher Mariëlle Wijermars and aims at gathering together scholars of algorithmic governance from Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Russia and the UK to discuss the notion of context in relation to the study of algorithms. While Daria and Mariëlle are behind the overall workshop design, Nordic project partners Patrick Vonderau and Holger Pötzsch bring their experience and networks into the implementation of individual workshops. Our goal is to develop methodologies for comparative study of algorithmic governance.
Project funding has been granted by the Joint Committee for Nordic research councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS), an organization set up to facilitate strategic cooperation between the research councils in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden in the research fields of Humanities and Social Sciences.
The first seminar will take place in Stockholm in May 2019. For more information and updates on the project, see the projects page.
On November 2d, the Digital Russia Studies autumn seminars continued with presentations on the use of machine learning and discourse analysis as a part of mixed methodology. How to conduct qualitative research in the digital era? Which digital tools are available for assisting discourse analysis? Why should we care about machine learning if our goal is ‘close reading’? Our guest MPhil Kristian Lundby Gjerde, a research fellow from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, gave a talk on a text analysis app he had created. His aim was to maintain the close reading aspect and apply digital tools at the same time. In our seminar, he presented an app prototype with collection of 10k free license documents from kremlin.ru. The app has a regular expression search engine and calendar view. It automatically adds new published documents to the collection. In addition, it is also possible to integrate PDF files with OCR and merge different text sources. We had a chance to test the app by using an example of Russian memory politics discourse that Kristian has studied. While the app is under development, we cannot wait to see it in the published open-source version!
Another presenter was BA Julia Nikolaenko, our trainee from HSE (Moscow), who is now doing her Master’s thesis on the Ukraine’s political images in the Russian media space. In her research, Julia aims at studying how discourses around the Ukrainian conflict differ between news and lifestyle media using computational text mining methods, such as topic modelling and sentiment analysis. In our seminar, she presented some preliminary results of her on-going research focusing on the lifestyle media Wonderzine, publishing within a feminist framework including fashion and beauty. She found out that articles mentioning Ukraine that were published in this media had positive tone in all topics. A wordcloud that was built on word frequencies is mainly about fashion, but human rights and social issues are also visible in the texts. The preliminary analysis suggests that Wonderzine’s framing and conceptual frameworks are not particularly affected by the interstate conflict. The seminar participants discussed the definitions of ideology and choice of media. Julia received fruitful comments and will continue her study based on them.
As part of Aleksanteri Conference ‘Liberation – Freedom – Democracy? 1918 – 1968- 2018’, on 24 October roundtable on Big Data and Area Studies was chaired by Dr. Daria Gritsenko, the founder of DRS network. Experts from Digital Humanities Dr. Mila Oiva (University of Turku), Dr. Jussi Pakkasvirta (UH), Dr. Ekaterina Kalinina (Södertörn University, Sweden) and M.Soc.Sc Markus Kainu (The Social Insurance Institution of Finland KELA) participated in discussion.
Is big data revolution or evolution?
— It depends on perspective; for whom and for which purposes, says Kainu. Big data is evolution for existing data when moving from micro to macro level. When thinking of methodology, it is also seen as evolution because of qualitative approaches used before. Yet, era of big data can also be generally viewed as revolution. Why? Research data preparations are greatly different from traditional research.
Open science and digitalisation
Participants also brought up some peculiarities of digital humanities research in discussion. Pakkasvirta emphasized that research projects should always be conducted by following principles of open science when possible. For example, Suomi24 forum data project he has been working on is open for free use.
— Supporting digitalisation at transnational level for collaboration projects should take place, comments Oiva. She has been participating in transnational Oceanic Exchange research project with focus on global connectedness of 19th century newspapers. However, the study does not cover, for example, Russian or East European newspapers because only few digitised archive materials are available for research.
Talking about possibilities of big data technologies Kalinina mentioned an interactive crowd-sourced monument project by Yandex, Russian search engine. One of the features of the interactive map created by Yandex is a possibility for the publics to mark the National Yandex map with monuments and other memorial objects. Yandex’ analysts have studied the collected from the users’ data and have noticed several trends that illustrate how people understand cultural heritage sites.
What are challenges of aligning big data and area studies?
— Big data research methodologies could be very helpful, but there is a risk of producing already existing stereotypes, starts Kalinina. That is why it is important to be critical towards to source of data, know your data as well as be ready to employ some “traditional” humanities and social science methodologies. It is important to know where the data is coming from, how companies form their data. It is also important to understand that data collected might not be representative due to digital divides in terms of access to digital technologies and the their uses. Another issue is data regulations and data protection laws that might condition the access we have to data for research purposes.
— Ensuring that talented young researchers will stay at academia instead of moving to private or public sector is essential, adds Kainu. Academia should be interested in employing data experts in order to support digital research and see their merits from another perspective.
