Watch the videos of our symposium Reconsidering Humanity: Big Data, the Scientific Method and Images of Humans

This symposium was organised and chaired by Urban Strandberg (political science and CERGU at the University of Gothenburg), with myself as co-organiser and -chair. Funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, it took place June 25-26, 2015, at the Visual Arena venue of the joint Lindholmen campus of Chalmers Institute of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, featuring keynote speakers from anthropology, philosophy, music, neuroscience, digital design, cogntive science, robotics, computer science, digital humanities, and politics from universities and research centres in Denmark, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the USA, represented by Palle Dahlstedt, Paula Droege, Carry Figdor, Staffan I Lindberg, Dawn Nafus, Anil Seth, Irina Schklovski, Barry C. Smith, Patrik Svensson and Paul Verschure.

The videos also include the introduction and the final discussion, as well as the comment and question sessions in connection to each lecture. Please feel free to link and share the material as much as you like!

Follow our live-streamed symposium: Reconsidering Humanity: Big Data, the Scientific Method, and the Images of Humans

One of the things I do since a number of years is to partake in the multi-disciplinary and cross-sectorial Technology, Institutions and Change working group of the major independent Swedish humanities and social science research funder Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, RJ. This groups is involved in a number of initiatives, among these book projects, research network funding, support of research education and conference-organisation. Within this context, members expose one another to aspects of the group theme, and initiate educational forays by site-visits to relevant research environments. A number of these inspired political scientist Urban Strandberg and me to start pondering some of the more visionary sides of a wave of so-called Big Data approaches which have been flooding both the sciences and the humanities in recent years. In particular, we centred on the most ambitious research visions with regard to areas of scientific and humanities inquiry into the basic aspects of humanity, society and their respective natures, where cross-disciplinary big data approaches have been held out promises of groundbreaking advances on basic challenges, such as bridging the gaps between the subjective and the objective perspectives on human experience, the individual/singular and collective/general aspects of society, and the materialistic and abstract stances of perceiving the essence of human and social nature. To address these visions and perceptions and – let's admit it – hopes and fears, with a simultaneously critical and constructive eye, we ventured to assemble, with the kind support of RJ, a selected multi-disciplinary and qualified assembly of researchers – and to some extent artists – all working in fields related to the grand Big Data visions, with philosophy, computer science, robotics, anthropology and neuroscience as some of the base disciplines.

The result is the symposium:

To make things manageable, we had to make the event invite only, but starting 9:30 CET the entire event will be streamed live on the web, here. More information, the program, abstracts, speaker presentations and more can be accessed here. Later, edited versions of the presentations will be made available as online videos. Please, spread the word! And if you're interested in the subject, don't hesitate to drop in virtually and become part of the flood of big data making up the core of the symposium's subject matter!

Facebook Emotional Manipulation Experiment: A Collection of Readings

I will not make a real post of my own re the already infamous experiments (initially claimed to be military funded, but that, it seems, was a hoax), where Facebook allowed behavioural researchers to manipulate the allocation of status updates in personal feeds, to study the resulting emotional communicative behaviour of users. My own brief take is that, whatever else may be said on the matter, this is definitely not covered by the user agreement I've signed when joining Facebook. For while I did agree to Facebook testing out all sort of things to improve their service, I did certainly not agree to be a subject in a scientific research experiment, the result of which is published in a scientific journal. I also think that the study may harbour some substantive both methodological and research ethical difficulties, spilling over to not only Facebook, but also the prestigeous PNAS journal's editors, who seem to have taken proof of research ethical review rather lightly... But don't take my word for it, here are four selected sources, not all echoing my views exactly, which may help you make up your mind.

The first one simply set up what the whole thing is about in broad terms, providing a few useful links. The second discusses the scientific quality of the study, which is also important from a research ethics standpoint. The third is an account by a usually brilliant bioethics and research ethics law scholar, discussing the legal ramifications of the study, as well as details regarding what has and should have happened in procedural terms. The fourth is a purely research ethical account by a trusted bioethics colleague of mine. Enjoy!

1. Meyer, R: Everything We Know About Facebook's Secret Mood Manipulation Experiment, from The Atlantic.

2. Grohol, JM: Emotional Contagion on Facebook? More Like Bad Research Methods, from PsychCentral.

3. Meyer, MN: Everything You Need to Know About Facebook’s Controversial Emotion Experiment, from Wired.

4. Hunter, D: Consent and Ethics in Facebook’s Emotional Manipulation Study, from The Conversation.