There are many ways to organize the materials and approaches that characterize digitalSTS. During the workshops that led to this volume, participants identified three themes that came to organize our inquiry: theory, methods and making. We therefore solicited papers that either a) contributed theoretical insights in the case study style typical of classic STS, b) contributed to discussions of methodological explorations about the digital, or that engaged digital inquiry techniques and technics themselves, and c) perhaps most inventively, engaged in the making and design of artifacts as a form of inquiry in and of itself. Distinct groups of editors evaluated and shepherded contributions within each section. We have always encouraged pluralism, however, and expect that there are many ways to explore the contributed pieces to digitalSTS. We here offer the original tagged themes — and other important thematic resonances of central importance to STS as a field; each constitute a unique pathways through the volume’s heterogenous contributions.
Preface
Introduction
Materiality
Introduction
Laura Forlano
Unfolding Digital Materiality: How Engineers Struggle to Shape Tangible and Fluid Objects
Alexandre Camus and Dominique Vinck
The Life and Death of Data
Yanni Loukissas
Materiality Methodology, and Some Tricks of the Trade in the Study of Data and Specimens
David Ribes
Digital Visualizations for Thinking with the Environment
Nerea Calvillo
Gender
Introduction
Daniela K. Rosner
If “Diversity” Is the Answer, What Is the Question? Understanding Diversity Advocacy in Voluntaristic Technology Projects
Christina Dunbar-Hester
Feminist STS and Ubiquitous Computing: Investigating the Nature of the “Nature” of Ubicomp
Xaroula (Charalampia) Kerasidou
Affect and Emotion in digitalSTS
Luke Stark
The Ambiguous Boundaries of Computer Source Code and Some of Its Political Consequences
Stéphane Couture
Global Inequalities
Introduction
Steven J. Jackson
Venture Ed: Recycling Hype, Fixing Futures, and the Temporal Order of Edtech
Anita Say Chan
Dangerous Networks: Internet Regulations as Racial Border Control in Italy
Camilla A. Hawthorne
Social Movements and Digital Technology: A Research Agenda
Carla Ilten and Paul-Brian McInerney
Living in the Broken City: Infrastructural Inequity, Uncertainty, and the Materiality of the Digital in Brazil
David Nemer and Padma Chirumamilla
Sound Bites, Sentiments, and Accents: Digitizing Communicative Labor in the Era of Global Outsourcing
Winifred R. Poster
Infrastructure
Introduction
Janet Vertesi
Infrastructural Competence
Steve Sawyer, Ingrid Erickson, and Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi
Getting “There” from the Ever-Changing “Here”: Following Digital Directions
Ranjit Singh, Chris Hesselbein, Jessica Price, and Michael Lynch
Digitized Coral Reefs
Elena Parmiggiani and Eric Monteiro
Of “Working Ontologists” and “High-Quality Human Components”: The Politics of Semantic Infrastructures
Doris Allhutter
The Energy Walk: Infrastructuring the Imagination
Brit Ross Winthereik, James Maguire, and Laura Watts
Software
Introduction
Carl DiSalvo
From Affordances to Accomplishments: PowerPoint and Excel at NASA
Janet Vertesi
Misuser Innovations: The Role of “Misuses” and “Misusers” in Digital Communication Technologies
Guillaume Latzko-Toth, Johan Söderberg, Florence Millerand, and Steve Jones
Knowing Algorithms
Nick Seaver
Keeping Software Present: Software as a Timely Object for STS Studies of the Digital
Marisa Leavitt Cohn
Visualizing the Social
Introduction
Yanni Loukissas
Tracing Design Ecologies: Collecting and Visualizing Ephemeral Data as a Method in Design and Technology Studies
Daniel Cardoso Llach
Data Sprints: A Collaborative Format in Digital Controversy Mapping
Anders Kristian Munk, Axel Meunier, and Tommaso Venturini
Smart Artifacts Mediating Social Viscosity
Juan Salamanca
Actor-Network versus Network Analysis versus Digital Networks: Are We Talking about the Same Networks?
Tommaso Venturini, Anders Kristian Munk, and Mathieu Jacomy