digital cultures thesis

Master of Arts in Digital Studies

The Master of Arts in Digital Studies of Language, Culture, and History provides a solid grounding in computational methods and their use in the arts and humanities. It is a stepping stone to careers that require a combination of coding skills with the capabilities in research, writing, and critical thinking provided by an education in the humanities.

Graduates of this program are eligible for non-academic jobs in software development or software-related marketing, communications, and technical writing. Alternatively, they may pursue doctoral studies in order to apply their computational skills to research and teaching; or they may take on an academic support role in digital humanities at a college, university, or cultural institution.

There is a one-year version of the master’s program with no thesis requirement and a two-year version of the program that entails a thesis project and a specialization in a particular area. The two-year M.A. is recommended for students who wish to pursue a Ph.D. in the future.

In addition to the information provided in this website, the academic policies pertaining to this master’s program and other useful information may be found here in the Digital Studies Student Manual . 

A STEM Designated Degree Program

This master’s program qualifies as a STEM Designated Degree Program under the regulations of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The program is primarily intended for students who have previously majored in the arts or humanities. However, students who majored in the sciences, including computer science, may also benefit from the program and are encouraged to apply.

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The deadlines and required materials for applying for the M.A. are described on the Apply for the M.A. page  of this website. For more information, please send email to  [email protected] .

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One-Year M.A.

Students in the one-year version of the master’s program take courses full-time on the University of Chicago campus for one academic year, from late September to the end of May. They do not do a master’s thesis.

Please note that students who are admitted to do a one-year M.A. will not be able to stay on to do a two-year M.A. The decision about whether to do a one-year M.A. or a two-year M.A. must be made at the time of application.

Students doing the one-year M.A. take three courses per quarter in the Autumn, Winter, and Spring quarters, for a total of nine courses, including six core courses in Digital Studies (DIGS) and three elective courses . The elective courses may be in any department of the humanities or social sciences.

The Associate Director of Curriculum and Instruction of the Forum for Digital Culture will meet with each student once per quarter, in Week 7 or Week 8, to discuss the student’s academic progress and elective courses.

Autumn Quarter

In the Autumn Quarter, students take three required core courses in Digital Studies (DIGS):

• DIGS 30001, Introduction to Computer Programming with Python
• DIGS 30002, Data Analysis I: Introduction to Statistics
• DIGS 30003, Data Management for the Humanities ( in this course students learn how to acquire and clean data stored in diverse formats, how to use relational databases and the SQL querying language, and how to construct ontologies for non-relational graph databases using the Web Ontology Language )

Winter Quarter

In the Winter Quarter, students take two required core courses in Digital Studies (DIGS) and one elective course :

• DIGS 30004, Data Analysis II: Data Visualization and Machine Learning ( this course provides additional practice in Python coding )
• DIGS 30007, Introduction to Digital Humanities ( this course surveys the the history and theory of digital computing, the use of computers for research in the humanities, and current debates about digital humanities )
• One elective course chosen from a preapproved list or individually approved by the Associate Director of Curriculum and Instruction

Spring Quarter

In the Spring Quarter, students take one required core course in Digital Studies (DIGS) and two elective courses :

• DIGS 30005, Data Publication for the Humanities ( in this course students learn how to publish scholarly data on the Web by means of apps written in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS )
• Two elective courses chosen from a preapproved list or individually approved by the Associate Director of Curriculum and Instruction

A grade of C (2.0) or higher in the Autumn core courses (DIGS 30001, 30002, and 30003) is a requirement for continuing in the M.A. program because these courses are prerequisites for subsequent required courses in the Winter and Spring. Students who have previously passed a college-level course in computer programming or statistics with a grade of B (3.0) or higher may petition the Associate Director of Curriculum and Instruction for an exemption from taking DIGS 30001 and/or DIGS 30002, allowing them to take one or two additional elective courses.

Two-Year Specialized M.A. with Thesis Project

Students in the two-year research-intensive version of the master’s program take courses full-time on the University of Chicago campus for two consecutive academic years. In their first year, they take the same six core courses as the students doing a one-year M.A. (described above) and three courses prescribed for their area of specialization. In their second year, they take additional courses prescribed for their area of specialization and do a thesis project in that area under the supervision of a faculty advisor. The tuition fee is reduced by 50 percent in the second year.

The proposed area of specialization must be indicated at the time of application to the two-year M.A. program. Four areas of specialization are currently available and are listed below. A specialization in Digital Ethics and Public Discourse is planned for the future.

Applicants to the two-year specialized M.A. who are not admitted to that program will be automatically considered for the one-year M.A. and may be offered admission to the latter.

C lick the links below for more information on the areas of specialization:

• Artificial Intelligence and Language
• Digital Art and Archaeology
• Digital Media and Extended Reality
• Digital Texts and Culture

Thesis Project

In their second year, students will do a thesis project under the guidance of a thesis advisor who is a University of Chicago faculty member, instructional professor, or lecturer. The thesis advisor may or may not be someone whose own research entails computational methods. The Associate Director of Curriculum and Instruction of the Forum for Digital Culture will work with students to select a feasible topic and find a suitable advisor. Training and advice concerning the computational methods used in the thesis project will be provided by the staff of the Forum for Digital Culture.

The thesis must have a software component as well as a written component. In the written component, the student will explain the computational aspects of the project and reflect critically on the methods being used with reference to the historical development of these methods and the assumptions underlying them and with reference to current debates in digital humanities. The length of the written component of the thesis may vary, depending on the subject matter and the expectations of the thesis advisor, but it will be at least 25 pages and no more than 50 pages of text (double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman with one-inch margins), not counting illustrations and bibliographic references.

Students   must submit to the Associate Director of Curriculum and Instruction a thesis proposal form signed by the thesis advisor no later than the end of Week 6 of the Spring Quarter of their first year. This form will contain the thesis title and abstract and a schedule for regular consultation with the faculty advisor and the Forum staff , who will help the student with the technical aspects of the project.

The completed thesis project (both the software component and the written component) must be submitted to the thesis advisor and the Associate Director of Curriculum and Instruction no later than the end of Week 6 in the Spring Quarter of the student’s second year in the program.

Summer Internship

Students doing a two-year M.A. are eligible for a paid internship to work part-time on campus in the summer between their first and second year under the supervision of a member of the staff of the Forum for Digital Culture. They are also expected to begin work on the software component of their thesis projects during that summer.

How to Apply

Click here to start your application . contact  [email protected]  with questions about the application process..

If you have questions about any of the Digital Studies programs, please send email to  [email protected] .

Admission Requirements and Minimum Grades

No previous background in computer programming is required and students are admitted from a wide variety of undergraduate majors. However, to be admitted to the program, the student will normally have passed at least one college-level course in mathematics or statistics with a grade of B (3.0) or higher.

Students will apply for either the one-year M.A. or the two-year research-intensive M.A., which requires a thesis project and a specialization in a particular area. Admission to the two-year M.A. will take into account the applicant’s prior training and aptitude for the area of specialization specified in the application. However, an undergraduate major in the chosen area of specialization is not required.

While in the M.A. program, students must maintain a cumulative grade point average of 2.7 (B-). If they fall below this average, they will be placed on academic probation and if their grades do not improve, they may be withdrawn from the program.

In addition, a grade of C (2.0) or higher in the initial courses in computer programming (DIGS 30001) and statistics (DIGS 30002) is a requirement for continuing in the M.A. program. These courses are prerequisites for subsequent core courses required to complete the program. Students who fail to obtain a grade of C (2.0) in either of these courses in the Autumn Quarter will be placed on academic probation and must then either (1) request a leave of absence, if they plan to return in the Autumn of the following year to re-take the course or courses in which they failed to obtain the required grade, or (2) withdraw from the program entirely.

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A sustainable approach to threatened digital cultural heritage

Gambell, Sarah Elizabeth (2022) A sustainable approach to threatened digital cultural heritage. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Endorsed by UNESCO as an effective and timely way to facilitate action against illicit trafficking of cultural property, widespread digitisation of inventories and artefacts mitigates loss of movable heritage and can facilitate expedited restitution of displaced items in the future. However, the frameworks for undertaking expedited, pre-emptive digitisation are outdated. This research therefore aims to develop a new methodology for “responsive digitisation”, via a systematic re-evaluation of digitisation strategies for at-risk materials. It will explore how such comprehensive digitisation practices can be situated for analytical evaluation, in line with the strategic values of collections use, access, and reuse in the heritage sector. This research explores the role of digitisation praxis for the preservation of contested cultural heritage under threat, where there is an immediate need for pre-emptive digitisation to mitigate the displacement of inventories and collections. It undertakes a gap analysis of relevant policy documents in the heritage sector, and thereby proposes a new framework and methodology for employing a strategy for digitisation of cultural heritage in under threat, prioritising methods that have the scope for long-term sustainability. It identifies four key challenges that a theory of responsive digitisation should address: 1. A lack of formal digital preservation planning in existing policy documents, 2. A lack of standardised procedures for digitisation, 3. A lack of emphasis on undertaking digitisation methods with digital sustainability integrated from the planning stage, and 4. Missing methods for disseminating digital information to parties situated in conflict. In doing so, it provides a framework for cultural heritage under threat, focusing on long-term digital sustainability, informed by wider disciplinary narratives concerning preservation, destruction, information control and the role of museums in the future. Further, it develops a theoretical framework for undertaking pre-emptive and rigorous digitisation of heritage with regards to conflict and preservation, which will emphasise long-term digital sustainability.

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Digital Culture, Master's, 2 years

• Tuition For non eu/eea citizens
• Years 2 Years
• Grade requirements Minimum C
• Language English
• Start Autumn and Spring

Main content

What do you learn .

Through the Master’s programme in Digital Culture, you learn to reflect critically on topics such as technology history and technology culture, and you gain practical experience with web design and other creative web projects. Current topics for the Master’s thesis can be e-books, selfies, computer games and learning, and digital poetry. 

Digital culture is a field that is developing rapidly and is characterised by methodological pluralism. The methods include algorithmic methods used in coding, historical methods, text analysis and explanatory methods, statistical methods and qualitative data. 

With a Master’s degree in digital culture 

You have in-depth knowledge of a central topic within digital culture 

You have knowledge of and experience with professional argumentation, discussion and presentation 

You know how to produce academic texts at an advanced level 

You can use methods and analysis tools that are necessary to complete an independent research project within the subject area you have chosen 

Student life 

As a Master’s student in digital culture, your base will be at the HF building on the university campus in the centre of Bergen. You will have your own reading room space, and work side by side with other Master’s students at the institute. You will become part of a lively, international environment and get to enjoy informal contact with both students and staff members. 

If you want to influence the programme’s development, you can run as a student representative on the Digital Culture programme board for , or create social and academic events as part of the “fagutvalg” (student committee) for digital culture. 

In a normal week, you attend one to two lectures, and spend the rest of the time on self-study. Usually, all classroom activities and assignments are compulsory. In addition, you have seminars and individual guidance. 

The teaching is research-based. This means that the methods, themes and subjects we teach are selected in accordance with relevant, new research at the institute. 

You will also read and do a lot of research on your own. 

What can you work as? 

Our former students work in diverse fields such as 

Technology journalism 

Web design, teaching 

Administration and development of business information systems 

Innovation in the mobile service industry 

Programming 

With the rapid technological changes of our time, we not only need people who can program computers; we also need people who understand how technology affects us and who know how to use digital technology to improve society. The Master’s programme in Digital Culture trains professionals who can use technology in a creative way and who can analyse the effects of technological change. 

Admission requirements and application deadline 

Follow these links to find the general entry requirements and guidelines on how to apply:

• Citizens from outside the European Union/EEA/EFTA (4 January)
• Citizens from within the European Union/EEA/EFTA (1 March)
• Nordic citizens and applicants residing in Norway (15 April)

You will also have to meet  the programme specific entry requirements .

All applicants with citizenship from outside EU/EEA  must pay tuition fees. 

