Qualitative Inquiry

Pink, Sarah

doi: 10.1177/10778004221096845pmid: N/A

Emerging digital, automated and connected systems, devices, data, and algorithms are increasingly part of our lives. They participate in the everyday realities of participants in qualitative research and they are embedded in the infrastructures through which we research and share our scholarship, research, and practice. This article introduces this new landscape and its implications for qualitative research. I argue that we need to engage not only with questions of how automated futures are imagined by others, but with how to engage with such futures as qualitative researchers.

Lupton, Deborah; Watson, Ash

doi: 10.1177/10778004221097049pmid: N/A

In this article, we present ideas about developing innovative methods for the sociology of futures. Our approach brings together the literature on sociotechnical imaginaries and the sociology of futures with vital materialism theories and research-creation methods. We draw on our research-creation materials from a series of online workshops. The workshops involved the use of creative writing prompts with participants across a diverse range of age groups and locations. The article ends with some reflections on the implications of our approach for researching the futures of emerging digital technologies and the methodological and theoretical development of the sociology of futures.

Dahlgren, Kari; Pink, Sarah; Strengers, Yolande; Nicholls, Larissa

doi: 10.1177/10778004221097630pmid: N/A

Recent interest in futures anthropology has argued that the discipline should play a more active role in shaping futures. However, this raises methodological problems for accessing futures and recreating the co-presence that is central to ethnography. Studying automated futures is particularly challenging because of the strong visions of technology-led futures, which rely on solutionist narratives and fail to account for everyday life. This article discusses a methodological innovation for studying automated futures through ethnographic visits, home tours, and comic strips that enable imaginative potential while drawing in the realities of everyday life and the maintenance of contingency into the future.

Pink, Sarah

doi: 10.1177/10778004221097060pmid: N/A

In this article I introduce the theory and practice of Design Anthropological Filmmaking as a mode of actively proposing alternative possibilities to the technological solutionist narratives and imaginaries that dominate industry, government and policy narratives about automated futures. I argue for documentary practice that is theoretically and critically aligned with a vision of the world as ongoingly emergent, and unfinished, and contests conventional innovation paradigms. To demonstrate this theory-practice dialogue I draw on my collaborative documentaries Laundry Lives and Smart Homes for Seniors which explore everyday life in the home with digital, emerging and automated technologies.

Cellard, Loup

doi: 10.1177/10778004221097055pmid: N/A

For many scholars and policy makers, the democratic demand for algorithmic transparency is a call for openness. Yet critical algorithm studies have shown that classical accountability devices, such as freedom of information, audits, or code openness have failed to make algorithms meaningfully knowable to ordinary citizens. Rather than waiting for curated and limited transparency to open so-called “hidden black boxes,” I propose and illustrate in this article a method of “surfacing algorithms.” This experimental method makes algorithms accountable through the (re)design of their surfaces: the forms of appearance, documentation, and tangible devices accompanying their use in everyday life. Democratic accountability is thus reconceptualized as a design problem. I demonstrate my method by showing how the reverse-engineering of the French housing tax algorithm performed by citizens during collective workshops through the scrutiny of their tax letters served to interrogate a fiscal algorithm from its surface.

Robertson, Shanthi; Magee, Liam; Soldatić, Karen

doi: 10.1177/10778004221099560pmid: N/A

This article makes two key contributions to methodological debates in automation research. First, we argue for and demonstrate how methods in this field must account for intersections of social difference, such as race, class, ethnicity, culture, and disability, in more nuanced ways. Second, we consider the complexities of bringing together computational and qualitative methods in an intersectional methodological approach while also arguing that in their respective subjects (machines and human subjects) and conceptual scope they enable a specific dialogue on intersectionality and automation to be articulated. We draw on field reflections from a project that combines an analysis of intersectional bias in language models with findings from a community workshop on the frustrations and aspirations produced through engagement with everyday artificial intelligence (AI)–driven technologies in the context of care.

Berg, Martin

doi: 10.1177/10778004221096851pmid: N/A

This article introduces “digital technography” as a methodology to interrogate and voice emerging digital technologies and their anticipated futures. I demonstrate, with reference to recent research on wearable self-tracking devices, digital food technologies, and platforms for work automation, how one can gain an understanding of these technologies by attending to the materials in which they are promoted; and actively engaging with them imaginatively and self-reflexively as a social scientist. This article outlines a digital technographic methodology centered around the three conceptual anchors of specification, valorization, and anticipation, all of which pertain to how a digital technology aims and perhaps even aspires to become a part of everyday life.

Rennie, Ellie; Zargham, Michael; Tan, Joshua; Miller, Luke; Abbott, Jonathan; Nabben, Kelsie; De Filippi, Primavera

doi: 10.1177/10778004221097056pmid: N/A

Blockchain governance occurs through a combination of social and technical activities, involving smart contracts, deliberation within a group, and voting. These processes are significant as they demonstrate how governance of distributed infrastructures is evolving. While typologies of blockchain governance can be constructed by gathering on-chain interactions and formal rules, other aspects are more difficult to observe, including governance interactions occurring inside discussion forums. In this article, we discuss a participatory digital ethnography technique, whereby participants and researchers use a bespoke bot to identify governance interactions occurring within project forums (on Discord). The technique is designed to be used in conjunction with the analysis of software for the purpose of mapping and understanding the “governance surface” of different protocols. We describe our tools and methods for understanding automated futures through a case study of the SourceCred community, an organization using, developing, and maintaining open source software called SourceCred. The SourceCred codebase is also used by other decentralized communities for various organizational functions, including reputation and compensation.

Sleep, Lyndal Naomi

doi: 10.1177/10778004221096853pmid: N/A

Automated decision-making (ADM) technologies, like artificial intelligence and machine learning, are increasingly being used by governments. Researchers have attempted to map the deployment of these technologies. However, mapping is an inherently political act, reinforcing dominant discourses and imaginings of technological futures. In this article, I engage with critical cartography to outline the potential of counter-mapping for researching automation in decision making, with the purpose of mapping, to quote from Hodgson and Schroeder in 2002, “against dominant power structures, to further seemingly progressive goals.” Drawing on the case of ADM in Australian social services, I reflexively account for how counter-mapping can provide a method for moving beyond dominant discourses of efficiency, cost cutting, and industriousness, to allow the alternative voices of service users’ experiences of ADM to be heard. I argue that future ADM mapping needs to focus on making visible those who are subject to the decisions of automated systems, but are usually made unknowable by the over-confident calculability of dominant ADM discourses.