Jill Walker Rettberg

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Jill Walker Rettberg

cand.philol., dr.art.
NMD Spesial - med Clay Shirky - NMD Special 2011 (6286387748).jpg
Dr. Rettberg at a panel debate at Nordiske mediedager in 2011.
NationalityNorwegian
Other namesJill Walker
Known for blogging, social media, digital narratives
Scientific career
Fields Internet studies, Digital humanities, Science and Technology Studies
Institutions University of Bergen
Thesis Fiction and interaction how clicking a mouse can make you part of a fictional world  (2004)
Website jilltxt.net

Jill Walker Rettberg (born Jill Walker in 1971) is co-director of the Center for Digital Narrative [1] [2] and Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen. She is "a leading researcher in self-representation in social media" [3] and a European Research Council grantee (2018-2023) with the project Machine Vision in Everyday Life: Playful Interactions with Visual Technologies in Digital Art, Games, Narratives and Social Media [4] [5] . Rettberg is known for innovative research dissemination in social media, having started her research blog jill/txt in 2000, [6] and developed Snapchat Research Stories in 2017. [7] [8]

Contents

Education and academic career

After completing an MA in Comparative Literature at the University of Bergen in 1998, [9] Rettberg worked for a year on a research project developing educational MOOs, [10] and in 2003 completed a doctoral degree in Humanistic Informatics at the University of Bergen under the supervision of Espen Aarseth. [11]

Rettberg was hired as an associate professor at the University of Bergen after her PhD, and was promoted to full Professor of Digital Culture in 2009. In addition to her tenured position at the University of Bergen, Rettberg has been a visiting scholar at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, University of Illinois Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago. [12]

In addition to her academic positions, Jill Walker Rettberg is a member of the Research Council of Norway's portfolio board for Humanities and Social Sciences (2019-2023), [13] and was previously a member of Arts Council Norway's research and development committee. [14] She co-authored the official Norwegian report NOU 2013:2 on hindrances for digital growth [15] and was a member of the Norwegian Privacy Commission. [16]

Rettberg is a frequently cited expert in Norwegian media. [17]

Blogging and social media

Described as a "prolific blogger", [18] Rettberg started her research blog jill/txt in 2000 and was thus one of the earliest academic bloggers. [19] In 2002 she co-authored the first scholarly paper on blogs with Torill Mortensen. [20] In 2003 she wrote a definition of weblog for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, posting a first draft [21] to her blog and asking readers for feedback that she then integrated into the final definition. [22] In 2006 she published a paper describing the transition from blogging as a PhD student to blogging as an established academic as being challenging, [23] and identifying three types of academic blogging. As described by Melissa Gregg, these three types are: 1) public intellectuals with large audiences whose blogs are a defining feature of their reputation or notoriety, 2) the research log, an online version of the traditional notebook or record-book, and 3) pseudonymous blogs about academic life. [24] Building on this, Gregg characterised academic blogs as a "subcultural form of expression favored by young academics as part of constructing a professional identity". [24]

Rettberg's book Blogging was published by Polity in 2008, with a second editing published in 2014. The book was praised for its "intelligent theoretical and critical attitude", [25] its accessible style [26] [27] and "its recognition that blogging is ultimately about humans, not metrics". [28]

Selfies and machine vision

With the book Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves Rettberg examined three key modes of self-representation in social media: textual, as in blogs, visual, as in selfies, and quantitative, as in self-tracking and the growing quantitative self movement. [29] She argued that seeing these modes in combination is key to understanding social media as a whole.

The book was described as a "goldmine of historical and contemporary case studies" [30] and is listed on the syllabus at at least 60 universities according to Open Syllabus. [31]

In 2018 Rettberg launched a research project on Machine Vision funded by the European Research Council. The project developed the Database of Machine Vision in Art, Games and Narratives, which contains structured analyses of situations involving machine vision technologies from 500 creative works. The data is available for download and is analysed in several scholarly papers. [32] [33] [34]

The book Machine Vision: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We See the World [35] comes out of this project.

Books

Major grants and awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hypertext</span> Text with references (links) to other text that the reader can immediately access

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically activated by a mouse click, keypress set, or screen touch. Apart from text, the term "hypertext" is also sometimes used to describe tables, images, and other presentational content formats with integrated hyperlinks. Hypertext is one of the key underlying concepts of the World Wide Web, where Web pages are often written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). As implemented on the Web, hypertext enables the easy-to-use publication of information over the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blog</span> Discussion or informational site published on the internet

A blog is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. Until 2009, blogs were often the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Gillmor</span> American technology writer

Dan Gillmor is an American technology writer and columnist. He is director of News Co/Lab, an initiative to elevate news literacy and awareness, at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Dan Gillmor is also in the board of directors of The Signals Network, a non-profit organization supporting whistleblowers.