Study structure 

Semester 1 

Key Theories of Digital Culture (15 ECTSECTS) 

Digital Media Aesthetics (15 ECTSECTS) 

Semester 2 

Methods and project development in digital culture (15 ECTSECTS) 

Elective course in digital culture (15 ECTS) 

Semesters 3 and 4 

Master's thesis (60 ECTS)

You can go on an exchange stay for one semester. An exchange stay gives you valuable cultural experience, linguistic training, new professional insights and experiences for life. We particularly recommend a stay at one of our partner universities in the NORDPLUS Nordic Digital Culture Network. You can also study at one of the other recommended partner universities. 

Further study opportunities 

With a Master’s degree, you can qualify for further research work; for example, you can take a PhD in Digital Culture. 

Questions about the course? 

Telephone: +47 55 58 93 70 

E-mail: [email protected]  

Study plan 

https://www.uib.no/studier/ MAHF-DIKUL /plan 

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Article contents

Digital culture and qualitative methodologies in education.

• Eliane Schlemmer Eliane Schlemmer Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos - UNISOS
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.508
• Published online: 30 September 2019

From a digital culture perspective, this article has as main objective to assess two contemporary qualitative research methods in the field of education with distinct theoretical orientations: the cartographic method as a way of tracing trajectories in research-intervention with a theoretical basis in the biology of knowledge, enactive cognition and inventive cognition; and the cartographic method as a means of identifying and mapping the controversies linked to the different associations between human and non-human actors with a theoretical basis in actor-network theory (ANT). With their own specificities, both methods have been fruitful in the development of qualitative research in the field of education, in the context of digital culture, and more recently, in the hybrid culture of atopic habitation, mainly because they also relate to equally consistent theories and aspects of human cognition, making it possible to detect traces and clues in the fluid associations between actors enhanced by different digital technologies (DT), including data mining and learning analytics. From the Brazilian perspective on the topic, this article approaches the experience of the cartographic method of research intervention as well as the cartography of controversies as tools for developing qualitative research in education. These different forms of the cartographic method have inspired the construction of didactic-pedagogical experiences based on theoretical approaches linked to cognition, producing inventive methodologies and interventionist pedagogical practices. These methodologies and practices, which will be discussed at length in this article, have been developed and validated by the Research Group in Digital Education at Unisinos University at different levels and in varied educational settings.

• qualitative research
• cartography
• digital culture
• multimodality
• pervasiveness

Introduction

A version of this article in its original language.

A social group’s socialization is made visible by a distinctive way of acting, which develops rituals representing emotions, common values, and norms for coexistence, all of which contribute to constructing a culture. This makes it possible to refer, for example, to a pre-digital, digital, or gamer culture, and, more recently, a hybrid culture in atopic habitation.

Research itself is also embedded in a culture, which is evident in the understanding of what science is and how to do science in different areas of knowledge. This way of doing science, of researching, has faced new challenges and implications arising mainly from exponential digital technological growth.

The production of knowledge, as well as its almost instantaneous dissemination, produces broad access to ever greater amounts of information in a very short time, providing direct interaction with the researcher or research group responsible for a given discovery and/or innovation, as well as the constitution of research networks. This movement, so characteristic of contemporary scientific inquiry, instigates dialogue among fields, allowing distinct areas of knowledge to overlap and establish new research contexts. Thus we have seen the emergence of biomedicine, biotechnology, food engineering, and informatics in digital education/education, among many others, posing new methodological research challenges.

Lopes and Schlemmer ( 2017 ), point out that research in education in the context of digital culture has sought theoretical and methodological references that can support the complexity of knowledge production in this context, provoking dialogue and the problematization of the very theoretical and epistemological field that sustains it, in addition to the simple problematization related to the use of specific digital technologies (DT) and their effects on education. In this sense, theorists such as Pierre Lévy, Manuel Castells, Bruno Latour, Michel Maffesoli, Massimo Di Felice, Lúcia Santaella, and André Lemos, among others, problematize the sociocultural dimension of digital technological development, allowing us to broaden the focus of research into the contexts of emerging digital culture and, according to Schlemmer ( 2018 ), hybrid culture in atopic habitation, as well as to understand how this phenomenon relates to the field of education. It is therefore a matter of researching the broader meanings that these cultures produce in the field of teaching and learning, that is, the broader field of education.

With this context in mind, the following is a presentation of the research we have conducted as part of the Research Group in Digital Education, which highlights some of the concerns, strategies, and theoretical and methodological approaches that we have adopted in our research in the field of education in digital culture, and more recently in the hybrid culture in atopic habitation, which has enabled us to engage in broader and deeper dialogue. The objective is to consider the cartographic method of intervention research so as to highlight the research process, showing how we gradually adopted digital culture research methods before arriving at the cartographic method of intervention research and the cartography of controversies, which are discussed at length in this article.

From Digital Culture to Hybrid Culture in Atopic Habitation: Challenges for Qualitative Research in Education

In the field of research on education and digital culture in Brazil, Schlemmer, Lopes, and Molina ( 2012 ) outline some epistemological and methodological challenges on experiments in providing guidance by master’s and doctoral students in education. These challenges involve the construction of research objects and problems in the field of education and digital culture in DT contexts, including virtual learning environments, digital social media, and 3D digital virtual worlds. The authors propose rethinking the term virtual as a demarcation of an epistemological and methodological frontier in the ethnographic research of education and digital culture. They argue that the term digital would be more appropriate in distinguishing this border. They also suggest that the term netnography would be the most appropriate in a theoretical-methodological ethnographic research design in education and digital culture.

With this perspective, Lopes, Schlemmer, and Molina ( 2014b ) present some approaches to developing research and new procedures involving the use of applications (apps) and mobile devices (netbooks, tablets, and smartphones) in ethnographic research based on the project “Escola aumentada: Cartografia digital e mobilidade para a aprendizagem e a cidadania.” For the authors, the development of mobile technologies, geolocation (GPS and locative media), and distributed online databases (cloud computing) created new possibilities for the production of records and interactions in ethnographic research. While the diversity of digital records (text, photo, audio, and video) coupled with indexing and tagging mechanisms (tags, hashtags, geotags, etc.) opens up new possibilities for research, it also requires participants to understand the relevant syntax and new technological procedures for the production, recording, and sharing of information. Some programs and applications for desktop and mobile devices such as NVivo and Evernote, among others, can facilitate this process, contributing to the planning and organization of such production. The authors also refer to participatory research methodologies capable of involving researchers and subjects in the production and analysis of data. The current technological context, they note, can consolidate a new scenario in the field of research in which scholars and subjects act as co-producers of knowledge. In this sense, cartography mediated by digital devices emerges as a rich methodological possibility, involving social actors in the context of local problems. This engagement is a necessary condition for the production of meaning through the shared and mediated use of DT in the process of knowledge construction. This scenario can reconfigure both the research itself and the contract between researchers and subjects, since action and participation become instances of authorship from which all sides speak and produce.

Expanding their experimentation along with the discussion over the cartographic method, Lopes, Schlemmer, and Molina ( 2014a ) carried out an early attempt to map actions linked to a digital inclusion program—Província de São Pedro (PSP)—to distribute netbooks and tablets to teachers and students, initially prioritizing schools in cities participating in the Territories of Peace Program (Programa Territórios de Paz, PTP) to address the following research problem: What is the reasoning for linking an educational program of digital inclusion to a public safety program? The objective of the research was to understand the ties between such programs. Thus, the authors present digital cartography as a methodological proposition for online research and indicate the digital map of culture in Rio Grande do Sul (RS) and digital cartography as technological possibilities to promote greater connectivity between such programs.

Schlemmer and Lopes ( 2016 ) and Schlemmer ( 2016a ) also analyze the potential of the method to inspire new practices in line with the need to understand the phenomenon of learning in all its complexity—social, political, cognitive, affective, and technological—precisely because of its interventionist nature. In this context, the authors present a theoretical, methodological, and technological experiment developed in higher education and inspired by the cartographic method as a way of monitoring and evaluating learning in gamified processes and games from an interventionist perspective developed in a hybrid, multimodal, pervasive, and ubiquitous context.

Lopes and Schlemmer ( 2017 ) problematize the ethical, epistemological, and methodological aspects related to the field of education in digital culture, reflecting on how ethics can dialogue with the choices scholars make when conducting research. The authors present the paths adopted in two surveys conducted between 2010 and 2015 with a state public school in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre participating in government programs for digital inclusion. Founded on the intervention research cartographic method, they present some of the results of discussions with teachers and students, based on the experience of producing and publishing information on the Internet. They problematize the ethical dilemma of research intervention based on the idea of technological appropriation, as a process that is established from the changes of practices that take place in contexts of analogical school culture and digital culture. They discuss and propose, based on the results of the research, overcoming the ethical dilemma of children and young students participating in surveys involving the publication of online content and the fears regarding media exposure—namely, the production and access to inappropriate content—and inattention in the classroom.

This research demonstrates that the cartographic method has been relevant, especially when the research tries to understand phenomena related to learning in the digital culture or, more recently, in the hybrid culture in an atopic habitation. Associated with this perspective, in the digital technological context are systems of data mining and learning analytics that make it possible to more effectively follow the tracks left by the subjects in the different spaces in which they interact.

Hybrid, in this context, refers to the mix between different elements resulting in a new element composed of the previous ones. For Latour ( 1994 ), the hybrid consists of multiple matrices, mixtures of nature and culture, which is therefore contrary to the separation between culture/nature, human/non human, among other things.

By atopic habitation, Di Felice ( 2009 ) refers to a relationship, a form of communication, characterized by the network interactions between different human and non human collectives, digital and territorial technologies. Atopic habitation “is thus the transient and fluid hybridization of bodies, technologies and landscapes, and as the advent of a new typology of ecosystem, neither organic, nor inorganic, nor static, nor delimitable, but informative and immaterial” (p. 291).

Thus, according to Schlemmer ( 2013 , 2014 , 2015 , 2016a , 2016b , 2016c , 2017 ), the hybrid is understood to be a mixture of space (geographic and digital), presence (physical and digital), technologies (analogue and digital), and culture (pre-digital and digital). It is in this context that the term multimodal is used, which includes the different imbricated educational modalities: the presential-physical modality and online modality and, while online, being able to combine elements of electronic learning, mobile learning, pervasive learning, ubiquitous learning, immersive learning, gamification learning, and game-based learning.

When scholars refer to hybridism in atopic habitation, in multimodality, pervasiveness, and ubiquity, they mean actions and interactions between human actors (HA) and non-human actors (NHA), in geographic and digital spaces, in interactions of different cultures (digital and pre-digital), constituting inseparable networks linking interconnected natures, techniques, and cultures. This suggests that a new understanding of culture and society may be emerging, one that embraces coexistence, co-engendering, mutual respect, solidarity, and the recognition of the other as a legitimate interlocutor. Thus, it is worth seeking to understand what these changes might mean in the area of education and, by extension, for research in education.

It is in this context that two contemporary methodological approaches are presented and discussed within the scope of qualitative research in education, linked to specific theoretical orientations.

The Cartographic Method of Research Intervention in Relation to Cognition Sciences

The cartographic method of intervention research is based on the cartographic method proposed by Deleuze and Guattari ( 1995 ). This method has been developed in Brazil by Kastrup ( 2007 , 2008 ), Passos, Kastrup, and Escóssia ( 2009 ), and Passos, Kastrup, and Tedesco ( 2014 ) as a means of interventionist research.

According to Passos et al. ( 2009 ), this approach originated from concerns about research methodology, which requires more open and, at the same time, inventive procedures. Thus, the theme of cartography emerged as a methodological issue in the face of impasses in cognition research, developed by the research group Cognição e Subjetividades. 1 The method began taking shape when the members of the research group questioned the assumption that knowledge means representing or recognizing reality by configuring the importance of the binomial cognition/creation and calling for a more detailed investigation process into the temporal dimension of knowledge production processes. Thus, the authors defined the concept of cognition as creative, autopoietic (Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, 2001 ), or enactive (Francisco Varela, 1988 ).