— For me, the biggest challenge is yet spreading propaganda, says Pakkasvirta. Source criticism lacks often among adults when they read or share something in the Internet with comparison to children who – surprisingly often – are quite aware of it. Hence, the coverage of propaganda in big data can be surprising.
What is the future of area studies in the digital era?
Kalinina wonders whether the use of big data methodologies and big data might lead to the emergence of studies ever more focused on transnational issues given the availability of such data.
—We will always have the context of history of each region, concludes Oiva.
Mariëlle, you just came back from the #AoIR2018 conference in Montréal. Could you briefly tell us what it was about?
#AoIR2018 is the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers that brings together scholars from across the world who study the internet and information technologies, more broadly, from a wide variety of disciplines. This year, the conference theme was ’Transnational Materialities’ and many papers reflected on the importance of, among others, infrastructures. In addition to parallel panel sessions and two keynote events, the conference included various pre-conference workshops, of which I participated in the workshop on ‘Digital Methods in Internet Research’.
That sounds like an exciting programme! What did you present at the conference?
I presented a paper on how governmental policy concerning the internet is framed in Russian mass media. While there is quite a significant body of research on internet governance in Russia, much less is known about the role of the media in shaping public perceptions about the internet and the extend to which it should be regulated by the state. The question how the Russian government strives to create popular support for governmental regulation in this sphere has received little attention. At the moment, I draw upon my previous experience of researching Russian state television and political communication to shed light on this particular aspect of internet governance. In the paper, I focussed on mass media framing of the decision to block popular messaging app Telegram in April 2018. The attempts by government agency Roskomnadzor to block Telegram were not very successful (indeed, the app is still accessible for many Russians), while it did negatively affect many other online services, even outside of Russia. In response, mass demonstrations took place across Russia to protest against the blocking and restrictions of internet freedom more generally. The paper I presented is part of my current project ’Selling Censorship: Affective Framing and the Legitimation of Internet Control in Russia’ that is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
What are the main findings of your research?
The research project is still at an early stage, therefore I presented some preliminary findings based on my analysis of television coverage on the topic on the main Russian state-funded TV channels, and why it is important to study these discourses. The television coverage I examined emphasised how the encrypted communication option offered by Telegram is used by terrorist groups, for example in the preparations of the 2017 terrorist attack in St. Petersburg. Indeed, Telegram’s refusal to provide access to such private communications to the Russian Federal Security Services, in compliance with an anti-terrorist legislation package known as the Yarovaya Law, is the official reason for its blockage. The fact that encrypted messaging is used not only by terrorists and criminals, but also for legitimate purposes such as by investigative journalists is simply ignored or disregarded, as is Telegram’s increasingly important function as a platform for (independent) news. By, instead, creating a black-and-white opposition between privacy and security, any open debate about citizens’ right to private communications is effectively cut short.
That is very interesting! What are the next steps in this project?
The October session aimed to teach Digital Russia Studies enthusiasts how new research resources – such as open government data – can be cleaned and pre-processed in an easy and efficient manner. Ilona Repponen, a research assistant at the Digital Russia Studies research group, held a master-class inspired by the work of Olga Parkhimovich and her clearspending.ru project.
In the first part of the workshop, the participants got acquainted with Russian open budget resources and learned how to use their search engines and download the data. According to Open Budget Index, Russia has succeeded in that field. Budget data on public procurement, local government, public services, subsidy agreements is available for free use in the Internet. Repponen emphasized that although published data is more or less correct it is advisable to study it critically because of a human factor behind it. Hence, mistakes can occur.
While publishing open data in mandated by the executive order of the Russian president since 2012, it remains notoriously difficult for researchers to collect and process these data. Luckily, there are tools that can help along the way. The second part of the workshop was devoted to OpenRefine, an open-source tool suitable for processing messy data that needs to be calculated. The participants tried several functions and facets for clarifying and organizing the data in different steps. Finally, based on her own research experience, Repponen explained what should be taken into consideration when assessing the results of data transformations and checking unclear items manually.
Daria, you just came back from the Internet, Policy and Politics conference in Oxford. Could you briefly tell us what it was about?
Internet, Policy and Politics (IPP) is a conference convened by the Oxford Internet Institute for the OII-edited academic journal Policy and Internet, in collaboration with the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) standing group on Internet and Politics. This year the topic was ‘Long Live Democracy?’, so it was about questioning the theses of democratic renewal – and democratic decay – in a digital world. Over two days, around 80 research papers were presented by scholars from all over the world, showcasing rigorous and critical investigations on the role of digital technologies in democratic processes and showing many ways in which the internet has affected democracies, both positive and negative.
That is a timely and controversial topic! What did you present at the conference?