Social computing is an area of computer science that is concerned with the intersection of social behavior and computational systems. It is based on creating or recreating social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Thus, blogs, email, instant messaging, social network services, wikis, social bookmarking and other instances of what is often called social software illustrate ideas from social computing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic literature</span> Literary genre created for digital devices

Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature encompassing works created exclusively on and for digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. A work of electronic literature can be defined as "a construction whose literary aesthetics emerge from computation", "work that could only exist in the space for which it was developed/written/coded—the digital space". This means that these writings cannot be easily printed, or cannot be printed at all, because elements crucial to the text are unable to be carried over onto a printed version.

Blog fiction is an online literary genre that tells a fictional story in the style of a weblog or blog. In the early years of weblogs, blog fictions were described as an exciting new genres creating new opportunities for emerging authors, but were also described as "notorious" in part because they often uneasily tread the line between fiction and hoax. Sometimes blog fictions are republished as print books, and in other cases conventional novels are written in the style of a blog without having been published as an online blog. Blog fiction is a genre of Electronic literature.

An edublog is a blog created for educational purposes. Edublogs archive and support student and teacher learning by facilitating reflection, questioning by self and others, collaboration and by providing contexts for engaging in higher-order thinking. Edublogs proliferated when blogging architecture became more simplified and teachers perceived the instructional potential of blogs as an online resource. The use of blogs has become popular in education institutions including public schools and colleges. Blogs can be useful tools for sharing information and tips among co-workers, providing information for students, or keeping in contact with parents. Common examples include blogs written by or for teachers, blogs maintained for the purpose of classroom instruction, or blogs written about educational policy. Educators who blog are sometimes called edubloggers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nick Montfort</span> American poet & digital media professor

Nick Montfort is a poet and professor of digital media at MIT, where he directs a lab called The Trope Tank. He also holds a part-time position at the University of Bergen where he leads a node on computational narrative systems at the Center for Digital Narrative. Among his publications are seven books of computer-generated literature and six books from the MIT Press, several of which are collaborations. His work also includes digital projects, many of them in the form of short programs. He lives in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julian Sanchez (writer)</span> American writer (born 1979)

Julian Sanchez is an American writer living in Washington, D.C. Formerly a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, he previously covered technology and privacy issues as the Washington editor for Ars Technica.

John Hawks is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He also maintains a paleoanthropology blog. Contrary to the common view that cultural evolution has made human biological evolution insignificant, Hawks believes that human evolution has sped up in recent history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Selfie</span> Photographic self-portrait

A selfie is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a digital camera or smartphone, which may be held in the hand or supported by a selfie stick. Selfies are often shared on social media, via social networking services such as Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Snapchat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multimodality</span> Phenomenon of human communication having different forms that combine

Multimodality is the application of multiple literacies within one medium. Multiple literacies or "modes" contribute to an audience's understanding of a composition. Everything from the placement of images to the organization of the content to the method of delivery creates meaning. This is the result of a shift from isolated text being relied on as the primary source of communication, to the image being utilized more frequently in the digital age. Multimodality describes communication practices in terms of the textual, aural, linguistic, spatial, and visual resources used to compose messages.

Scott Rettberg is an American digital artist and scholar of electronic literature based in Bergen, Norway. He is the co-founder and served as the first executive director of the Electronic Literature Organization. He leads the Center for Digital Narrative, a Norwegian Centre of Research Excellence from 2023 to 2033.

Lilie Chouliaraki is a professor in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE). Chouliaraki’s main area of research is the mediation of human vulnerability and suffering. She empirically explores how the media affects our moral and political relationships with distant others in the sense that it affects how we see the vulnerability of other people and how we are asked to feel, think and act toward them.

David Jhave Johnston is a Canadian poet, videographer, and motion graphics artist working chiefly in digital and computational media,. and a researcher at the Center for Digital Narrative at the University of Bergen. This artist's work is often attributed, simply, to the name Jhave.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Civilization's Waiting Room</span> Research-focused live-action roleplaying game

Sivilisasjonens venterom was a research larp held in Bergen in November 2021. It was designed to explore the potential of larps as a research methodology and as research dissemination, and was specifically intended to investigate ethical questions that arise when encountering new surveillance technologies.