Maturana and Rezepka ( 2000 ) suggest that the way people attribute meaning and learn has a distinctly human quality, since people are autonomous and autopoietic, in congruence with the environment in which they are inserted. This congruence can cause disturbances in the structure of human beings, promoting learning processes insofar as the structure self-produces to compensate for the disturbance. Thus, for Maturana ( 1993a , 1993b ), learning is the act of transforming within a particular environment of recurrent interactions, and happens as the behavior of an organism varies during its ontogenesis in a manner congruent with the variations of the environment (Maturana, 1998 ). Therefore, when I refer to a medium or a hybrid, it means that the congruence of the subject with this environment causes disruptions in the structure of this subject, which allows him or her to attribute meanings that originate from the action and interaction in that space, thus promoting learning processes as the structure reproduces itself to compensate for the disturbance, and in so doing, compounds its ontogeny.

The process of cognition consists of creating a range of behaviors through conduct within a field of interactions. Knowledge, from this perspective, is not simply representation, but implies a permanent interpretation of action. For Varela ( 1990 ), interpretation and knowledge are emergent (in the sense of emerging) results of action or acting in the world. Thus, greater capacity for cognition consists, to a large extent, of asking the pertinent questions that arise at every moment of our life. These are not predefined but rather enactive: they emerge from action in the world, the relevant aspect being what our common sense deems appropriate within a given context. Thus, knower and what is known, subject and object, determine each other and arise simultaneously. The enactive orientation proposes an intermediate way of transcending both extremes: subject and object define each other and are correlative.

The central point of cognition for Maturana and Varela ( 1997 ) is its ability to elicit meaning: knowledge is not predetermined or established a priori, but implicit in regular processes of cognitive activities themselves. In this way, cognition is not the representation of a world that exists independently, but rather the “production” of a world through the process of living, the “continuous coincidence of our being, our doing and our knowing” (p. 20).

According to Passos ( 2015 ), “to know is to enter a structural coupling with the environment, to interact” (p. 85). However, the understanding of interaction changes in this perspective because it no longer assumes the preexistence of the two terms (organism and environment, subject and object) that interact. To interact in this perspective means to construct oneself and the environment, being, therefore, the “act of knowing reality, an act of affirmation of self, self-surrendering, of autopoiesis. By redefining the cognitive act, its representational sense disappears” (p. 86). In this way, transgression lies in imbuing knowledge with pragmatic value that makes it a performative act, in which to know is to do and vice versa. This delegitimizes the understanding of knowledge through transparency or indifference of the cognitive act: “The whole act of knowing is a form of engagement in the world, of commitment to the world that constitutes itself in this act” (p. 86).

An important element that marks the difference between the enactive approach and any form of biological constructivism or neo-Kantianism is the emphasis on codetermination. In this context, the understanding that conduct is potentially unpredictable marks a departure from the theoretical approach of Maturana and Varela, from other behaviorist and Piagetian approaches.

In this perspective, according to Passos et al. ( 2009 ), subject and object—the poles of cognoscence—are outcomes of cognitive activity rather than conditions. By broadening the concept of cognition and understanding it as linked to creation, the production of knowledge pragmatically and reciprocally shapes the self and the cognitive domain such that cognitive practice engenders subjectivity, overcoming an understanding of dependence of a cognitive subject and a given world, understood as invariant fundamentals. Understanding of cognition as an act of creation brings with it “the problem of the ethical commitment of the cognitive act to the created reality. Production of knowledge, production of subjectivity” (p. 13). The methodological problem is set as follows: “How to study the plane of reality production? What method allows us to follow these processes?” (p. 13). Instead of rules to be applied in the method, the authors offer clues to guide the researcher, since it is not always possible to predetermine every methodological procedure: “The clues that guide the cartographer are like references that contribute to maintaining an attitude of openness to what is happening and of calibrating the course of the research—the meta-hodos of research” (p. 13).

Initially, eight points were proposed to guide the practice of the cartographic method. These were not laid out in hierarchical order but as a rhizome (based on Deleuze & Guattari, 1995 ), referring to each other and forming a set of connections and references to order, develop, and collectivize the cartographer’s experience.

According to Passos et al. ( 2009 ), cartography is an intervention research method (point 1) that aims to track the process, through clues, guiding the course of the research, without establishing a linear path to an end. In this way, it considers the effects of the research process on the research object, the researcher, and the results, and does not simply represent an object: “Cartography seeks to ensure the accuracy of the method without giving up the unpredictability of the process of knowledge production, which is a positive requirement of the ad hoc investigation process” (Kastrup, 2007 , p. 19). What sets it apart from other approaches is the focus on the process and not the end result. With the aim of tracking the process (point 3), clues may arise, which might help to describe, discuss, and, above all, to collect the experience of the cartographer.

In this sense, the cartographer needs to keep in mind that the action of researching his object in motion constitutes a practice in which his path establishes links with the participants inserted into the context of what is being investigated. This composition of agency between heterogeneous actors is expressed by Barros and Kastrup ( 2009 ), drawing from Caiafa ( 2007 ). For these authors, agency implies a relationship of cooperation, a kind of sympathy, which, in addition to a simple feeling of esteem, refers to a composition of bodies implying mutual affection that enable the ethnographer to effectively “enter into relationship with the heterogeneous ones that surround it, to act with them, to write with them” (Barros & Kastrup, 2009 , p. 57).

According to Passos et al. ( 2009 ), cartography as a methodological orientation needs to be articulated using three ideas that make up a plan of action or a research plan: transversality, implication, and the dissolution of the observer’s point of view (point 6). In traditional third- and first-person methodologies, there is always the imposition of a point of view capable of representing or signifying the object at hand. There must be an observer, which implies the “subject–object separation or duality, as well as the imposition of an interpretative reference frame separate from experience” (Passos & Eirado, 2009 , p. 121). These authors discuss the work of Varela, Thompson, and Rosch ( 2003 ), who point out that third-person methodology does not work when studying cognition or the mind, because there is a circularity between knowledge and the known world that is fundamental but often overlooked. This is more evident in studies of cognition because it is not possible to separate the structure that is known from the experience of knowing. This understanding of cognitive experience as its own creation, that is, of both the known object and the subject it knows, which occurs in circular motion, is called “enactive action or approach, modulating the notion of autopoiesis formulated by Maturana and Varela in the 1970s” (Passos & Eirado, 2009 , p. 121).

For Passos and Eirado ( 2009 ), the biology of knowledge, autopoiesis, accepts the challenge of thinking without a foundation, since third-person methodology needs to be complemented by first-person methodology. Woven together, these make it possible to penetrate the circularity that arises in the experience of acquiring knowledge. The cartographer has to avoid merely seeking solutions and testing hypotheses, for “he does not take the self as an object, but the self-emergence processes as the destabilization of the points of view that collapse the experience in the (‘internal’) self” (p. 123). He must inhabit the experience without being bound by any point of view, his main task being to dissolve the observer’s point of view without neglecting observation. Enaction assumes that all experience emerges from experimentation, since it does not refer to what is already a given but rather the emergence of change. Data does not exist a priori, waiting to be gathered, instead, it is constituted in the experience itself. In this way, it is up to the cartographer to accompany this emergence of himself and the world in the experience, and for this it is imperative to be immersed and never immune to the process.

Kastrup and Barros ( 2009 ) argue that the method is not a research model developed through clues, strategies, and procedures. The procedures are embodied in apparatuses (dispositif) that perform important and distinct functions in the operation of cartography. 2 Grounded in Deleuze’s work, they understand apparatuses as “machines that make it possible to see and speak,” composed of lines of visibility, enunciation, force, and subjectification. These apparatuses are aligned with the process of creation, and the work of the researcher-cartographer is to unravel these lines and monitor their effects. The purpose of the apparatus involves three movement functions (point 4): reference (more or less regular apparatus, in which repetition and variation are articulated); explicitation (research territory to be explored, explicitation of the lines that participate in the ongoing production process, inseparable dimensions, research and intervention); and transformation production (“transformation of the relations between the elements/lines/affective, cognitive, institutional, micro and macropolitical vectors, activating movements and sustaining processes of production” [Kastrup & Barros, 2009 , p. 80]). Cartography can produce and transform the reality to be analyzed. In this way, mapping implies intervention.

The cartographer, the person using the cartographic method, does so through “cartographic attention.” Cartographic attention (point 2), according to Kastrup ( 2007 , p. 15), is based on Freud’s concept of “free-floating attention” and Bergson’s concept of “attentive recognition.” It is concentrated and open with four varieties (movements): tracing, touch, landing, and attentive recognition. The cartographer’s work begins with tracing , which involves scanning/sweeping the field, an overview with open and unfocused attention. It is a broader look at something that touches it, beyond the search for information. Touch triggers the selection process, the first meaning, the first analysis performed on the selection process. It is characterized by a quick sense of focus on attention, when something touches, it draws attention, causing it to become alert, but that does not yet define what the cartographer will focus on. The movement that refers to a defined point of attention and focus is the landing , which is to stop, zoom in, choose/define, and indicate that the selected element needs to be inspected more closely for analysis. That is, “the landing gesture indicates that the perception, whether it is visual, auditory or otherwise, makes a stop and the field closes in a kind of zoom. A new territory is formed, the field of observation is reconfigured” (Kastrup, 2009 , p. 43). The fourth and final movement is of Bergson’s attentive recognition , characterized by an investigative attitude about the landing, to which the cartographer’s attention is drawn. It represents analysis itself.

The cartographer’s objective is to map a territory that he/she did not previously inhabit (point 7), to understand the planes of power (point 5)—a moving plane of the reality of things at work in it—and to produce knowledge over the course of research, which involves attention and, with it, the very creation of the field of observation (Escóssia & Tedesco, 2009 ).

Because it is a form of intervention research, the analysis occurs in the process, in the movement of cartography, which makes it possible to carry out the intervention while the process is taking place. Thus, Escóssia and Tedesco ( 2009 ) point to the double direction of the nature of cartography: as a knowledge process that is not restricted to describing or classifying the formal contours of the objects of the world, but in tracing the movement itself that animates them, and as a practice of intervention, where access to the plane of power implies inhabiting it, so that the acts of the cartographer, also a collective of forces, participate and intervene in the changes and in the transformations that occur.

This inhabiting of an existential territory is significantly different from the “application of a theory or the execution of a prescriptive methodological planning, since it implies receiving and being welcomed in the difference that is expressed between the terms of the relation: subject and object, researcher and researched, I and the world” (Alvarez & Passos, 2009 , p. 148). In cartography, one does not “separate theory and practice, spaces of reflection and action. To know, to act and to inhabit a territory are no longer experiences distant from each other” (p. 149).

As far as the cartographic method of research intervention is concerned, where the data are produced Passos and Barros ( 2009 ) emphasize the question of narrativity, that is, it is always narratives that we deal with, being that sometimes the research participants also are cartographers. What each one says, what the situation says implies taking a position in a certain narrativity politics (point 8). 3 This narrative position (ethos of research) is embedded in other policies that are at stake, such as research policies, subjectivity, or cognitive policies. So all production of knowledge comes from an implicitly political position. According to the authors, narrativity politics refers to the position we take in facing the world and ourselves. In this way, “the knowledge we express about ourselves and the world is not only a theoretical problem, but a policy-related problem” (Passos & Barros, 2009 , p. 151).

According to Passos and Barros ( 2009 ), narrativity politics involves two methods and two ways of speaking—extensivism and intensivism—and also two narrative procedures: redundancy (“organizing what in this case is abundance, generating a circulation of meaning that reinforces the clarity of the case, its unity and identity” [p. 158]) and disassembly (“extracting from the larger case the agitation of microcases as microstruggles brought into the scene” [p.161]). In this dismantling process, three characteristics stand out: (1) the procedure to narrate the “case” is due to an increase in the coefficient of deterritorialization; (2) “everything is political”; and (3) everything acquires collective value.