I presented the first results from our ongoing project on the uptake of civic technologies in the Russian regions. Together with Andrey Indukaev, last spring we started wondering why, how and to which consequences various civic technologies are being adopted across Russia. It is not very well known, but in Russia many cities and municipalities enter into dialogue with their citizens using online tools. For instance in Moscow there is a blockchain-based platform called Active Citizen, where citizens can cast their votes with regard to various municipal matters, such as local speed limits, bus route design, library services, parks and recreational zones, and where voting is rewarded in the form of points that can be exchanged for services, such as museum tickets. The geography of civic technology is very wide – in Yakutsk it enables online public hearings and participatory budgeting, in Belgorod and Rostov – interactive maps with city problems co-created by the citizens, and so on. In this sense, Russian cities are not so different from their counterparts in Germany and the UK, as we discovered in the IPP conference. It was very exciting to hear that very similar projects are now being realised in, say, Göttingen or Köln. This provoked a good discussion about the democratic potential of civic technology.
What are the main arguments of your research?
We are at the initial stage of this project, so it is too early to say what we will find. However, the IPP2018 was definitely a great place to test our hypothesis. We argue that there is no ‘democracy by design’ and that any civic technology is not deployed in a vacuum. We follow to socio-technical tradition of understanding the life of technology in society and we suggest that ideas surrounding technological development matter. The democratic potential of a civic technology instrument depends first and furthermost on the narratives that accompany its design and deployment. ‘Democracy in – democracy out’, to make it very simple.
I’d like to know more! What are the next steps in this project?
I think the IPP2018 was a great platform to test our ideas and improve the analytical model. Now we are in the phase of extensive data collection. I am sure there will be many surprises and new questions coming from the data, but we are well-equipped in DRS to handle large databases, so looking forward to discovering the patterns of civic technology adoption in the Russian regions guided by our analytical framework.
The workshop ‘(Politics of) Digital Humanities in Eastern European Studies’ was also attended by Felix Herrmann, a research associate IT (Research Centre for East-European Studies, Bremen) and Anastasiya Bonch-Osmolovskaya, an associate professor of School of Linguistics (HSE, Moscow).
Herrmann presented Discuss Data Project that aims to facilitate research data management in East-European Studies. In the project, an independent platform will be created for discussion and peer reviewing of datasets with links to literature and many more features. Bonch-Osmolovskaya, in turn, gave a talk on challenges and advantages of big data sources. She showed how to define context and discourse of a certain subject by combining computational linguistic methods, such as finding collocations, frequencies. Both scholars shared their thoughts on Digital Humanities with us.
Felix Herrmann: Organising these kind of events are necessary steps in forming Digital Humanities methods. In the field of digitalisation, there is still much to do and knowledge to share.
Anastasiya Bonch-Osmolovskaya: I am pleased to say that the workshop exceeded my expectations; as a result, we not only enjoyed a good organisation, but also got new contacts and effective results.
Felix Herrmann: In Germany, computer literacy is less supported in school education compare to Finland, for example. Regardless of students’ digital nativity, they lack a deep understanding of things behind digitalisation. And again, talented graduates from Digital Humanities transfer into business life instead of remaining at university.
Another challenge in Digital Humanities is a need of transnational funding since most research projects are funded at national level. Yet, it would have been more efficient if funding were transnational with less bureaucracy occurring.
Anastasiya Bonch-Osmolovskaya: Digital Humanities is developing very quickly on a certain unprepared base. Projects are sometimes reminiscent of biology laboratories with experts with various backgrounds. Thus, these projects are very difficult to manage and they require certain organisational skills.
Felix Herrmann: For the future of Digital Humanities methods in compare to traditional ones, they will remain parallel. Choosing methodology indeed depends on research question.
Anastasiya Bonch-Osmolovskaya: In my opinion, the boundaries between different disciplines will be blurred. Science will be less descriptive and based on evidence. Thus, generalisation will occur through numbers.
Felix Herrmann: What I have observed among students is that the motivation for DH should come from inside. Digital Humanities courses should not be obligatory since it does not bring much. Generally, acquiring basic coding skills is yet an advantage in working life today.
Anastasiya Bonch-Osmolovskaya: We should promote Digital Humanities courses since students who will not attend them may lose some knowledge and important skills as future experts.
On 10-11 September, together with the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe (Marburg, Germany) a joint workshop was organised at the Aleksanteri Institute. Digital humanities enthusiasts enjoyed two days of discussing Digital Humanities and networking with colleagues. A following workshop will be held in the future.
How did participants find the workshop? What are challenges and possibilities of Digital Humanities when applying them in Eastern European Studies? What potential does Digital Humanities posses for students? What is the future of Digital Humanities? We interviewed workshop’s presenters Dr. Mila Oiva, a postdoctoral researcher of cultural history (University of Turku) and Misha Melnichenko, a historian and the founder of Prozhito Project. Oiva gave a talk on economic and advertising discourse in the Polish newspaper “Žycie Gospodarcze” between 1950 and 1980. By organising data, using topic modelling and studying collocations, she tracked presence of export strategies in the newspaper. Melnichenko, in turn, coordinates Prozhito Project that goals to digitalise diaries and publish them in the Internet.
