Evaluation as governance: The practical politics of web-based feedback
My doctoral project looks at the practical politics of web-based reviews and ratings in two very different areas: online patient feedback and search engine optimization (SEO). Following people, postings, ratings and reputations ethnographically, I explore the mundane, everyday practices that go into establishing and maintaining these schemes and the ways in which they do (or do not) reconfigure networks of governance and accountability. Building on recent arguments in Science and Technology Studies (STS), Neo-Foucauldian governance theory and critical accounting studies, I develop a relational view of governance and accountability as a contingent and situated accomplishment: how do the subjects and objects of governance come about in practice? How can a better understanding of these messy practices contribute to theoretical debates about transparency, accountability and ‘democratic’ participation? What is it to evaluate the evaluators — and will this business ever stop?
How’s my feedback? A collaborative project to rethink and evaluate internet-based review and rating schemes
This is an ESRC-funded project (RES-192-22-0005), aimed at rethinking and evaluating web-based review and rating schemes. While some have welcomed these new technologies as innovative tools for fostering transparency, accountability and public engagement, others have criticized the forced exposure and alleged lack of accuracy and legitimacy, pointing to the potentially devastating consequences of negative evaluations for businesses, services and individuals. The project tackle these issues by involving key stakeholders and users in the collaborative design and evaluation of a website that aggregates and disseminates feedback about online reviews, ratings and rankings — a feedback website for feedback websites. The project is run in collaboration with Patient Opinion.
The STS Talk-Walks: A monthly walking seminar at Oxford University
As an experiment, we are introducing a new activity at InSIS this academic year: The STS Talk-Walks. We meet up once a month on a Friday afternoon for a walk during which we explore a question that cuts across our work. Everyone is welcome, whether you consider yourself an STS person or not. The idea has traveled to Oxford from the University of Amsterdam, where Annemarie Mol and Anna M. Mann have hosted a Walking Seminar for a while. As they write, “talking-while-walking can enhance thinking in ways not attainable behind a desk or in a seminar sitting down.”
Past projects
Storying: A Workshop
What is it to tell a story in social science research? What techniques, strategies and narrative devices are available and how can we make the most of them? What audiences do we write for and how are they configured in the text? How can we approach the often daunting yet essential task of academic writing? In this three-hour workshop, we explore different story-telling strategies while asking how we can make them productive for our research projects. Rather than listening to lectures and absorbing theory, we engage in a number of hands-on exercises. These include discussions on stories and storying, in which we apply and experiment with concepts from the background readings, alongside short writing and editing exercises. The overall goal is to learn from each other and explore with different modes of storying. Co-organized with Fadhila Mazanderani.
Modes of Governance in Digitally Networked Environments
Together with Christian Pentzold, I organized an international and multidisciplinary workshop on modes of governance in digitally networked environments in Oxford. Supported by an EPSRC grant (EP/FO/3701/1), the workshop brought together junior researchers from different cultures and disciplines, including anthropology, computer science, legal studies, political science, sociology and science & technology studies to explore issues of governance in mediated worlds. A key concern of this project is to better understand how and to what extent different approaches to governance in digitally networked environments perform the worlds in which they have their place and what the implications are for the practice of governance and governance research.
- Ziewitz, M. & C. Pentzold, Modes of Governance in Digitally Networked Environments: A Workshop Report, OII Forum Discussion Paper No. 19, October 2010.
- Call for Participation
- Some blog reactions
PEACH: Presence Research in Action
Presence research focuses on understanding and controlling the cognitive experience of being somewhere, or someone. As part of a multidisciplinary consortium of neuroscientists, psychologists, computer scientists, engineers and social scientists, we analyzed social impact scenarios to raise and address potential ethical and policy issues relating to presence technologies. The project was a three-year FP6 Coordination Action funded by the European Commission and led by Starlab Barcelona. Together with Ralph Schroeder and Eric Meyer.
- Ralph Schroeder, Malte Ziewitz & Eric Meyer, Social, Ethical, and Legal Issues in Presence Research and Applications, Peach FP6 Coordination Action No 33909, May 2009
- PEACH project website
Let’s play: What public policy can learn from game design
In this half-day workshop at Oxford in 2008, I brought together two unlikely companions: the worlds of public policy and game design. Following an overview of basic game design theory, we analyzed and manipulated a variety of games, ranging from Monopoly, Quake and Baseball to Poker, UNO and Tic-Tac-Toe. Participants were challenged to think creatively about the potential and limitations of playful approaches to public policy and the values expressed in different configurations of a game.
Towards a Future Internet: State of the Art Report
This European Commission DG INFSO project (SMART 2008/0049) explored what a future internet should be — by researching the possible social, psychological, technological and economic options for its further development and their likely socio-economic impacts. As part of the project team led by Ian Brown, I wrote the State of the Art Report, which examined prior studies and analysed how the internet evolved to date