Continuing their elaboration of the eight points of the cartographic method, Passos et al. ( 2014 ) cite thinkers besides Deleuze, Guattari, Maturana, and Varela, introducing Latour, among others, into the discussion regarding the research experience. According to Passos et al. ( 2014 ), the “importance of the research experience points to its inscription on the plane of powers, which constitutes the production plan of both knowledge and known reality” (p. 8). Researchers are immersed in the experience, which distances the cartographic method from other approaches guided by processes such as the “collection,” processing, and analysis of the data, taken as information. In this way, the cartographic method is based on inventive cognition and creative cognition, thus differentiating itself from the idea of the representation of a preexisting world. Therefore, “the cartographic method is not defined by the procedures it adopts, but it is an activity guided by a directive of a nature that is not strictly epistemological, but ethical-aesthetic-political” (p. 9).

Kastrup, Tedesco, and Passos ( 2015 ) point out that the cartographic method is compatible and can be used alongside different techniques, strategies, and research approaches, among them interviews, data analysis, and qualitative or quantitative strategies. In this way, the method is fluid, distinct from methodological models guided by the assumptions of representation. However, research that investigates the experience of research itself must make clear the “firm position of the cartographer with regard to the guideline of research: access/production of the plane of powers that responds to the creation/transformation of experience” (p. 9).

Inventive cognition emerges from the biology of knowledge (Maturana and Varela), of enunciative cognition (Varela), and includes elements of Bergson, Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari. According to Kastrup ( 2015 ), thinking stems from stimuli that make you think and does not happen spontaneously, from nothing. The stimuli are, therefore, forces of the present, of a world in movement and accelerated transformation constituting “the unique ground of emergence of thought and novelty” (p. 96). This understanding differs from that held by those who understand cognition from a perspective that Maturana and Varela ( 2001 ) call environmentalist (a realistic assumption of a given world), which “does not allow us to think about the invention of the world itself and above all the world in transformation” (p. 96). Thus, Kastrup ( 2015 ) seeks to understand the “shifts of cognition in the contemporary,” from the encounter of two intercessors for the psychology of cognition: (a) Maturana and Varela, who promote the idea of the biology of knowledge (autopoiesis), by refusing the model of representation and promoting the understanding of cognition as an invention of oneself and of the world; and (b) Deleuze and Guattari, who focus on the transformations currently taking place in cognition. To this understanding, the author adds that, in order to be able to understand the new ways of knowing and living emerging today, it is necessary to affirm the present as a movement of virtualization of currently constituted cognitive forms. The conditions of cognition have in themselves tension between constituted forms and forces of instability: “Forces of the present, which problematize the old forms, placing cognition on the route of experimentation” (Kastrup, 2015 , p. 97).

In this context, Kastrup ( 2015 ) refers to DTs, stating that they cannot be understood as mere objects or as solutions to old problems but as a basis “for creating new problems, new relationships with information, in time, with space, with oneself and with others” (p. 97). 4 Thus, the relation between the constituted forms and the present is not of rupture or of discontinuity, but of coexistence, the conditions of cognition being polytemporal and not invariant or historical. The problem of cognitive functioning is in how the present can provoke “cracks in historical strata, in old mental habits, in established structural couplings and produce novelty,” in addition to understanding it as historically produced. “It is the living gift that coexists with the history of structural couplings. Through this notion, Varela introduces in the studies of cognition the possibility of thinking it into becoming, becoming that makes the history bifurcate” (pp. 98–99).

In the biology of knowledge, with the concept of autopoiesis, Varela resignifies the understanding of learning by, in approaching the problem, placing the actor as the prototypical apprentice. Learning is not, as previous theories proposed, adapting to a given environment, or obtaining knowledge, but experimentation, invention of self and the world. The invention of a work of art is correlated with the production of the artist him or herself. As a novelty comes a theory of action, since for Maturana and Varela the living system is a constantly moving cognitive system in a process of permanent self-production, that is, autopoietic, which can be understood, according to Kastrup ( 2015 ), by the formula BE = DO = KNOW. 5 In this sense, the functioning of the living being is confused with the process of self-creation; according to Varela ( 1990 , p. 99), “doing is ontological.” Understanding cognition as action or practice leads to its permanent modification and not to invariant structures. In addition to the logic of action, cognition refers to flows in conduct (Maturana & Mpodozis, 1992 , p. 18).

Paradoxically, according to Kastrup ( 2015 ), what ensures the flow of the conduct is precisely the crack, the break, the notion of breakdown, described in Varela ( 1990 ) and Varela, Thompson, and Rosch ( 2003 ), as perturbation, a “problematization” of the structures of the living, ranging from engagements with the world, without it being possible to determine a principle that guides this drift toward the pursuit of a superior equilibrium. Breakdowns are the source of the autonomous and creative side of living cognition and arise as a theoretical-scientific formulation for an understanding of cognition that is not restricted to solving problems but is, first of all, the invention of problems. Thus, Varela ( 1990 ) explains the rooting of cognition in the “concrete,” dealing with earlier conceptions that approach cognition from the point of view of logic, general mechanisms, or representation, grouped under the denomination of “abstract” approaches to cognition (p. 102). The breakdown is a cognitive activity that happens in the immediate present and in that concrete actually lives. This “concrete” for Varela ( 1990 ) is not a step for something different, but how we arrived and where we are.

In the perspective of reconciling cognition with concrete Varela presents the notion of enaction (actuation), previously explained. For Kastrup ( 2015 ), this notion refers first to an embodied cognition distinct from the understanding of cognition as a mental process, for it is “tributary to action, resulting from experiences that are not mentally inscribed, but in the body” (p. 103). It is an action guided by local sensory processes and not by the perception of objects or forms. These sensorimotor attachments are not separate from the lived cognition (biological, psychological, and cultural couplings). Thus, the embodiment of knowledge implies social couplings, including linguistic ones, so that the body, in addition to a biological entity, is able to register and mark itself historically and culturally.

In order to exemplify the concept of enaction, linked to the embodiment of knowledge, Varela et al. ( 2003 ) refer to learning a musical instrument, where the musician is taken as a prototype of the learner. In this process of learning, initially the body functions are commanded by the mind, because the process begins with a representation, with symbolic instructions. However, to learn to play an instrument is not to follow rules, and learning truly only happens “when the symbolic relation is transformed into direct coupling of the body with the instrument, eliminating the intermediary of representation” (p. 103). That is, therein is the enaction, actuation, incarnation, or embodiment of knowledge. Thus, for the author, cognition begins to function outside the register of representation, in direct coupling with the matter that the world provides. To learn is not to adapt to the musical instrument, but to act with it. Thus, the notion of acting refers to a collective dimension that appears in the body, at the same time as it indicates the participation of the body in the configuration of the world that is shared by the collective.

This understanding of coupling as agency allows Kastrup ( 2015 ) to move forward in a second sense of the notion of acting— cognition as invention of a world—constructed in the interface between Varela’s cognitive studies and Deleuze and Guattari’s subjectivity production, from whom it takes the concept of agency as “direct communication, without mediation of representation” (p. 104). Communication without subordination, hierarchy, or determinism does not operate by causality, but by reciprocal implication between movements, processes, or heterogeneous flows, by double capture. According to the authors still referring to the learning of a musical instrument, agency refers to the production of a complex apprentice–instrument unit, which produces a process of reciprocal differentiation. The mechanical relationship occurs between previous elements (having the same elements and the same relationships, we will have the same product behavior repeated in the same way) whereas machinic agency, on the other hand, connects flows or processes and creates forms.

Kastrup ( 2015 ) uses again the example of learning a musical instrument to demonstrate that if we understand flute learning, for example, as a machinic agency, “learning is eliminating distances, because one learns between mouth and flute, learns in the middle, on the surface of its coupling, outside the field of representation” (p. 104). That is to say, in this adaptation with the medium, “the blowing motion is able to interact with the arrangement of the instrument and at the same time generate the sound and the apprentice” (p. 105). Thus, coupling should be thought of as a machinic agency or a product of learning, a creative activity always focused on becoming and not a mechanical representation or repetition. This understanding puts an end to the supposed determinism of the object or the environment. The best learner is the one who permanently creates a relationship with the instrument, incessantly reinventing himself as a musician.

The best student, for Kastrup ( 2015 ), is not the one who approaches the world through crystallized habits, but who can always remain in the process of learning, which can also be understood as permanent unlearning. That is, learn is to experience incessantly in order to evade the control of representation, preventing crystallized habits from forming, that is, be alert to continuous variations and rapid resonances, implying, at the same time, a certain lack of attention to the practical schemes of recognition.

Bergson ( 1934 ) theorizes this relation between certain attention and correlative inattention. For this author, there is a pragmatic, utilitarian life that assures learning while solving problems, but there is also an additional attention, which is attention to duration, which ensures learning as the invention of problems.

In this context, it is fundamental to consider that the contemporary world has provoked the emergence of new forms of subjectivity, mainly by the ceaseless and almost omnipresent presence of all kinds of DT, which has accelerated processes of transformation and innovation in the ways of living and engaging, which are more and more open and in flux. In this whirlwind of uncertainty, subjectivity is called upon to reconfigure itself and must learn to deal with breakdowns, with the disturbances that present themselves. On the other hand, this same reality, coupled with the online approach to the most diverse cultures, according to Kastrup ( 2015 ), reveals the precariousness of any supposed foundation that can be provided by the world (p. 108), that is, if we are affected on all sides by disturbances of all nature, solutions are not assured. Therefore, if we want to create new ways of knowing and living, we must invent a world, for learning to live in a world without fundamentals is to invent it by living, remembering that invention of self cannot be achieved without the invention of a related world.

If interpretation and knowledge are emergent results (in the sense of emerging) of action in the world or acting, when spaces are hybrid, multimodal, pervasive, and ubiquitous, and dwelling is atopical, what are the relevant issues that emerge concerning the action and performance of the subjects in these spaces? How do meanings emerge? What world do we produce and invent?

The Cartographic Method as a Means of Identifying and Mapping Controversies and Actor–Network Theory

Recently, actor–network theory (ANT), developed by Latour, Law, and Callon, also recognized subject–object codetermination by emphasizing the participation of non-humans—objects and quasi-objects—in social relations, thus presenting itself as an alternative to the binaries of modernity by eschewing a compartmentalized view of reality. 6

In this perspective, ANT (Latour, 2012 ) provides a new understanding of what is social, presenting the idea that humans establish a social network not only to interact with other people, but with non human elements as well. According to the author, the social is not simply made up of people, but also machines, animals, texts, money, architecture, laboratories, institutions, among other elements. By the principle of connectivity, everything is linked in a network, with multiple inputs, which is always in continuous movement and open to new elements. For the author, social refers to the network of HA and NHA, where the actor is any person, thing, (quasi-)object, or institution that produces agency, that is, something with the ability to produce effects on the network (although indirectly), of being actant. The understanding of agency, therefore, is related to the human and non human actors (actants), similarly, who participate in the actions and provoke transformations in the network, in movement. Thus, in ANT, or sociology of associations, the non human is no longer considered only as an artifact, whose meaning is attributed by the human, but as having agency, because it participates in actions in everyday situations and causes transformations. Non human actors also shape events in the creation of meanings, acting in the reflective and symbolic sphere.

In this context, network is understood from the perspective of a rhizome (based on Deleuze & Guattari, 1995 ), that is, seen as something alive, changeable—as flows, circulations, alliances, and movements of a series of animate and inanimate elements—and not as fixed to a set of actors. It refers to transformations, translations, displacements, therefore, quite distinct from the traditional understanding of a network as a form or structure. The network is the associative movement that forms the social, being rather an instrument of analysis or its object. The actor–network binomial perspective proposes that the actor never acts alone. In acting, it is influenced (constituted) by the networks in which it has connections and, at the same time, it can represent these networks, as well as influence them. In this way, it is never quite clear who is acting. The actor is, at the same time, the builder and receiver of the networks.

