In this paper, the authors examine some of the implications of born-digital research environments by discussing the emergence of data mining and the analysis of social media platforms. With the rise of individual online activity in chat rooms, social networking sites and micro-blogging services, new repositories for social science research have become available in large quantities. Given the changes of scale that accompany such research, both in terms of data mining and the communication of results, the authors term this type of research 'massified research'. This article argues that while the private and commercial processing of these new massive data sets is far from unproblematic, the use by academic practitioners poses particular challenges with respect to established ethical protocols. These involve reconfigurations of the external relations between researchers and participants, as well as the internal relations that compose the identities of the participant, the researcher and that of the data. Consequently, massified research and its outputs operate in a grey area of undefined conduct with respect to these concerns. The authors work through the specific case study of using Twitter's public Application Programming Interface for research and visualization. To conclude, this article proposes some potential best practices to extend current procedures and guidelines for such massified research. Most importantly, the authors develop these under the banner of 'agile ethics'. The authors conclude by making the counterintuitive suggestion that researchers make themselves as vulnerable to potential data mining as the subjects who comprise their data sets: a parity of practice.
This article is a collective response to the 2020 iteration of The Manifesto for Teaching Online. Originally published in 2011 as 20 simple but provocative statements, the aim was, and continues to be, to critically challenge the normalization of education as techno-corporate enterprise and the failure to properly account for digital methods in teaching in Higher Education. The 2020 Manifesto continues in the same critically provocative fashion, and, as the response collected here demonstrates, its publication could not be timelier. Though the Manifesto was written before the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the responses gathered here inevitably reflect on the experiences of moving to digital, distant, online teaching under unprecedented conditions. As these contributions reveal, the challenges were many and varied, ranging from the positive, breakthrough opportunities that digital learning offered to many students, including the disabled, to the problematic, such as poor digital networks and access, and simple digital poverty. Regardless of the nature of each response, taken together, what they show is that The Manifesto for Teaching Online offers welcome insights into and practical advice on how to teach online, and creatively confront the supremacy of face-to-face teaching.
Climate change has led to urgent calls for environmental action and justice, which is likely to include increased urban vegetation. The benefits of this planting could go beyond ecological and climate benefits to contribute to decolonisation and environmental and spatial justice and build on the well-documented links between ecological and human wellbeing. In Aotearoa New Zealand, past and ongoing injustices resulting from colonisation have disconnected Māori (the Indigenous people) from their land. Māori see themselves reflected in the landscape and te taiao (the natural world). The process of colonisation has mostly erased natural heritage, intrinsic to Māori identity, from urban areas. Many plants in urban areas represent colonial identity rather than this natural heritage, and many of the native plants that have been planted originate from other parts of the country. Through reviewing the literature, this article argues for research that determines the benefits of urban planting design prioritising plants that naturally occurred in the past, termed here ‘plants of place’, in public places. In settler colonial countries, where it is an accepted practice to acknowledge built and predominantly colonial heritage, making pre-colonial natural heritage visible can have many co-benefits. It has the potential to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation, decolonisation efforts, spatial justice and environmental justice. Celebrating natural heritage and planting ‘plants of place’ can contribute in some part to righting past injustices and preparing for a changing future.
The micro blogging platform Twitter is actively used by millions of people. By using the geo tags of the messages sent a virtual landscape of online activity at a certain place is generated to visualize the interface between the real-world location and the virtual activity. These New City Landscapes (NCL) visualize the amount of activity as density surfaces with hills, peaks and valleys. Across a set of different cities from around the world the resulting landscape morphologies are compared and characterized as types. This article focuses on temporal narratives and how they travel through the urban fabric via the virtual landscape in different cities around the world. The findings are discussed as cross comparisons according to activity in time and space.
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