Abstract

The growing digitalization of human lives and the exponential rise in digital data have significantly transformed how we understand cultural, political, and social phenomena globally. The concept of “datafication” has emerged as a theoretical framework to address these changes, impacting societies and reshaping research methods in social sciences and humanities. Discussions on datafication, and recently generative AI, thus highlight a dual role this has for research: it is both seen as an object of academic study but also as a set of new tools and methodologies for producing knowledge from new data sources. This pubic seminar addresses this dual nature of datafication and how it potentially affects social sciences and humanities research in distinctly global and comparative contexts. Through examples from over 10 years of research on comparative contexts globally, and in East Africa and Ethiopia in particular, it reflects on the complex relationship between methods, theory and contextual interpretation necessary to understand the significance of emerging forms of digital politics globally in contemporary data-driven environments.

Bio 

Dr. Matti Pohjonen’s research revolves around developing critical research approaches and methodologies to understand digital politics and cultures in especially comparative global media contexts. This has included work on blogging cultures in India, developing new research methods using interactive radio and SMS for researching hard-to-reach populations in East Africa, research on online hate speech in Ethiopia, and exploring the use of AI in social sciences and humanities research. He currently works as a Senior Researcher for the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH), University of Helsinki, leading methodological development on the use of internet and social media data, including debates on generative AI and LLMs. He previously worked as a researcher for University of Oxford, the VOX-Pol network of excellence and as a Lecturer in Global Digital Culture at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He has published extensively on topics related to global digital communication for journals such as International Journal of Communication, Popular Communication, Social Media + Society and Big Data & Society.