For Latour ( 2012 ), the social has no predefined locus, but is understood as provisional, performative, as processes of aggregations, associations, and reassociations between HA and NHA. In order to understand the social, which, therefore, is not what explains but rather what needs to be explained, the author recommends that the actors be followed in their associations and reassociations (cartography). I understand, therefore, that nowadays these associations and reassociations are increasingly constituted in nomadic movements, in an atopic habitation that takes place in hybrid, multimodal, pervasive, and ubiquitous spaces. 7

With regard to science, Latour ( 2016 ) says that every idea only proceeds from multiple deviations and compositions. It is the attribution of science to understand this process and not only the result. For this, it is necessary to retrace the entire chain of deviations and compositions, and what matters in this process is what emerges and forms in the course of the process of composition and deviations of courses of action. Linked to this question, Latour ( 2016 ) in the second letter of Cogitamus, raises the problem of method: How is it possible to analyze deviations and compositions if, in general, they are invisible?

In this context, the concept of proof becomes the protagonist, because, according to the author, it is at the moment of proof that the blunting of deviations and compositions is revealed. This evidence, although there are other forms of evidence, materializes in the panel: everything works well, until it stops working. This is more pedagogical form of expression of proof. The computer, initially understood as a technical object, is now presented as a sociotechnical project: “From simple, my computer has become multiple; of unified, has become disunited; it immediately became mediate; of fast, it became slow” (Latour, 2016 , p. 47). The network, or part of it, with the different elements that together kept it working, now fails, becoming visible. It is at this moment that it is necessary to analyze the links, the relationships, the networks that integrate it.

This perspective, presented by Latour ( 2016 ), although linked to the method he calls “cartography of controversies,” could also be linked to the cartographic method of intervention research, proposed by Kastrup ( 2007 , 2008 ), Passos et al. ( 2009 ), and Passos, Kastrup, and Tedesco ( 2014 ).

While Latour ( 2016 ) refers to pane and understood as a proof, bringing sociotechnical network analysis (HA and ANH) to the context; we could think from the point of view of the subject’s cognition (HA) as a cognitive imbalance (Piaget) or as a breakdown (Varela) understood as a proof, later assumed by Kastrup, Tedesco, and Passos ( 2015 ) from the perspective of the inventive cognition.

With regard to the interactions that take place in this sociotechnical network, the deviations and compositions are visible by the traces that the different actants produce in the movement of associations, which can be accompanied by “another” sociotechnical network formed by HA (teachers) and NHA (mining and data-based systems and learning analytics), providing elements that allow us to trace the cosmogram and understand the process under construction.

Turning to the question of the pane for Latour ( 2016 )—in the context of a sociotechnical network; cognitive imbalance for Piaget and breakdown for Varela—in the context of cognition; a process of investigation begins, so that the initial indetermination begins to be deciphered, the source of the disturbance is found, and a problem is revealed progressively. 8 Hypotheses and solutions are tested and verified, until the problem is solved.

In the case of the computer (NHA), in the context of sociotechnical network (formed by HA and NHA), the pane is repaired and put back to use. In the case of cognition, what in the comprehension of Varela ( 1990 ) and Kastrup, Tedesco, and Passos ( 2015 ) refers to an enactuated, self-engendered process of agency, caused by a breakdown, takes knowledge to a superior equilibrium, not in the perspective of problem-solving but, above all, in the invention of problems. It is not the result, but the process by which the result is achieved. In a way, this is related to the concept of debugging, a result of a metacognitive process (Piaget, 1976 , 1978a , 1978b , 1995 ) that is necessary for computational thinking, which was very present in research related to language programming in the 1980s and 1990s.

From the proof concept, Latour ( 2016 ), in his third letter in Cogitamus, goes on to discuss scientific controversies, stating that the statements pass between two poles: radical doubt and unquestionable certainty: “At the beginning of the exercise, the statement floats; in the end, one must find it solidly anchored in a precise landscape . . .” (p. 81). According to the author, this is where the importance of controversies lies.

The term controversy, according to Latour ( 2016 ), “designates all possible positions, ranging from absolute doubt . . . to indisputable certainty” (p. 79). The word “controversy” describes a shared uncertainty about aspects of science and/or technology that are not yet stabilized. It occurs when there is a disagreement between the actors, that is, “when actors discover that they cannot ignore each other and controversies end when actors manage to work out the solid commitment to live together” (Venturini, 2010 , p. 260). The cartography of controversies consists in mapping the actions of human and non human actors involved in contemporary sociotechnical questions, without, however, assuming an a priori frame or an order to be followed. In this context, according to Latour ( 2012 ), the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) achieves a better understanding of the order after the actors explain all the controversies in which they were involved, that is, “We [social scientists] will not try to discipline, to frame you [the actors] in our categories; we will allow them to stick to their own worlds and only then will we ask for their explanation of how they were established” (p. 44). It is not up to the analyst to define and order the social, but rather to the actors present in the context. If the goal is to restore order, it is best to go through the associations, tracing the connections between the controversies themselves. The pursuit of order, rigor, and pattern is by no means abandoned, just repositioned one step further in the form of abstraction, so that actors can unfold their own and various cosmos, no matter how irrational they may seem.

Latour ( 2012 ) notes that it is possible to trace stronger relationships and discover more revealing patterns when we find a way to record the links between unstable and mutable frames of reference rather than trying to stabilize one. What makes one expand, relate, compare, and organize is what one has to describe. The important thing is not to stop the flow of controversy, because if the actors do not act, they will leave no clues: “No clue, no information, no description—and therefore no conversation” (p. 217). It is in the flow of controversies that one has to find the “firm ground: on shifting sands. Contrary to what is commonly said, relativism is a way of floating in the data, not plunging into it” (p. 46).

The main idea is to give visibility to the different understandings about situations, movements, representativities, influences, and interests. For this, it is necessary to explore, visualize polemics, the movement of action and motion, that is, where mediation flows (Lemos, 2013 ). Controversies are those spaces of dialogue, conflict, negotiation, and action, which the actors reveal by leaving traces.

For Latour ( 2016 ), mapping a controversy is learning to locate all these movements. This implies following the statements from doubts permeated by intermediate states (rumor, opinion, idea, proposition), pros and cons, until they become the

final result, where clear and well-defined inscriptions are evident. However, with the condition of taking it in its motion, and not frozen in an object. Remembering that nothing is definitive, both techniques and sciences do not exist by the simple force of inertia. To exist is to always be in that front line. What we now understand as a certain statement is only the final stage of a controversy and in no way its beginning. (Latour, 2016 , pp. 80–81)

Latour ( 2016 ) states that the two extremes must be considered: fact and opinion, which correspond to two moments in the controversy. Accompanying the controversies is then to describe the ways in which the actors construct and modify the evidence.

Venturini ( 2012 , p. 800) proposes a script to subsidize the creation of cartographies of controversies, which is summarized by Lemos ( 2013 , p. 118): (1) to define the best possible controversy; (2) observe, describe, and maintain that the object is controversial; (3) identify whether the controversy is: cold/hot, present/past, secret/public, difficult to access/accessible, limited/unlimited; (4) apply the lenses to the collection of information (gather statements, opinions, read the specialized literature); (5) identify human and non human actants and sketch the network that connects them; (6) identify cosmogram, ideologies, and worldviews. The cartographer must then identify the representativity, influence, and interest of the actors in the networks.

If there is evidence, Latour ( 2016 ) proposes that two conditions are imposed on the analysis: (1) that it comes from the actors, and (2) that it results from joint activity, therefore, not more than a cogito, but a Cogitamus.

In this context, the author refers to the new passage from the infinite world (modern and post-scientific revolution) to the complicated multiverse or pluriverse, term coined by William James. Thus, if there is no radical discontinuity, the meaning of the word revolution changes. Latour ( 2016 ), based on Sloterdijk, stresses that it is not a matter of revolution or emancipation, but of explicitness, since “history never breaks with the past, but permanently makes more and more explicit with which we have to learn to live, elements that will be compatible or incompatible with existing ones” (p. 115). Thus, the author inaugurates a new “epistemological policy,” in which the researcher’s function is to describe “the agency of all beings that a particular culture links with practical forms of life” (p. 166). This refers to a movement of associations between the different parties participating in a controversy, which can be represented by what the author calls a cosmogram. In order to retract the different parties, Latour ( 2016 ) proposes the description of the associations of convenience, coexistence, opposition, and exclusion between HA and NHA, whose conditions of existence become explicit in the course of the trials submitted by the disputes: “to become sensitive to these lists of associations and logical duels without resorting to the distinction between the rational and the irrational, the modern and the archaic, the systematic and the unsystematic” (Latour, 2016 , pp. 116–117).

Mapping the cosmograms means working with the movement, with the agency distribution drawing of mobility, unlike the paradigm, which works with frames (stabilized theoretical framework). When designing a cosmogram, the analyst does not need to resort to structures, systems, or frames, which limit or even render unviable the monitoring of the connections in formation in the sociotechnical networks. He needs to go through the network, follow the actants in their associations, identifying the controversies, their different visions or world versions (multiverses or pluriverses), showing how the whole world (a complicated and complex pluriverse), a cosmos, reveals itself, emerges, and reconfigures itself in the confrontation of ontologies.

It is within the scope of interactions that occur in this sociotechnical network that the different actants (human and non human) produce traces in the movement of associations. These traces, in the scope of education research, can be accompanied by another sociotechnical network formed by HA (teachers-researchers) and NHA (diverse systems, including those based on mining and data and learning analytics) which, when mapped, provide elements that make it possible to draw the cosmogram (diagram of mediations, motion, mobility), a multiverse, and understand the process under construction—the movement of these associations happening. The aim is to map the controversies: “the study of innovations and controversies is one of the first privileged places where objects can be held longer as visible, disseminated and recognized mediators before they become invisible, non-social intermediaries” (Latour, 2012 , p. 120).

It is important to consider that for Latour ( 1994 ), the logic of thinking of the sciences is vitiated by a need for purification by division, which results in exclusion. According to Melo ( 2011 ), this logic, in a way, freezes the possibility of transformation, because it does not consider the continuous mixture, which produces hybrids incessantly and indefinitely. Instead of imposing one part(s) on another, replacing one or the other(s), as the modern project intended, the parts become the contact with heterogeneous versions, through the adjustment of hybrid practices and interests, through which these parties receive from each other the chance of mutual transformation (Despret, 2002 ). TAR presents the notion of hybrids and generalized symmetry.

It is possible to bring elements of this vision presented by Latour to reflect on the question of culture, since it is not a question of dividing, of classifying, into analogical (pre-digital) culture, digital culture, or cyberculture, or, but to consider the mixture, that is to say, the hybrids that are produced in that mixture, which is resignified and transformed in that coexistence.

Conclusion: Education Qualitative Research in the Hybrid and Multimodal Culture Context in an Atopic Dwelling

Both methods, the cartographic method of intervention research and the cartography of controversies, with their specificities, have proved robust for the development of qualitative research in the field of education, in the context of digital culture and hybrid culture in an atopic dwelling, mainly because they are also related to equally consistent and contemporary theories in terms of human cognition aspects, enabling us to track the traces and clues in the mobility of associations between actants, which are enhanced by different Digital Technologies (DT), including data mining and learning analytics.

These methods have been used in the research developed by the Grupo de Pesquisa Educação Digital (GPe-dU Unisinos/CNPq), in which I am involved at the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), since 2010 . In particular, the cartographic method of intervention research, as well as being appropriate as a research method, has been investigated for its potency with regard to the development of new methodologies and pedagogical practices, due to its interventionist characteristic in accompanying the process (along the course), aligned with the need to understand the phenomenon of learning in its complexity—social, political, cognitive, affective, and technological (Schlemmer, Lopes, & Molina, 2012 ), in contexts of hybridism, multimodality, pervasiveness, and ubiquity. Its power to accompany learning processes has also been investigated as well as the possibility of it being appropriated by teachers and students in their own learning pathways.

