Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society

In this chapter we will be concentrating on one of the key processes in the ‘cultural circuit’ (see Du Gay et al., 1997, and the Introduction to this volume) – the practices of representation. The aim of this chapter is to introduce you to this topic, and to explain what it is about and why we give it such importance in cultural studies. The concept of representation has come to occupy a new and important place in the study of culture. Representation connects meaning and language to culture. But what exactly do people mean by it? What does representation have to do with culture and meaning? One common-sense usage of the term is as follows: ‘Representation means using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people.’ You may well ask, ‘Is that all?’ Well, yes and no. Representation is an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture. It does involve the use of language, of signs and images which stand for or represent things. But this is a far from simple or straightforward process, as you will soon discover. How does the concept of representation connect meaning and language to culture? In order to explore this connection further, we will look at a number of different theories about how language is used to represent the world. Here we will be drawing a distinction between three different accounts or theories: the reflective, the intentional and the constructionist approaches to representation. Does language simply reflect a meaning which already exists out there in the world of objects, people and events (reflective)? Does language express only what the speaker or writer or painter wants to say, his or her personally intended meaning (intentional)? Or is meaning constructed in and through language (constructionist)? You will learn more in a moment about these three approaches. Most of the chapter will be spent exploring the constructionist approach, because it is this perspective which has had the most significant impact on cultural studies in recent years. This CHAPTER ONE

From Work to Representation

/pdf/citizen-science-a-study-of-people-expertise-and-sustainable-3po1jwi9qc.pdf

Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable Development

The Spirit Level: why equality is better for everyone, edited by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, London, Penguin, 2010, 368 pp., £7.99, ISBN 9780141032368 I once submitted an article to an Amer...

The Spirit Level: why equality is better for everyone

Farming is undergoing a digital revolution. Our existing review of current Big Data applications in the agri-food sector has revealed several collection and analytics tools that may have implications for relationships of power between players in the food system (e.g. between farmers and large corporations). For example, Who retains ownership of the data generated by applications like Monsanto Corproation's Weed I.D. “app”? Are there privacy implications with the data gathered by John Deere's precision agricultural equipment? Systematically tracing the digital revolution in agriculture, and charting the affordances as well as the limitations of Big Data applied to food and agriculture, should be a broad research goal for Big Data scholarship. Such a goal brings data scholarship into conversation with food studies and it allows for a focus on the material consequences of big data in society.

/pdf/big-data-in-food-and-agriculture-58kh30nkai.pdf

Big Data in food and agriculture

In May 2018 over 200 people from around the world met at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom to participate in a conference on ‘Data Justice’ hosted by the Data Justice Lab. They included scho...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1606268

Exploring Data Justice: Conceptions, Applications and Directions

A new news order?: Online news content examined

There is an abundance of enthusiasm and optimism about how governments at all levels can make use of big data, algorithms and artificial intelligence. There is also growing concern about the risks that come with these new systems. This article makes the case for greater government transparency and accountability about uses of big data through a Government of Canada qualitative research case study. Adapting a method from critical cartographers, I employ counter-mapping to map government big data practices and internal discussions of risk and challenge. I do so by drawing on interviews and freedom of information requests. The analysis reveals that there are more concerns and risks than often publicly discussed and that there are significant areas of silence that need greater attention. The article underlines the need for our democratic systems to respond to our new datafied contexts by ensuring that our institutions make changes to better protect citizen rights, uphold democratic principles and ensure means for citizen intervention

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2053951718809145

Democratic governance in an age of datafication: Lessons from mapping government discourses and practices

There has been a data rush in the past decade brought about by online communication and, in particular, social media (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, among others), which promises a new age of digital enlightenment. But social data is compromised: it is being seized by specific economic interests, it leads to a fundamental shift in the relationship between research and the public good, and it fosters new forms of control and surveillance.Compromised Data: From Social Media to Big Data explores how we perform critical research within a compromised social data framework. The expert, international lineup of contributors explores the limits and challenges of social data research in order to invent and develop new modes of doing public research. At its core, this collection argues that we are witnessing a fundamental reshaping of the social through social data mining.

Compromised Data: From Social Media to Big Data

This article provides a framing analysis of mainstream press coverage of poverty (offline and online) in Canada and the UK, and compares mainstream news coverage to coverage on alternative news sites. The research questions the extent to which, and how, coverage of children and immigrants presents contemporary constructions of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving poor’. It is argued that rationalizing and individualizing frames dominate coverage of poverty and immigration. The author suggests that the significance of the dominance of these frames is their ability to privilege and embed market-based approaches to poverty and immigration. An analysis of alternative news content reveals the extent to which social justice frames, the very frames that counter market-based approaches, are absent from mainstream news coverage. Overall, these results indicate that challenging problematic representations and approaches to poverty will require changing representations, an expansion of coverage that runs counter to news...

Joanna Redden

Papers

Exploring Data Justice: Conceptions, Applications and Directions

A new news order?: Online news content examined

Democratic governance in an age of datafication: Lessons from mapping government discourses and practices

Compromised Data: From Social Media to Big Data

Poverty in the news: a framing analysis of coverage in Canada and the United Kingdom