About the group
Our research encompasses the study of large-scale technologies, such as big tech, social media and other platforms, but also specific hardware solutions, software applications and databases. Broader themes of data collection, algorithms, automation and platformization are considered vis-à-vis analog processes and practices in order to understand continuities, ruptures and novelties of digital phenomena.
We are interested in the complexities of digital technologies and practices, the human-technology interactions and decisions taken in digitized settings of crime and control. This also includes the ways in which digitization produces shifts in knowledge practices and related responsibilities in highly collaborative environments. Each group member brings their specific area of expertise into the digital context, such as drug markets and communities, punishment and imprisonment, security practices and politics, courtroom practices, migration and border control, radicalization, forensics and policing.
Recurring themes include:
- Digital methods: offline and online, digital and non-digital, issues of accessing populations online, of gathering data online, ethics, digital ethnographies
- Different abilities to access the Internet and digital services, due to control, lack of technological resources or digital literacy
- Digital state and sub-state practices and their interaction
- Privatization of knowledge and competence, in/transparencies and business secrets, commercialization and security markets, the use of “public” data
- Online representations of people & practices, self-presentation, subcultures
- International dynamics, collaborations and technology export
- Videos, visualizations and the technology gaze
- Information collection & archives, registers, databases
- Prediction & prevention practices
- Broader understandings of privacy and publicity, risks and trust
- Discrimination & bias, discourses about legality & regulation
- Radicalization, information politics & echo chambers, propaganda, narratives & framings on digital platforms
- Labs, the work on data registers, digital & data practices, data work, routines & everyday practices
- Confluences of biology and technology, biometry & genetic surveillance
- The darknet, hacking, challenging and avoiding online surveillance
Duration
The group is active until 31 December 2026.
Leader:
Primary members:
Secondary members:
- Jan C. Andersen
- Rose E. Boyle
- Katja Franko
- Stefano Mazzilli Daechsel
- Marina Hiller-Foshaugen
- Heidi Mork Lomell
- Mirjam A. Twigt
- Maja Vestad
- Thea Myrvang
- Camilla Løvschall Langeland
Host institute
Inquiries can be sent to Mareile Kaufmann (mareile.kaufmann@jus.uio.no).