Dr. Mila Oiva: The initiative to organise the workshop was prominent and warmly welcomed. I got into applying Digital Humanities methods a few years ago and ever since there has been a demand on academic events with focus on Eastern Europe and Digital Humanities.
The challenges I have faced is that availability of digital resources is still limited and memory politics selective. Moreover, Digital Humanities methods seem to be too quick and easy way to conduct research. Machine does everything on the behalf of human. Meanwhile, there is a need of deep understanding. How is data actually processed and how does that affect research? There is sometimes a lack of digital skills and knowledge of Digital Humanities methods among scholars. In addition, DH projects need continuity and that should be a part of decision-making strategy when funding them. We still need philosophy of research and research methods should be developed to have best practices. Yet, Digital Humanities methods provide great advantages over traditional methods when big data in question.
What will happen in the future? DH will be more linked with society, with no division between traditional and digital methods. Transnational and interdisciplinary cooperation should increase including cooperation between institutes, such as universities, archives. I highly recommend students to attend courses in Digital Humanities because digital literacy, digital source criticism and understanding of data are vital skills in our society. Knowledge of processing and analysing masses of data will be certainly needed in working life. Moreover, it is an exciting field of research for those interested in academic career.
Misha Melnichenko: I found the workshop great because of opportunity to meet, network and make cooperation agreements with colleagues. Discussion on best practices of digitalisation was also very fruitful. From my point of view, approaches of Prozhito Project are slightly different from traditional research. We position ourselves as opposite to traditional archives. Most archives have certain conditions under which they take materials for storage. Hence, some material will never be stored and disappear by time. I indeed support data’s availability and information’s free distribution. In our project, content’s accuracy and relevance is less important. Our target audience is generally media but also scholars who might get interested in diaries.
To proceed in our aims, we have used advantages of digitalisation. Starting was the hardest part since the amount of work was huge in the beginning. Luckily, we have many volunteers who are eager to support us; most of them with no academic background. They get instructions for their tasks and we proof their job, from time to time. In addition, students from HSE (Moscow) do their traineeships at our project. For them, contributing to the project has been a source of inspiration. They start to see history from a different point of view; thorough glasses of individual stories instead of general facts. In addition, students acquire essential working life skills in editing texts and processing source materials.
We are interested in widening our map and hope to increase cooperation since we have technical solutions for other languages too. Today we cooperate with the Herder Institute in order to support them with digitalisation.
Continue reading interview with two other participants Felix Herrmann and Dr. Anastasiya Bonch-Osmolovskaya – in part II!
Organisers’ view on Digital Humanities: read also interview with Dr. Markku Kangaspuro (Aleksanteri Institute) and Prof. Dr. Peter Haslinger (Herder Institute) in the Russian Media Lab blog.
On Friday, 7.9.19, we opened the second season of DRS seminars with two talks that span over 100 years of ICT development in their attempt to answer one question – how can we capture the contingencies of new technologies?
Dr. Brendan Humphreys, a political historian from the University of Helsinki, started his talk by reminding the audience of the fact that as a “boring historian” one has to admit that “nothing is new” – or at least not as new as one may think. “Lenin’s Tweets: the Telegram Seen from the Age of Social Media” is a provocative exploration of the telegram vs the social media, in particular, Twitter. Lenin’s telegrams were short, quite often aggressive in tone, and they were reported in the mainstream media (newspapers) as a source – not unlike tweets of some politicians today. At the same time, the ‘like and repost’ features enables by the modern technology were not present 100 years ago. Nevertheless, it is useful to think that the politics of short public statements is not peculiar to our digital age. Rather, it has been re-shaped through social media.
The Visiting Fellow at the Aleksanteri Institute and a senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography Dr. Wladimir Sgibnev is interested in production of space, peripheral urban regions, and mobility in the post-Soviet area. His current research focuses on the marshrutkas, private urban mini-buses, as a major and highly contested mobility phenomenon throughout the former Soviet Union, which has barely received any academic attention so far. His talk titled “The Dark Side of Digitalisation. Spatial Justice and Informal Transport in the Age of Uber” investigated the impact of digitalisation on marshrutka drivers’ working environments and passenger travel conditions. Building on ethnographic fieldwork in Central Asia, Dr. Sgibnev demonstrated that while digitalisation may be seen as a positive trend that allows to formalise and order the messiness of marshrutkas – in terms of routes, finances, and governance – it may have unexpected consequences for mobility justice.
University of Helsinki