Among the research projects that have used the cartographic method of intervention research are: “Escola aumentada: Cartografias digitais para as aprendizagens e a cidadania,” “Gamificação em Espaços de Convivência Híbridos e Multimodais: Uma experiência no ensino superior,” and “Gamificação em Espaços de Convivência Híbridos e Multimodais: A educação na cultura digital.” Under different approaches and in varying contexts, research explores the perspectives of hybridism, multimodality, pervasiveness, and ubiquity, as well as cartographic attention. It was in the context of these projects that the cartographic method of intervention research began to become the object of study, inspiring studies carried out on the formation and qualification of teachers and students (Lopes & Schlemmer, 2017 ; Lopes & Valentini, 2012 ; Schlemmer, 2014 , 2015 ; Schlemmer & Lopes, 2016 ) in the scope of elementary education, graduation in pedagogy and digital games, post-graduation stricto sensu , and continuing teacher training. Our focus has been to explore some elements related to the hybrid, multimodal, pervasive, and ubiquitous culture and the new regimes of action, participation, and socialization of experience.

In the context of elementary education schools, we have outlined some experiences involving cartography with the support of digital media, geolocation, and digital marking (quick response [QR] codes), to provoke experiences of local mapping of people, objects, and places in the public space. In the undergraduate, and graduate continuing teacher education context, as well as in elementary school, we also designed inventive methodologies and pedagogical interventionist, aggregative, and gammatical practices with a cartographic bent, mainly the cartographer attention through the four movements (tracing, touching, landing and attentive recognition) , linked to elements of gamification, with the support of digital media, geolocation, digital coding (QR codes), and augmented reality, in order to provoke learning experiences in a hybrid, multimodal, pervasive, and ubiquitous context. According to Schlemmer and Lopes ( 2016 ), unlike classic cartography (mapping), the idea was to provoke aesthetic and/or informational experiences for the production of meanings about our environment in the case of schools, and on the concepts present in undergraduate and undergraduate academic activities in the case of higher education. The purpose of these experiments is to activate sensibility and cognition as functions of intelligence, as well as registration and sharing as functions of sociability.

Schlemmer ( 2018 ) states that inspiration in the cartographic method of intervention research to develop inventive methodologies and interventionist, aggregative, and gamified pedagogical practices comes from the following elements:

the intervention research perspective, and, during the development of games and gamified processes, at different times, both the teacher and the subjects themselves act as interventionist mediators

the idea of working with learning as an invention of problems (“supplementary” attention, duration, attentive recognition of a context), besides learning how to solve problems (attention to pragmatic utilitarian life)

the proposal to follow the course

the clue metaphor

movements of the cartographer’s attention (tracing, touching, landing, and attentive recognition).

In the context of tracks, according to Schlemmer ( 2018 ), the proposal is to work with the concept of geographic tracks (local/specific points in the community/city), live tracks (people from local community who hold certain knowledge necessary for the development of the missions), online tracks (specialists that do not belong to the local community, but that can appear in video), as characters in Mixed Reality (MR) or in Augmented Reality (AR) (iotized objects).

In the scope of a cartographer’s attention movements, tracing is characterized by the exploration/scanning of the field—in the case of this research, geographic and online spaces in search of clues (information) to understand the processes; the touch triggers the selection process which consists, in this case from Schlemmer ( 2016a , 2017 ), in the selection of geographic clues, online clues, and live clues, to direct the research; and landing refers to stopping, zooming in on lanes, choice/definition, and attentive recognition in the perception of the global context.

The metaphor of the clue, as well as the changing focus of the cartographer’s attention, can also serve as inspiration to understand the composition of tracks, as well as the progression itself in the context of a game or gamified process—gaining achievements—at the same time as achievements can be understood as skills for the own gameplay and sociability. 9

It is important to point out that as a result of this process the inventive methodology |Gamified Learning Processes (GLP) is created (Schlemmer, 2018 ).

The Grupo de Pesquisa em Educação Digital (GPe-dU) has also investigated and developed theoretical, methodological, and technological experiences inspired by the cartographic method of research, as methodology for the monitoring and evaluation of learning in games and gamified processes from an interventionist perspective and developed in a hybrid, multimodal, pervasive, and ubiquitous context. According to Schlemmer and Lopes ( 2016 ) and Schlemmer ( 2016a ) such contexts are more easily subject to the pulverization of the spaces of participation and registration and, therefore, can hinder the exercise of teaching and of the discourse regarding both pedagogical mediation and the evaluation. Thus, the proposal developed by the authors, inspired by the cartographic method of intervention research as a methodology of monitoring and evaluation, allows accompanying the subjects in their different learning pathways, involving analogue technologies and DT, physical and online face-to-face interactions to develop their own missions and projects that, from the perspective of bring your own device (BYOD), can extend beyond the time set for formal education. The fact that the subject possesses a mobile device and is connected creates conditions of possibility for him or her to remain engaged in the process, regardless of time and space. Thus, the processes of monitoring and evaluation can, at different times, be “situated” and still intertwined. By means of clues, designed and planned to provide the hybridization of analogue and digital spaces, it is possible to establish a multimodal context, which is desirable when talking about immersion, agency, and engagement.

More specifically, with regard to the movements proposed by Kastrup ( 2007 , 2008 ) and others in the cartographic method, the development of gamification and game experiments allowed us to evaluate the power of the method and the inadequacies we perceive in our own experience of building the game or gamification. The question that seemed to us most challenging was to guarantee the unpredictability and rhizomatic opening of the cartographic method and attention. If we work from a perspective of “use of” rather than inventiveness, the design of phases of a gamified game or process, for example, which was designed by someone to be “applied” in education or simply played by players, cannot always guarantee the rhizomatic opening that underlies the two proposals of methods previously carried out, because it has a limited context and whose control is not complete developed in the field reconfiguration of the students learning. The possible reconfigurations take place in the circular or linear dimension of success itself when completing the missions. In this sense, an a priori objective always seems limited from the point of view of cartography, but not limiting from the point of view of learning. What is learned opens possibilities, but in the dynamics of the game these are not necessarily unpredictable, since it is a condition that games advance in phases.

The clue metaphor to the tracks conception, according to Schlemmer and Lopes ( 2016 ), was inspiring for game designers or gamification, but, to become inspirational to gaming, we identified the need for players to leave “traces” which may become clues for other players. An interesting strategy would be to insert notebooks as an object/item that loads and can be left somewhere—as in some online and offline role-playing games—into the dynamics of the game or gamification. Another strategy would be to insert HA and/or bots equipped with AI to record and report events, producing clues for the route of the tracks to grow and insert, at continuously, new challenges based on the reconfiguration of the field of knowledge produced by the players themselves. This perspective of valuing, in the context of game or gamification, ways of recording and sharing personal narratives (dynamic clue production) would be an interesting possibility for both teachers and students to map their learning processes—after all, mapping, from the perspective here presented, is a means to track processes.

In this case, it seems important to consider that it is necessary to invest in game dynamics that strengthen and value the narratives of the players (as in the case of Role Playing Game [RPG] or, better still, to work at the level of inventiveness, in which the entire process of the conception and development of the game or gamification is co-constructed by the learning subjects themselves).

It is important to mention that, in the case of the researches we develop, because they are situated within the scope of enactive and inventive cognition, the creation of the game or process is a result of a co-creation process between and with the learning subjects themselves, where the teacher acts as an interventionist, conducting pedagogical mediation. Thus, everything that composes the game or gamified process—from the pre-concept, concept, and development; what is implied in the definition of mechanics and dynamics; to being able to include tracks and progression—are defined by the subjects themselves who, therefore, extrapolate the perspective of knowledge as representation and learning as problem-solving, working on the level of knowledge as interpretation and learning through the invention of problems, from the notion of the rhizome, which is at the base of the development of both the cartographic method of intervention research, as well as the cartography of the controversies. This approach is qualitatively different from the traditional approaches found in games or gamified processes, where the subjects are only users, players, whose learning is by solving problems and their evolution by linear stages or phases.

Most recently, the projects “The City as a Learning Space: Games and Gamification in the Constitution of Hybrid, Multimodal, Pervasive and Ubiquitous Spaces for the Development of Citizenship,” and “The City as a Learning Space: Education for Citizenship in Hybrid, Multimodal, Pervasive and Ubiquitous Contexts,” also developed on the basis of the cartographic method of intervention research, we have more appropriately called the cartography of controversies, in order to better understand, in addition to what occurs at the micro level (enative and inventive cognition), the associations that occur between HA and NHA, which may be due to convenience, coexistence, opposition, and exclusion. These associations also evidence planes of forces and, therefore, political expression of cognition, in the sense that “knowing involves a position in relation to the world and itself, an attitude, an ethos” (Kastrup, Tedesco, & Passos, 2015 , p. 12). These associations can be evidenced in a cosmogram, which makes it possible to draw the distribution of the agency, the diagram of the mediations, in short, the design of the movement, its formation. In this way, the cosmogram works with the empirical and in motion, unlike the paradigm that works with the frame, with the theoretical framework stabilized with the model as structure.

Schlemmer and Lopes ( 2016 ) and Schlemmer ( 2018 ) emphasize that the proposal does not consist in a transposition of the method or methods, but rather an experimentation with the logic behind them, as well as some of its elements, which are linked to others, in this case, present in games, gamification, and PAGs, allowing us to develop inventive methodologies and pedagogical interventionist, aggregative, and gamified practices in the educational context.

Thus, relating the cartographic method of controversies and, consequently, elements present in the ANT with the cartographic method of intervention research and with the perspective of enactive cognition, in its two senses of action—corporate cognition and inventive cognition—allows us to understand that the process of invention or innovation, both in development and research, advances from multiple breakdowns, deviations, compositions, associations, and reassociations that occur in the empirical movement. In this way, understanding an invention, an innovation, implies tracking the traces and retracing the whole network of deviations and compositions, associations and reassociations that constitute the path.

From this context questions that inspire future investigations arise:

How can Latour’s concept of symmetry or flat ontology, in which HA and NHA are on the same plane (which eliminates the anthropocentric view of cognition), contribute to research in education?

How can the Latour cosmogram contribute to the intervention research cartographic method as a means of understanding the paths made by the different actors, as well as the controversies established in a network?

How can the intervention research cartographic method, comprising cognition as the invention of problems, associated with the cartography of controversies, be part of the methodology to help us understand the place of the human in the context of intelligent cities?

To sum up, “we go, we hear, we learn, we practice, we become competent, we change our minds. Very simple indeed: this is called research. Good research always produces copious new descriptions . . . There is no in-formation, just trans-formation” (Latour, 2012 , pp. 212–216).

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1. A group composed of researchers from the Universidade Federal Fluminense and Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

2. The idea of an apparatus (dispositif) is based on Foucault ( 1979 ), who understood it as a decidedly heterogeneous agglomeration involving discourses, institutions, architectural organizations, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, and philosophical, moral, and philanthropic propositions. In short, the apparatus is made up of that which is said and unsaid. The apparatus is the network that can be established among these elements (p. 244). The relationship among these elements indicates the existence of change of positions and modification of functions. An apparatus always responds to an urgent need, made clear by its strategic or dominant function.

3. Passos, Kastrup, and Escóssia ( 2009 ) understand politics in a broad sense as the form of human activity that, linked to power, relates to subjects, articulating them according to rules or norms that are not necessarily only legal in nature. Politics is also done through local arrangements, that is, micro relations, indicating this micropolitical dimension of power relations (Foucault, 1979 ).

4. See conception of non human actor, present in Latour’s ANT.

5. It is important to emphasize that the perspective of “doing and understanding” is also described as a theory in the work of Jean Piaget ( 1978a ). It is, however, necessary to establish differences and similarities.

6. ANT emerged from an interdisciplinary perspective, with contributions from different areas, and is still defining itself as a methodological tool.

7. The author of this article.

8. In the sense put forth by Dewey ( 1938 ) and taken up by Latour ( 2016 ).

9. In gamer lingo, achievements are goals that a subject can complete during the game. They can be explicit or secret, that is, that the subject discovers during the process of play.

