2026 Conference Programme

This workshop is structured around three key objectives, moving from conceptual framing through methodological comparison to practical implementation.

1) My first aim is demonstrating how platform infrastructures differ in how they regulate the dynamics of digital cultural objects, including audience commentary itself. In dialogue with actor-network perspectives, I seek to position platforms not as neutral environments but as active forces that condition participation and visibility, and reception. By exploring the ways audience responses are divergently prioritised, nested, or hidden on TikTok and Instagram, the workshop enables participants to test how audience responses become embedded within digital-cultural objects themselves and study the impact that distinct platform architectures exert upon supposedly independent comments.

2) The workshop then models a parallel convergent approach in which qualitative and quantitative analyses are used alongside one another rather than in opposition. Through controlled comparative case studies of cross-platform poetry, attendees move between critical discourse analysis and aggregate examination of commentary patterns. By exploring how each mode of inquiry challenges and enriches the other, participants will examine whether the effects of algorithmic curation on engagement dynamics become more visible through mixed methods.

3) A final core objective is equipping attendees with hands-on experience with accessible tools for ethically gathering and analysing platform commentary, including an introduction to responsible data extraction practices through Python-based notebooks. Working with sentiment scoring and thematic analysis, participants contrast how different models generate disparate readings of the same dataset. This process highlights where automated classification diverges from human evaluation, critically reflecting how our methodological choices shape interpretation of platform-mediated engagement.

This workshop aims to demonstrate the value of creative methodologies in researching the affective lived experience of post-digital, datafied subjects. We argue that communal arts-based practices of disassembling and re-assembling generate meaningfully reflexivity around the fragmentation of self which users are subjected to on social media. Ultimately this workshop is proposed as part of a methodology for those researching datafication amongst a variety of contexts.

As digital platforms increasingly mediate everyday life, users experience themselves as collections of data points, behavioural predictions, and algorithmic profiles. These fragmented representations generate diverse affective realities and contradictions that are difficult to access through conventional, screen-based methods alone.

The primary objective of the session is to demonstrate how creative, participatory, craft-based research methods can surface tactic forms of knowledge that are often overlooked in digital research. By engaging participants in hands-on collage-making, the workshop will show how material practices can render postdigital datafication processes tangible and discussable.

A second objective is to facilitate participants’ exploration of their own experiences as datafied bodies, foregrounding how digital systems actively shape feelings, behaviours, and self-understandings. Through a guided creative practice, participants will be encouraged to reflect on the tension between their active online self-representation and the processes of data capture, profiling, and algorithmic inference that occur covertly, beyond their control or visibility.

Finally, the workshop seeks to equip participants with transferable methodological tools that can be applied in their own research and teaching. Participants will leave with a critical understanding of how creative methods can be used to investigate postdigital subjectivity. Additionally, they will gain practical experience in facilitating participatory sessions that centre communal and creative reflexivity.

The primary objective of this tutorial is to demystify Social Network Analysis (SNA) for interdisciplinary scholars and equip them with the methodological tools to apply relational thinking to social media data. As social media platforms are inherently networked structures, standard statistical methods often fail to capture the complex interdependencies between users, content, and interactions.

This tutorial has three core learning objectives. First, we aim to ground participants in the theoretical foundations of SNA, enabling them to formulate research questions that move beyond attribute-based analysis (e.g., "who posted this?") to relational analysis (e.g., "how did this information diffuse?"). We will cover key concepts such as centrality, homophily, and structural roles within the context of platforms like Bluesky and Reddit.

Second, the session will provide hands-on technical training on Communalytic (https://communalytic.org/), a research platform for collecting and analyzing social media data. Participants will learn how to use this web-based tool to collect data, visualize communication patterns, and prepare datasets for advanced analysis; all without requiring prior coding knowledge.

Third, we aim to foster critical visual literacy. Network visualizations are often aesthetically pleasing but analytically opaque. We will show participants how to use Communalytic’s built-in Network Analyzer Module to identify latent community structures and influential actors.