In the digital humanities, "algorithmic culture" is part of an emerging synthesis of rigorous software algorithm driven design that couples software, highly structured data driven design with human oriented sociocultural attributes. An early occurrence of the term is found in Alexander R. Galloway classic Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture

Online Caroline was a web soap opera in 24 episodes written and published online by Tim Wright, Rob Bevan and Tom Harvey at the production company XPT in 2000. It was "an instant hit" and won that year's British Academy of Film and Television Arts award in the interactive category.

References

  1. ↑ Svarstad, Jørgen; Lie, Tove (23 September 2022). "Tre på rad for Moser-miljøet. 5 av 9 sentre til Universitetet i Oslo". Khrono (in Norwegian Bokmål). Retrieved 27 April 2023. Det nye senteret vil utforske de estetiske og samfunnsmessige effektene av nye former for digitale fortellinger. Det vil skape dypere kunnskap om hvordan digitale teknologier påvirker en av de mest fundamentalt menneskelige aktivitetene: Hvordan vi forteller historiene som former våre liv og hvordan vi forstår verden. University of Illinois at Chicago er samarbeidspartner. Scott Rettberg og Jill Walker Rettberg er senterledere.
  2. ↑ "Center for Digital Narrative". University of Bergen. Retrieved 27 April 2023.
  3. ↑ Ramanathan, Lavanya (13 February 2018). "Brows, contour, lips, lashes: How the 'full-beat face' took over the Internet". The Washington Post.
  4. ↑ "Machine Vision". University of Bergen. Retrieved 7 February 2022.
  5. ↑ "Machine Vision in Everyday Life: Playful Interactions with Visual Technologies in Digital Art, Games, Narratives and Social Media". European Commission: CORDIS - EU Research Results.
  6. ↑ Ewins, Rory (2005). "Who are You? Weblogs and Academic Identity". E-Learning and Digital Media. 2 (4): 369. doi:10.2304/elea.2005.2.4.368. ISSN   2042-7530. S2CID   144210088.
  7. ↑ "Filmscalpel | How Snapchat Uses Your Face" . Retrieved 7 February 2022.
  8. ↑ "Snapchat Research Story". Introduction to Digital Studies. 6 September 2017. Retrieved 7 February 2022.
  9. ↑ Walker, Jill (1998). Hypertextual criticism. Comparative readings of three web hypertexts about literature and film. University of Bergen. hdl:1956/1039.
  10. ↑ "Face-to-face MOO session". www.wordcircuits.com. Retrieved 7 February 2022.
  11. ↑ Walker, Jill (2003). Fiction and interaction how clicking a mouse can make you part of a fictional world. The University of Bergen. ISBN   978-82-8088-413-8.
  12. ↑ Rettberg, Jill Walker (18 January 2022). "Visiting scholar at the University of Chicago". jill/txt.
  13. ↑ "Portfolio Boards: Humanities and Social Sciences - Members". The Research Council of Norway. 15 April 2019.
  14. ↑ "Digital kultur, estetiske praksiser – en forskningssatsing fra Norsk kulturråd". Arts Council Norway. Retrieved 7 February 2022.
  15. ↑ Norge. Digitutvalget (2013). Hindre for digital verdiskaping. Torgeir A. Waterhouse. Oslo: Departementenes servicesenter, Informasjonsforvaltning. ISBN   978-82-583-1161-1. OCLC   1028489004.
  16. ↑ Moen, John Arne; Næss, Ingvild; Busch, Tor-Aksel; Grande, Trine Skei; Haugli, Trude Margrethe; Hertzberg, Haakon; Høyer, Marianne; Myrstad, Finn Lütkow-Holm; Nag, Toril (2022). Your privacy – our shared responsibility. Time for a privacy policy. Official Norwegian Reports NOU 2022: 11.
  17. ↑ Schei, Amanda (8 March 2023). "Disse kvinnene sier ja når journalister ringer, selv om det koster". khrono.no (in Norwegian Bokmål). Retrieved 27 April 2023.
  18. ↑ Hammond, Michael (1 July 2016). "How ideas of transformative learning can inform academic blogging". International Journal for Transformative Research. 3 (1): 36. doi: 10.1515/ijtr-2016-0006 . S2CID   152000259.
  19. ↑ Blanchard, Antoine (2010). "Ce que le blog apporte à la recherche". In Dacos, Marin (ed.). Read/Write Book. OpenEdition Press. ISBN   978-2-8218-0952-9. OCLC   1229605166.
  20. ↑ Mortensen, Torill; Walker, Jill (2002). "Blogging thoughts: personal publication as an online research tool". In Morrison, Andrew (ed.). Researching ICTs in Context. Oslo: Intermedia, University of Oslo.