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Global Digital Cultures

Perspectives from south asia.

How digitalization is reshaping culture and communication in the twenty-first century

Look Inside

• Table of Contents and Introduction

Description

Digital media histories are part of a global network, and South Asia is a key nexus in shaping the trajectory of digital media in the twenty-first century. Digital platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and others are deeply embedded in the daily lives of millions of people around the world, shaping how people engage with others as kin, as citizens, and as consumers. Moving away from Anglo-American and strictly national frameworks, the essays in this book explore the intersections of local, national, regional, and global forces that shape contemporary digital culture(s) in regions like South Asia: the rise of digital and mobile media technologies, the ongoing transformation of established media industries, and emergent forms of digital media practice and use that are reconfiguring sociocultural, political, and economic terrains across the Indian subcontinent. From massive state-driven digital identity projects and YouTube censorship to Tinder and dating culture, from Twitter and primetime television to Facebook and political rumors,  Global Digital Cultures  focuses on enduring concerns of representation, identity, and power while grappling with algorithmic curation and data-driven processes of production, circulation, and consumption.

Aswin Punathambekar  is Associate Professor of Media Studies and Founding Director of the Global Media Studies Initiative in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan. Sriram Mohan  is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan.

“This is a fantastic volume on an important topic. Global digital culture is a growing field. This volume will set a new standard and become a core text.” —Guobin Yang, Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Sociology and Communication, University of Pennsylvania  

"...this is a valuable addition to the literature that has for decades been documented by the Global North." — Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly - Usha Raman

"The essays in this volume perform the necessary work of contextualizing digital media usage in light of local pressures of representation, exploration, and aspiration." - After Image , Laboni Bhattacharya  "These essays represent exciting work being undertaken in South Asian media studies." -  After Image , Laboni Bhattacharya  - Laboni Bhattacharya

Program and courses Digital Culture Studies

Following Digital Culture Studies you will review existing research frameworks and propose new conceptual and analytical tools to study the many different cultural phenomena of the 21st century.

Program structure

This  one-year track MA Digital Culture Studies  consists of 60 ECTS:

• 5 core courses (30 ECTS)
• 1 elective course (6 ECTS)
• 2 research skills courses (6 ECTS)
• A Master's thesis (18 ECTS)  

This program starts at the   end of August.

In the first two blocks of the program you will follow four core courses and choose two research skills courses. In block three you follow one more core course and choose one elective. In the last block you write your Master's thesis. 

Program content

• Discourse Analysis and Digital Media (6 ECTS)
• Digital Media and Everyday Life (6 ECTS)
• Digital Futures (6 ECTS)
• Digital Culture and Urgent Social Topics (6 ECTS)
• Digital Industries and Infrastructures (6 ECTS)

Choose one elective from the following options:

• Performance: Ritual, Art, Body in Digital Culture (6 ECTS)
• Media Provocateurs (6 ECTS)
• Intercultural Communication On and Offline (6 ECTS)
• Attention Economies (6 ECTS)

Choose two of these research courses:

• Using Digital Literacies (3 ECTS)
• Interaction in Digital Culture (3 ECTS)
• Ethnography and Interview (3 ECTS)
• Narratology & Discursive Analytical Strategies (3 ECTS)
• Ethnomining (3 ECTS)
• Anthropology and Fieldwork (3 ECTS)
• Survey Design (3 ECTS)

In your Master's thesis you report on an independent research project you have carried out. For your research you choose a topic related to Digital Culture Studies. You will apply qualitative research methodology such as discourse analysis and (digital) ethnography, that can be expanded with methodologies from other disciplines, such as Big Data analysis, sociological research or quantitative methods.

Some examples of thesis topics students chose: 

• TikTok and the image of the Young Female Body  
• Social media and news about racism: How do social media affordances influence discourses about racism on different platforms? 
• Saying Sorry on Instagram after Being Canceled: Celebrity Apology and Social Media Affordances 
• Rohingyas’ Online and Offline “Genocide”: The Role of Facebook in Myanmar 

Watch a trial lecture

You will find a detailed description of the courses and required literature in our course catalog.

Go to the course descriptions

Please note: programs are subject to change. We advise you to look up the current program in OSIRIS Student at the start of the year.

Do you want to know more about this Master’s program?

Find out more during one of our events

Short overview of Digital Culture Studies

• Research concrete digital-cultural practices from within a broad interdisciplinary social-theoretical field and with an outspoken empirical emphasis.
• Learn all about  social, cultural and political transformation  of contemporary societies and investigate the influence of digitalization   on social life.
• Become aware of inclusionary and exclusionary effects in contemporary digital culture, and their  impact on social structure.
• Address a wide range of topical and urgent issues and focus on what is important now at this moment and on what might become relevant in the future.  
• Turn academic content into publications that are accessible to a wider public through Diggit Magazine , both a learning instrument and an online news platform focusing on digital culture, globalization, and arts.

Interested in the Digital Culture Studies track?

Check your eligibility and the deadlines for application.

Related Master’s programs:

• Art and Media Studies
• Research Master in Linguistics and Communication Sciences
• Philosophy of Data and Digital Society

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Master of Arts in Digital Studies of Language, Culture, and History

• Master of Arts Program in the Humanities
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This is an archived copy of the 2023-2024 catalog. To access the most recent version of the catalog, plesae visit http://catalog.uchicago.edu .

Department Website: http://digitalstudies.uchicago.edu

Faculty Director: David Schloen

Associate Director: Brooke Luetgert

Digital Studies Faculty Board

The University of Chicago’s program in Digital Studies of Language, Culture, and History provides a one-year Master of Arts curriculum intended for full-time students who have a bachelor’s degree in the humanities or in a related discipline such as history, anthropology, or linguistics. In addition, a  joint BA/MA  and undergraduate Minor  in Digital Studies are offered to students in the College of the University of Chicago, and a Graduate Certificate  in Digital Studies is available to graduate students in other programs of the University. The MA in Digital Studies qualifies as a STEM Designated Degree Program under the regulations of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The Digital Studies program at the University of Chicago responds to the growing demand for academic rigor in the loosely defined field of digital humanities and the need to certify technical competence in this area. The program equips students of the humanities to pursue careers that utilize their skills in research, writing, and critical thinking in tandem with the use of software for the study of human languages and cultures, past and present.

The Digital Studies  faculty and staff  represent a wide range of academic fields, including linguistics, literary studies, media studies, history, philosophy, anthropology, archaeology, art history, visual arts, musicology, and religious studies. They share a common interest in understanding the impact of digital technology and in using digital tools to represent, analyze, and preserve the products of human language and culture. Collectively, their work shows how digital studies encompass the full range of human activities, from everyday speech and writing to historical documents and literary texts, and include music and art as well as mundane objects, places, and institutions.

The core courses  and electives in Digital Studies (DIGS) are designed to foster, not just technical skills in coding and data analysis, but an understanding of the history of computing and its cultural impact from the perspective of the humanities. Students in these courses are introduced to computer programming and the use of software libraries via three widely used programming languages: Python, R, and JavaScript. Learning to code in these languages is the gateway for students to understand and use cutting-edge digital tools and data standards to manage, analyze, and publish information, with emphasis on the kinds of data commonly encountered in the humanities, including texts, images, maps, and other media.

The general MA in Digital Studies entails six core courses  and three electives . While a thesis is not required for degree completion, the program also offers three specialized concentrations in which two of the electives are replaced with courses in a particular subject area and students complete a thesis project in that area. The three concentrations are the  MA in Digital Archaeology , the MA in Digital Media , and the  MA in Digital Texts . Completing the degree with specialization and thesis will be noted on the degree certificate.

Degree Requirements

The general MA in Digital Studies requires  six core courses , three elective courses . Students who do a specialized concentration in Digital Archaeology, Digital Media, or Digital Texts must take two additional required courses in their area of concentration and do a thesis in that area, and so will have only one elective course. The general MA requires the following:

• Three core courses in the Autumn Quarter consisting of (1) an introduction to computer programming using the Python programming language; (2) basic statistics and data analysis using Python and Jupyter Notebooks; and (3) an introduction to digital humanities that surveys the the history and theory of digital computing, the various uses of computers in the humanities, and current debates concerning digital humanities. Students who have previously taken a programming course and/or a statistics course may be exempted from one or both of those requirements and take additional electives instead, subject to the approval of the Director of Digital Studies. To receive an exemption from the Autumn Quarter “Introduction to Computer Programming,” students must take a competency test to demonstrate their knowledge of programming and of Python.
• Three core courses in the Winter and Spring Quarters on data management, data publication, and data analysis for the humanities. Students must take either “Data Analysis for the Humanities II” in the Winter or “Data Analysis for the Humanities III” in the Spring; or they may choose to take both of these data analysis courses if they use one of them as an elective.
• Three elective courses in the Winter and Spring Quarters in any field of the humanities or social sciences. At least one of the three electives must deal with digital computing in some way, whether or not it entails actual coding.

Autumn Quarter

• DIGS 30001 Introduction to Computer Programming with Python
• DIGS 30002 Data Analysis I: Introduction to Statistics
• DIGS 30007 Introduction to Digital Humanities

Winter Quarter

• DIGS 30003 Data Management for the Humanities
• DIGS 30004 Data Analysis II: Data Visualization and Machine Learning
• An approved elective course (for the general MA) or   NEAA 30061 Ancient Landscapes I (for the MA in Digital Archaeology), or a  CMST course on digital media (for the MA in Digital Media) or   DIGS 30031 Digital Texts I: Corpus Building and Corpus Statistics (for the MA in Digital Texts)
• Selection of MA thesis topic and confirmation of a thesis adviser (optional)

Spring Quarter

• DIGS 30005 Data Publication for the Humanities
• An approved elective course (for the general MA) or   DIGS 30021 , “Digital Archaeology” (for the MA in Digital Archaeology), or a  CMST course on digital media (for the MA in Digital Media)
• Ongoing work on the MA thesis, due May 15 for June graduation or June 15 for August graduation (not required)

Summer Quarter

Students do not need to register for any courses in the Summer Quarter and they are not required to be in residence in the Chicago area while they complete the thesis.

The Master of Arts in Digital Studies of Language, Culture, and History program welcomes a cohort of students dedicated to exploring humanistic knowledge in the digital realm. 

Information on How to Apply

The application process for admission and financial aid for all graduate programs in the Humanities is administered through the divisional Office of the Dean of Students. The Application for Admission and Financial Aid, with instructions, deadlines and department specific information is available online at: http://humanities.uchicago.edu/students/admissions .

Questions pertaining to admissions and aid should be directed to [email protected] or (773) 702-1552.

International students must provide evidence of English proficiency by submitting scores from either the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). (Current minimum scores, etc., are provided with the application.) For more information, please see the Office of International Affairs website at https://internationalaffairs.uchicago.edu , or call them at (773) 702-7752.

Further information is available at https://digitalstudies.uchicago.edu/application

Contact Information

[email protected]

(773) 702-1552

Digital Studies Courses

DIGS 30000. Approaches to Digital Humanities Using Python. 100 Units.

This course introduces students to (1) current work in digital humanities with examples of the software applications being used and the computational research being done in literary, historical, linguistic, and cultural studies; and (2) the principles and practices of computer programming using the Python programming language. (Taught remotely via Zoom in the Summer Session; undergraduate only.)

Instructor(s): Clovis Gladstone     Terms Offered: Summer Equivalent Course(s): DIGS 10000

DIGS 30001. Introduction to Computer Programming with Python. 100 Units.

This course provides an introduction to computer programming and computational concepts using the Python programming language. Students are also introduced to the use of Visual Studio Code as an industry-standard source code editor. This course is a prerequisite for most of the other Digital Studies (DIGS) courses. Students enrolled in one of the Digital Studies programs (MA, joint BA/MA, undergraduate minor, or graduate certificate) who have previously passed an equivalent college-level course in computer programming with a grade of B (3.0) or higher may petition the Associate Director of Curriculum and Instruction of the Forum for Digital Culture for an exemption from taking this course and permission to take an additional elective course instead.

