“What actually happened? The use and misuse of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)”, Digital Methods Winter School and Data Sprint 2023

Applications are now open for the Digital Methods Winter School and Data Sprint 2023 which is on the theme of “What actually happened? The use and misuse of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)”.

This will take place on 9-13th January 2023 at the University of Amsterdam. Applications are accepted until 1st December 2022.

More details and registration links are available here and an excerpt on this year’s theme and the format is copied below:

The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI), Amsterdam, is holding its annual Winter School on the ‘Use and Misuse of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)’. The format is that of a (social media and web) data sprint, with tutorials as well as hands-on work for telling stories with data. There is also a programme of keynote speakers. It is intended for advanced Master’s students, PhD candidates and motivated scholars who would like to work on (and complete) a digital methods project in an intensive workshop setting. For a preview of what the event is like, you can view short video clips from previous editions of the School.

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Article on “Engaged research-led teaching: composing collective inquiry with digital methods and data”

A new article on “Engaged research-led teaching: composing collective inquiry with digital methods and data” co-authored by Jonathan GrayLiliana BounegruRichard RogersTommaso VenturiniDonato RicciAxel MeunierMichele MauriSabine NiedererNatalia Sánchez-QuerubínMarc TutersLucy Kimbell and Anders Kristian Munk has just been published in Digital Culture & Education.

The article is available here, and the abstract is as follows:

This article examines the organisation of collaborative digital methods and data projects in the context of engaged research-led teaching in the humanities. Drawing on interviews, field notes, projects and practices from across eight research groups associated with the Public Data Lab (publicdatalab.org), it provides considerations for those interested in undertaking such projects, organised around four areas: composing (1) problems and questions; (2) collectives of inquiry; (3) learning devices and infrastructures; and (4) vernacular, boundary and experimental outputs. Informed by constructivist approaches to learning and pragmatist approaches to collective inquiry, these considerations aim to support teaching and learning through digital projects which surface and reflect on the questions, problems, formats, data, methods, materials and means through which they are produced.

Using ObservableHQ notebooks for gathering and transforming data in digital research

We’ve recently been experimenting with the use of ObservableHQ notebooks for gathering and transforming data in the context of digital research. This post walks through a few recent examples of notebooks from recent Public Data Lab projects.

In one project we wanted to use the CrowdTangle “Links” API to fetch data about how certain web pages were shared online and across different platforms. After gaining access to relevant end points, we could adopt different means to call the APIs and retrieve data: such as using something like Postman (a general-purpose interface to call endpoints), or writing custom scripts (for example in Python or Javascript).

Code notebooks are a third option that lies somewhere in between these options. Designed for programmers, notebooks allow for iterative manipulation and experimentation with code whilst keeping track of creative processes by commenting on the thinking behind each step.

Notebooks allow us to both write and run custom scripts as well as creating simple interfaces for those who may not code. Thus we can use them to help researchers, students and external collaborators to collect data, making it easier to call APIs, setting parameters, or perform manipulations.

ObservableHQ is one solution for writing programming notebooks, it runs in the browser and is oriented towards data and visualisations (“We believe thinking with data is an essential skill for the future”). Hence, we thought it could be a good starting point for what we wanted to do.

Screen capture of a notebook
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Investigating infodemic – researchers, students and journalists work together to explore the online circulation of COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracies

Over the past year researchers and students at institutions associated with the Public Data Lab have contributed to a series of collaborative digital investigations into the online circulation of COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracies.

Researchers and students contributed to a series of “engaged research led teaching” projects developed with journalists, media organisations and non-governmental organisations around the world.

These were undertaken in association with the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project Infodemic: Combatting COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories, which explores how digital methods grounded in social and cultural research may facilitate understanding of WHO has described as an “infodemic” of misleading, fabricated, conspiratorial and other problematic material related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

These projects led to and contributed to a number of stories, investigations and publications including:

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