301251 Social Studies of Digital Science (S) (SoSe 2022)

For more than 50 years, social studies of science have provided us with empirically grounded accounts of science as mundane and everyday work. However, since the first ethnographers ventured into research laboratories, the nature of scientific work has changed in many ways. Attempts to capture and analyze these changes have been made through labels like the “bureaucratization”, “marketization”, or “internationalization” of science. The starting point for this seminar is the attempt to make sense of recent changes in scientific work through the notion of “digitalization”. From here the seminar pursues two main goals. First, we will engage with contemporary research on digitally-mediated aspects of scientific work. The aspects we cover include the role of digital data, infrastructures and genres of scientific output. We will also discuss new regimes of evaluating scientific work among peers and communicating scientific knowledge in broader digital publics. Second, we will discuss to what extent the established methods and analytic concepts of the field can help us understand digital science—and in what regards an “update” might be necessary.

This seminar is divided in one virtual kick-off session and two in person blocks. There are no mandatory readings for the kickoff session. However, there is a fair number of mandatory readings in preparation for each of the two in person blocks. There is plenty of time between the sessions to read, but I recommend that you plan ahead your reading. The readings as well as additional readings (optional) will be made available via Lernraum.