Instructor(s): Clovis Gladstone     Terms Offered: Autumn Equivalent Course(s): DIGS 20001

DIGS 30002. Data Analysis I: Introduction to Statistics. 100 Units.

This course provides an introduction to statistics and computational data analysis using Python and Jupyter Notebook. It is a prerequisite for "Data Analysis II: Data Visualization and Machine Learning" (DIGS 20004/30004) in the Winter Quarter. Topics covered include probability, distributions, and statistical inference, as well as linear regression and logistic regression. Students will gain additional practice in Python coding and will learn how to use Python libraries for statistics and plotting. The textbook for this course is OpenIntro Statistics, which is available online, free of charge. Students enrolled in one of the Digital Studies programs (MA, joint BA/MA, undergraduate minor, or graduate certificate) who have previously passed an equivalent college-level course in statistics with a grade of B (3.0) or higher may petition the Associate Director of Curriculum and Instruction of the Forum for Digital Culture for an exemption from taking this course and permission to take an additional elective course instead.

Instructor(s): Brooke Luetgert     Terms Offered: Autumn Equivalent Course(s): DIGS 20002

DIGS 30003. Data Management for the Humanities. 100 Units.

This course introduces concepts and techniques related to the representation and management of digital data with emphasis on the forms of data encountered in the humanities. Topics covered include: (1) digital text encoding using the Unicode and XML standards, with attention to the TEI-XML tagging scheme of the Text Encoding Initiative; (2) digital typefaces ("fonts") for displaying encoded characters; (3) digital encoding of 2D images, 3D models, sound, and video; (4) database models and querying languages (especially SQL for relational databases and SPARQL for non-relational RDF-graph databases), with attention to methods for integrating and querying the kinds of semi-structured and heterogeneous data characteristic of the humanities; (5) ontologies, the Semantic Web, and related technical standards; and (6) cartographic concepts (e.g., coordinate systems and map projections) and the basics of geospatial data management using Geographic Information Systems. This course has no prerequisite; i.e., prior knowledge of computer programming is not required.

Instructor(s): Miller Prosser     Terms Offered: Autumn Equivalent Course(s): DIGS 20003

DIGS 30004. Data Analysis II: Data Visualization and Machine Learning. 100 Units.

This course introduces best practices for analyzing large and complex data sets using Python and gives students a basic understanding of machine learning. Topics covered include data visualization, social network analysis, principal component analysis (PCA), and the k-nearest neighbors (KNN) algorithm. The objective is to make students familiar with these methods and aware of their potential in linguistic, cultural, and historical research.

Instructor(s): Brooke Luetgert     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): DIGS 20001/30001, “Introduction to Computer Programming with Python” (or an equivalent course in computer programming) and DIGS 20002/30002, “Data Analysis I: Introduction to Statistics” (or an equivalent course in statistics). Equivalent Course(s): DIGS 20004

DIGS 30005. Data Publication for the Humanities. 100 Units.

This course introduces software techniques and tools for building Web browser apps written in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript with emphasis on user interfaces for presenting information to researchers and students in the humanities. Students will take an active role in evaluating approaches and outcomes of existing digital publications. Topics covered include: (1) the use of application programming interfaces (APIs) to integrate into Web apps the various analysis, visualization, and database services provided by external systems; (2) the transformation of data into formats appropriate for publication on the Web; and (3) the nature of data in the humanities as pertains to digital publication.

Instructor(s): Miller Prosser     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): DIGS 20001/30001, “Introduction to Computer Programming with Python” (or an equivalent course in computer programming). Equivalent Course(s): DIGS 20005

DIGS 30006. Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities. 100 Units.

In this course we will look at artificial intelligence (AI) from the perspective of the humanities both to assess the impact of AI on the creation and study of cultural materials and to question its presuppositions. The first part of the course will survey the history of the attempts made over the years to create AI using computational methods and the philosophical critiques of those attempts. Attention will be paid both to symbolic AI that employs explicit digital representations of human knowledge and reasoning and the quite different paradigm of connectionist AI that employs neural networks and predictive models. In the latter part of the course, we will discuss the recent development of "generative AI" systems (e.g., ChatGPT) that use large "foundation models" to create remarkably human-like text and images and we will experiment with these systems via hands-on exercises. We will consider the benefits and drawbacks of such tools for research in the humanities and discuss their social and cultural impact more generally.

Instructor(s): Jeffrey Tharsen     Terms Offered: Spring Equivalent Course(s): DIGS 20006

DIGS 30007. Introduction to Digital Humanities. 100 Units.

This course surveys (1) the history and theory of digital computing, (2) the ways computers have been used in the humanities, (3) recent theoretical debates surrounding the contested concept of "digital humanities," (4) the philosophical issues raised by digital knowledge representation and artificial intelligence, and (5) the ethical and public policy issues raised by the pervasive use of digital technology in present-day societies.

Instructor(s): David Schloen     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): DIGS 20001/30001, “Introduction to Computer Programming with Python” (or an equivalent course in computer programming) and DIGS 20003/30003, “Data Management for the Humanities.” These prerequisites may be waived in some cases with the instructor’s consent. Equivalent Course(s): DIGS 20007

DIGS 30008. Thesis Preparation. 000 Units.

This course is intended for students in the two-year version of the Digital Studies MA program, who will normally enroll in it in the Spring Quarter of their second year, when they are completing their MA thesis projects.

Instructor(s): n/a     Terms Offered: Spring

DIGS 30021. Digital Archaeology. 100 Units.

This course introduces students to a variety of computational methods used in archaeology and art history for the digital representation and analysis of cultural sites, buildings, landscapes, and artifacts. Relevant concepts and techniques are taught by means of both explanatory lectures and hands-on exercises. Software tools used in the course include ArcGIS and QGIS for geospatial data and map-creation; Agisoft Metashape for photogrammetry and 3D modeling; OCHRE for integrated multimedia data management; and Python software libraries for image analysis, feature recognition, and statistics. Gamification and the use of augmented reality and virtual reality in archaeology are discussed briefly; these topics are covered in detail in DIGS 20041/30041, "Digital Media I: Game Design with Unity," and DIGS 20042/30042, "Digital Media II: Extended Reality with Unity."

Instructor(s): David Schloen     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): DIGS 20001/30001, “Introduction to Computer Programming with Python” (or an equivalent course in computer programming), DIGS 20002/30002, “Data Analysis I: Introduction to Statistics” (or an equivalent course in statistics), and DIGS 20003/30003, “Data Management for the Humanities.” These prerequisites may be waived in some cases with the instructor’s consent. Equivalent Course(s): DIGS 20021

DIGS 30031. Digital Texts I: Corpus Building and Corpus Statistics. 100 Units.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students in the humanities to digital methodologies for the study of texts. Students will not only learn how to construct a digital text collection but also how to process text as data. Among the various digital approaches which will be introduced in class are concordances (retrieving occurrences of words), semantic similarity detection (finding similar passages across texts), sentiment analysis, and stylometry (analysis of literary style). The course will highlight how these approaches to text can provide new avenues of research, such as tracing intellectual influence over the longue durée, or uncovering the distinguishing stylistic features of an author, work, or literary movement. Students need no prior knowledge of such methods, and the course will aim at providing both the basics of computer programming in Python and giving students the necessary tools to conduct a digital humanities project. The source material for the course will be drawn from literary sources, and students will be free (and encouraged) to use texts which are relevant to their own research interests. Students will need to bring a laptop to class.

Instructor(s): Clovis Gladstone     Terms Offered: Winter Equivalent Course(s): DIGS 20031, RLLT 34550, RLLT 24550

DIGS 30032. Digital Texts II: Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning. 100 Units.

This course builds on DIGS 20031/30031, "Digital Texts I: Corpus Building and Corpus Statistics," by introducing students to advanced computational methods for studying texts, including deep learning (AI), with emphasis on the needs of research in the humanities. Students will evaluate these methods and gain practical experience in applying them. Prerequisites: DIGS 20001/30001, "Introduction to Computer Programming with Python," DIGS 20004/30004, "Data Analysis II: Data Visualization and Machine Learning," and DIGS 20031/30031, "Digital Texts I: Corpus Building and Corpus Statistics," or equivalent prior preparation.

Instructor(s): Jeffrey Tharsen     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): DIGS 20001/30001, “Introduction to Computer Programming with Python,” DIGS 20003/30003, “Data Management for the Humanities,” DIGS 20004/30004, “Data Analysis II: Data Visualization and Machine Learning,” and DIGS 20031/30031, “Digital Texts I: Corpus Building and Corpus Statistics.” Note(s): Prerequisites may be waived by permission of the instructor for students who have sufficient background in the subject. Equivalent Course(s): DIGS 20032

DIGS 30035. Introduction to Cultural Analytics. 100 Units.

This course introduces students to the emerging field of cultural analytics - a field that sits at the intersection of cultural studies, information science, and the computational social sciences. At root, the field is oriented around questions of how to study the cultural past and present (whether text, image, or sound) with the aid of data-driven methods, and what such methods imply for our understanding of human culture. The course will begin with a look at how past scholars wrestled with the problem of applying numbers to cultural objects, and some of their initial attempts to do so. We then move to survey the wide variety of scholarship happening today under the influence of new digital technologies and vast new information infrastructures. How have scholars across different humanistic fields adopted new computational tools? What methodological and theoretical problems has this raised? What new discoveries has it yielded? Finally, the course will consider new research directions opened up by recent advances in artificial intelligence and the increasing convergence of cultural production with online platforms that are global in reach (e.g., TikTok, Wattpad, Netflix, Spotify). Students will engage with these questions through primary readings, attempts to replicate past studies, and by designing their own research proposals.

Instructor(s): Long, Hoyt      Terms Offered: Spring Note(s): Some programming experience preferred, but not required

DIGS 30041. Digital Media I: Game Design with Unity. 100 Units.

Part one of a two-course sequence, this making-oriented course provides an introduction to the principles, practices, and techniques of game design. Students will develop several small games, gaining hands-on experience with C# and the Unity development platform. The course takes a "ground up" approach: starting with the fundamentals of object- and component-oriented programming, then using those fundamentals to build complex, interactive experiences. While the course focuses on Unity, an introduction to software design patterns and an emphasis on a rapid feedback/iteration cycle will provide tools that translate to other game engines and creative computing projects. Through critique and the close examination of case studies from prior art, students will cultivate their critical eye and articulation, equipping them to discuss, assess, and refine games at various stages of development.

Instructor(s): Cameron Mankin     Terms Offered: Winter Prerequisite(s): DIGS 20001/30001, “Introduction to Computer Programming with Python” (or an equivalent course in computer programming). Note(s): Undergraduate MAAD students attempting to join the course should fill out this form to join a shortlist: https://airtable.com/appF7rAlnH3zoRdB4/shrfuB9cVwZC1b5hc. ONLY undergraduates who fill out the form will be considered for the course. Please do NOT send consent requests before filling out the form. Equivalent Course(s): MAAD 20041

DIGS 30042. Digital Media II: Extended Reality with Unity. 100 Units.

Part-two of a two-course sequence, this course teaches students how to develop extended reality (XR) environments using the Unity platform. The course emphasizes the creation of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) environments, allowing students to gain hands-on experience. Additionally, students will discuss development with their instructor and peers, assisting them in refining their skills and ideas while creating. By the end of the quarter, students will clearly understand the process of transforming ideas into final products, equipping them with the necessary tools for future XR endeavors.

Instructor(s): Crystal Beiersdorfer     Terms Offered: Spring Prerequisite(s): DIGS 30041/MAAD 20041, “Digital Media I: Game Design with Unity” (or an equivalent Unity course approved by the instructor). Equivalent Course(s): MAAD 20042

DIGS 49900. Reading and Research. 100 Units.

Reading and Research

Instructor(s): David Schloen     Terms Offered: Spring

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