  21. ↑ "final version of weblog definition". jill/txt. 28 June 2003. Retrieved 27 April 2023.
  22. ↑ Hoffmann, Christian R. (2012). Cohesive profiling : meaning and interaction in personal weblogs. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. Co. p. 15. ISBN   978-90-272-7469-4. OCLC   784997754.
  23. ↑ Walker, Jill (2006). "Blogging from inside the ivory tower". In Bruns, A.; Jacobs, J. (eds.). Uses of Blogs. Peter Lang.
  24. 1 2 Gregg, Melissa (2009). "Banal Bohemia: Blogging from the Ivory Tower Hot-Desk". Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 15 (4): 470–483. doi:10.1177/1354856509342345. ISSN   1354-8565. S2CID   143173277.
  25. ↑ Maceviciute, Elena (2014). "Review of: Rettberg, Jill Walker. Blogging. (2nd. ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014". Information Research: An International Electronic Journal. 19 (3).
  26. ↑ Kreiss, Daniel (2009). "Review of Blogging Jill Walker Rettberg Polity Press, Malden, MA, 2008$59.95 (hard), $19.95 (paper), pp. 184". Journal of Communication. 59 (2). doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2009.01430.x.
  27. ↑ Lowrey, Wilson (24 December 2009). "A Review of: "Jill Walker Rettberg. Blogging"". Mass Communication and Society. 13 (1): 111–114. doi:10.1080/15205430902962117. ISSN   1520-5436. S2CID   145364725. "The writing style is a strength of this book. The author's 8 years of practicing blogging is evident in the breezy, matter-of-fact manner in which she maps her subject matter. (..) It is accessible to undergrads, the conceptual depth makes it appropriate for graduate-level courses, and there are insights here that should spur ideas for future research."
  28. ↑ Nolan, Sybil (2014). "Book Review: Blogging: Digital Media and Society Series (Second Edition)". Media International Australia. 152 (1): 204–205. doi:10.1177/1329878X1415200141. ISSN   1329-878X. S2CID   150359884.
  29. ↑ Rettberg, Jill Walker (2014). Seeing ourselves through technology : how we use selfies, blogs and wearable devices to see and shape ourselves. Basingstoke. ISBN   978-1-137-47666-1. OCLC   892563828.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  30. ↑ Abidin, Crystal (2016). "Book review: Jill Walker Rettberg, Seeing ourselves through technology: How we use selfies, blogs and wearable devices to see and shape ourselves". Mobile Media & Communication. 4 (2): 290–292. doi:10.1177/2050157916633942b. ISSN   2050-1579. S2CID   192598806.
  31. ↑ "Open Syllabus: Explorer". Open Syllabus. Retrieved 27 April 2023.
  32. ↑ Rettberg, Jill Walker; Kronman, Linda; Solberg, Ragnhild; Gunderson, Marianne; Bjørklund, Stein Magne; Stokkedal, Linn Heidi; Jacob, Kurdin; de Seta, Gabriele; Markham, Annette (1 June 2022). "Representations of machine vision technologies in artworks, games and narratives: A dataset". Data in Brief. 42: 108319. Bibcode:2022DIB....4208319R. doi:10.1016/j.dib.2022.108319. ISSN   2352-3409. PMC   9344297 . PMID   35928587.
  33. ↑ Rettberg, Jill Walker (2022). "Algorithmic failure as a humanities methodology: Machine learning's mispredictions identify rich cases for qualitative analysis". Big Data & Society. 9 (2): 205395172211312. arXiv: 2305.11663 . doi:10.1177/20539517221131290. ISSN   2053-9517.
  34. ↑ Solberg, Ragnhild (15 December 2022). ""Too Easy" or "Too Much"? (Re)imagining Protagonistic Enhancement through Machine Vision in Video Games". Przegląd Kulturoznawczy (in Polish). 2022 (Numer 4 (54) Playing While the World Burns: Games in a Time of Crisis): 548–569. doi: 10.4467/20843860PK.22.037.17091 . ISSN   2084-3860.
  35. ↑ Rettberg, Jill Walker (2023). Machine Vision: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We See the World. Basingstoke: Polity. ISBN   978-1-5095-4522-3. OCLC   1353961655.
  36. ↑ "John Lovas Award Winners". Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy.
  37. ↑ "List of Awardees". Meltzer Foundation.
  38. ↑ Wingert, Bernd (14 December 1999). ""Back to the Roots": The 10th ACM Hypertext Conference Met in Darmstadt" (PDF). Dichtung Digital. 7.
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