Slides from a talk I gave at the University of Ghent on 21 October 2014 about how Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and digital methods can be used to study and inform data journalism.

1. What Actor-Network Theory (ANT)
and digital methods can do for data
journalism research and practice
21st October 2014, Ghent University
Liliana Bounegru | lilianabounegru.org | @bb_liliana!

3. Using ANT and digital methods!
I. to study data journalism!
II. to do data journalism

4. I. Using ANT and digital methods
to study data journalism

5. Geeks vs. pundits: !
The clash of two
epistemological cultures

6. "Nate Silver says this is a 73.6 percent chance that the president is going to win? Nobody in that campaign
thinks they have a 73 percent chance — they think they have a 50.1 percent chance of winning. And you
talk to the Romney people, it’s the same thing. . . . Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a toss-up
right now is such an ideologue, they should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops and
microphones for the next 10 days, because they're jokes." (Joe Scarborough, MSNBC, 2012)

7. “I am Nate Silver, the Lord and God of the Algorithm!” (Jon
Stewart, 2012)

8. How to study this collision
with ANT and digital
methods

9. “[T]here is nothing specific to social order; (…) there is no
social dimension of any sort, no social ‘context’, no distinct
domain of reality to which the label ‘social’ or ‘society’ could
be attributed; (…) no ‘social force’ is available to ‘explain’
the residual features other domains cannot account for (…)
and (…) society, far from being the context ‘in which’
everything is framed, should rather be constructed as one of
the many connecting elements circulating in tiny conduits”
– Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network
Theory (2005)

10. “The social is visible only by the traces it leaves..”
– Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network
Theory (2005)

11. “The interest of electronic media lies in the fact
that every interaction that passes through them
leaves traces..”
– Bruno Latour & Tommaso Venturini, “The Social Fabric:
Digital Traces and Quali-quantitative Methods” (2009)

12. Digital methods are “methods of the medium”
designed to repurpose digital objects such as
tags, likes, links and hashtags to study issues.
– Digital Methods Initiative

13. 1. An online mapping of
data journalism

14. Who speaks about data journalism and what
issues are at stake?
What groups and practices are articulated around
labels associated with data journalism online?
What visions and values do they promote?

15. Twitter: co-hashtag analysis, social graph by
mentions, URL frequency
Web: Historical Google rankings, hyperlink analysis
Mailing lists: lexical analysis, social graph by
replies

16. 2. The life of data in the
newsroom

17. “Objects, too, have agency”
– Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network
Theory (2005)

18. “[F]ocusing on the objects of journalism […]
can provide scholars with insights into the
social, material, and cultural context that
suffuses our technologically obsessed world.”
– C.W. Anderson and Juliette De Maeyer, “Introduction: Objects of
Journalism and the News”, 2014

19. What journalistic practices, values and visions
are articulated around the use of data as raw
material for reporting?
How are traditional journalistic practices, values
and norms, transformed?

20. Ethnography
Interviews
Observations
Internal documents
Digital methods

21. 3. The politics of
quantitative methods in
the newsroom

22. Where do journalists’ attachments to particular forms of
quantitative analysis come from?
How are these commitments articulated?
How do they shape the process of knowledge production
and its outcomes?
What quantitative methods are being left out? (the question
of alternative histories)

23. Ethnography
Secondary literature
Digital methods

24. II. Using ANT and digital methods
to do data journalism!

26. Controversy mapping for
journalism!

27. STS
researchers
leading
digital
newsrooms
new ways of
covering
complex issues
+ =

28. suite of open source tools for capturing,
analysing and narrating socio-technical
controversies for journalism

29. Examples!

30. Mapping the rise of the
far right in Europe with
the web and social
media

31. The Guardian (2013) “The rise of far right parties across Europe is a chilling echo of the 1930s”.
Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/15/far-right-threat-europe-integration

32. Huffington Post (2014) “Sudden Rise of Far Right Groups in EU Parliament Rings Alarm Bells Across
Europe”. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elinadav-heymann/sudden-rise-of-far-right-
_b_5512961.html

33. New York Times (2014) “Populist Party Gaining Muscle to Push Britain to the Right”.
Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/world/europe/populist-party-gaining-muscle-to-push-britain-
to-the-right.html

34. What are the recruitment methods
of far right groups?

35. Are current recruitment counter-measures
proving effective?

36. What kinds of issues are most active
amongst far right groups?

37. How are far right extremist groups connected
to populist right and other right wing groups?

38. Profiles for 13 European countries.

39. 1. List of links per country
2. Analyse links between them
3. Study issues and actors

40. Findings
New issues (e.g. environment, anti-globalisation
and rights), principles and
recruitment techniques.
Counter-measures are outdated.
!
Islamophobia is located primarily in the North.

41. Greece: blood and soil and organic markets

42. Rogers, R. et al (2013) “Right-Wing Formations in Europe and Their Counter-Measures: An Online
Mapping”. Digital Methods Initiative. https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/RightWingPopulismStudy

44. Hungary: horse and yurt recruitment festivals

45. Rogers, R. et al (2013) “Right-Wing Formations in Europe and Their Counter-Measures: An Online
Mapping”. Digital Methods Initiative. https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/RightWingPopulismStudy

47. Taking back the yurt?

48. Counter-Jihadist groups on social media

49. The Guardian (2012) “Far-right anti-Muslim network on rise globally as Breivik trial opens”.
Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/14/breivik-trial-norway-mass-murderer

50. Hope Not Hate (2012) “Counter-Jihad Report”.
Available at: http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/counter-jihad/

51. Are different Counter-Jihadist groups in
Europe connected? If so how?

52. Digital Methods Initiative. “Counter-Jihadist Networks: Mapping
the Connections Between Facebook Groups in Europe.”

53. Digital Methods Initiative. “Counter-Jihadist Networks: Mapping
the Connections Between Facebook Groups in Europe.”

54. Findings
Facebook is an important medium for extremist
groups.
!
Three main clusters based on geographical
proximity.
!
European Counter-Jihadist groups are networked
and transnational.

55. Who are the new leaders?

57. Findings!
!
Offline leaders are active on Facebook.
!
There are also new emerging online leaders.
!
New technique for identifying online leaders.

58. Some tools and
techniques that organise
web and social media for
research…

59. “Netvizz is a tool that extracts data from
different sections of the Facebook platform
(personal profile, groups, pages) for research
purposes.”

60. Rieder, B. (2013). Studying Facebook via data extraction: the Netvizz application. In WebSci '13
Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference (pp. 346-355). New York: ACM.

61. Netvizz: https://tools.digitalmethods.net/netvizz/facebook/netvizz/

62. “The Twitter Capture and Analysis Toolset
(DMI-TCAT) captures tweets and allows for
multiple analyses (hashtags, mentions, users,
search, ...).”

63. Borra, E. & Rieder, B. (2014) “Programmed method: developing a toolset for capturing and analyzing
tweets”. Aslib Journal of Information Management. Vol. 66 No. 3: 262-278.

64. TCAT: https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDmiTcat

65. TCAT: https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDmiTcat

66. The Issue Crawler

67. “A software tool that locates and visualizes
networks on the web”

68. Issue Crawler: https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolIssueCrawler

69. “Gephi is an interactive visualization and
exploration platform for all kinds of networks
and complex systems, dynamic and
hierarchical graphs.”

70. Gephi: http://gephi.org

71. Techniques!
Co-occurrence analysis to identify themes
Network analysis to identify actors and sources
Hyperlink analysis to explore “politics of
association”
Resonance analysis to identify source
partisanship

72. Thank You!
Liliana Bounegru | lilianabounegru.org | @bb_liliana