This workshop is structured around three key objectives, moving from conceptual framing through methodological comparison to practical implementation.

1) My first aim is demonstrating how platform infrastructures differ in how they regulate the dynamics of digital cultural objects, including audience commentary itself. In dialogue with actor-network perspectives, I seek to position platforms not as neutral environments but as active forces that condition participation and visibility, and reception. By exploring the ways audience responses are divergently prioritised, nested, or hidden on TikTok and Instagram, the workshop enables participants to test how audience responses become embedded within digital-cultural objects themselves and study the impact that distinct platform architectures exert upon supposedly independent comments.

2) The workshop then models a parallel convergent approach in which qualitative and quantitative analyses are used alongside one another rather than in opposition. Through controlled comparative case studies of cross-platform poetry, attendees move between critical discourse analysis and aggregate examination of commentary patterns. By exploring how each mode of inquiry challenges and enriches the other, participants will examine whether the effects of algorithmic curation on engagement dynamics become more visible through mixed methods.

3) A final core objective is equipping attendees with hands-on experience with accessible tools for ethically gathering and analysing platform commentary, including an introduction to responsible data extraction practices through Python-based notebooks. Working with sentiment scoring and thematic analysis, participants contrast how different models generate disparate readings of the same dataset. This process highlights where automated classification diverges from human evaluation, critically reflecting how our methodological choices shape interpretation of platform-mediated engagement.

This workshop aims to demonstrate the value of creative methodologies in researching the affective lived experience of post-digital, datafied subjects. We argue that communal arts-based practices of disassembling and re-assembling generate meaningfully reflexivity around the fragmentation of self which users are subjected to on social media. Ultimately this workshop is proposed as part of a methodology for those researching datafication amongst a variety of contexts.

As digital platforms increasingly mediate everyday life, users experience themselves as collections of data points, behavioural predictions, and algorithmic profiles. These fragmented representations generate diverse affective realities and contradictions that are difficult to access through conventional, screen-based methods alone.

The primary objective of the session is to demonstrate how creative, participatory, craft-based research methods can surface tactic forms of knowledge that are often overlooked in digital research. By engaging participants in hands-on collage-making, the workshop will show how material practices can render postdigital datafication processes tangible and discussable.

A second objective is to facilitate participants’ exploration of their own experiences as datafied bodies, foregrounding how digital systems actively shape feelings, behaviours, and self-understandings. Through a guided creative practice, participants will be encouraged to reflect on the tension between their active online self-representation and the processes of data capture, profiling, and algorithmic inference that occur covertly, beyond their control or visibility.

Finally, the workshop seeks to equip participants with transferable methodological tools that can be applied in their own research and teaching. Participants will leave with a critical understanding of how creative methods can be used to investigate postdigital subjectivity. Additionally, they will gain practical experience in facilitating participatory sessions that centre communal and creative reflexivity.

The primary objective of this tutorial is to demystify Social Network Analysis (SNA) for interdisciplinary scholars and equip them with the methodological tools to apply relational thinking to social media data. As social media platforms are inherently networked structures, standard statistical methods often fail to capture the complex interdependencies between users, content, and interactions.

This tutorial has three core learning objectives. First, we aim to ground participants in the theoretical foundations of SNA, enabling them to formulate research questions that move beyond attribute-based analysis (e.g., "who posted this?") to relational analysis (e.g., "how did this information diffuse?"). We will cover key concepts such as centrality, homophily, and structural roles within the context of platforms like Bluesky and Reddit.

Second, the session will provide hands-on technical training on Communalytic (https://communalytic.org/), a research platform for collecting and analyzing social media data. Participants will learn how to use this web-based tool to collect data, visualize communication patterns, and prepare datasets for advanced analysis; all without requiring prior coding knowledge.

Third, we aim to foster critical visual literacy. Network visualizations are often aesthetically pleasing but analytically opaque. We will show participants how to use Communalytic’s built-in Network Analyzer Module to identify latent community structures and influential actors.