On November 5th, 2020, dhCenter member Nicolas Baya-Laffite will give an online seminar, in French, organized by the CNRS Centre Internet et Société on “Des controverses aux attentions collectives. Les traces de Wikipédia pour la cartographie numérique de dynamiques sociales” (“From controversies to collective attention. The traces of Wikipedia for the digital mapping of social dynamics”).
In this presentation, Baya-Laffite, a researcher and lecturer in digital humanities at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) Science and Technology Studies Lab, will focus on Wikipedia as a space, infrastructure, and actor of our collective attention, from the perspective of visitor data.
Drawing on the work done in UNIL’s WikiMaps project, Baya-Laffite will first situate the evolution of research on Wikipedia in the information ecosystem, and the potential of visitor traces for research. He will introduce WikiMaps’ cartographic visualization tool, which provides unique insights on the dynamics of collective attention and memory. Finally, he will address the technical, epistemological and political value of open exploration tools for social and human sciences research in an age of increasing concern over data privacy.
