SIAH Data Series 2022: Civics Event

Overview

COVID ARCADIA – A DATA CIVICS PROJECT
Socio-material adaptations and the role of ‘digital affective’ premises in a pandemic city

This paper reflects on a digital ethnography project tracing the responses of independent service retailers in Edinburgh to the Covid pandemic conducted as part of the Data Civics programme at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. Data Civics draws on the civic sociology of Patrick Geddes to frame questions about the role the sociological observatory/laboratory can play in urban research in a datafied twenty-first century context. It addresses the challenges of placemaking, participation, representation and governance in a research, teaching and engagement programme built around participatory, co-designed, creative projects and experiments.

CovidArcadia was supported by the Scottish Funding Council as part of their Covid Recovery funding scheme. It tracked the material and technical adjustments independent retailers made to their premises to continue trading safely and comply with the rapidly changing restrictions and regulations during the pandemic. These changes include the installation of signs, bespoke hatches, plexiglass screens, lanes, traffic lights, sanitiser dispensers etc. For service outlets, like cafés, coffee-shops and hairdressers, who offer an experience or atmosphere, pandemic conditions present a particular challenge. Some responded by also adapting their ‘digital premises’ to create a ‘digital affective’ atmosphere, commissioning and sharing new forms of content, e.g. cartoons, crowdfunding schemes, films, jokes, diaries etc. especially on Instagram. We investigated these adaptations using digital ethnographic methods analysing the role, affordances and interplay of these changes across material and digital premises. Many of these adaptations are rapid improvisations, combining the use of semi-obsolete, forgotten or superseded technologies from A-frames to QR codes but they share the goal of re-fashioning space, movement and place in market encounters. The Covid pandemic thus adds new and unpredictable complications in the slow disease facing the arcade in digital economies.

Speaker biographies

Liz McFall is Chancellor’s Fellow based in Sociology and the Edinburgh Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh. She writes about how people engage with markets particularly for technical and complicated propositions like insurance, credit and urban development projects. She co-edited Markets and the Arts of Attachment with Franck Cochoy and Joe Deville (Routledge 2017) and is author of Devising Consumption: cultural economies of insurance, credit and spending (Routledge 2014) and Advertising: a cultural economy (Sage 2004). She is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cultural Economy.

Dr Kath Bassett is a Lecturer in the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of York in the UK. She received her doctorate in sociology from the University of Edinburgh, masters from the University of York, and bachelors from Pacific University. She convenes a module on feminist theory, as well as teaches digital ethnography and feminist and queer ethics. Her research is oriented in Cultural Studies and focuses on: platform governance and algorithms; locative media and mobile smart devices; cultural-economic development and tourism; emotions, affect, and the psy disciplines; masculinities and transgender issues/politics. She has published in Feminist Studies and New Media & Society.

Elif Buse Doyuran is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. She is broadly interested in digital economies and currently researches the mobilisation of behavioural economics in digital marketing and product design practices. She previously reviewed How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism by Cory Doctorow, for the Journal of Cultural Economy. She holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and a BA from Bogazici University, Istanbul.  

İdil Galip is a writer, researcher, and maker from Turkey. Her work is informed by ethnographic methods and is focused on work, platforms, and digital culture. She is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Edinburgh where she is mapping the creative and digital labour that goes into the creation, dissemination, and monetisation of internet memes. She also runs the Meme Studies Research Network, an interdisciplinary and international network for people who study memes. İdil has published in various academic journals and holds degrees from London School of Economics and Bilkent University. 

Addie McGowan is a PhD candidate who holds the Share City joint studentship across the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, supervised in Architecture and Sociology. She studies the sharing economy in the city by way of exploring how home sharing platforms like Airbnb (co)produce urban place and knowledge via their digital and social infrastructures. Her research interests include platforms, tourism, advertising, and digital culture, and has contributed to funded research projects including Covid Arcadia, Forging the Future of Travel and Tourism, and most recently Supporting local acceleration in Granton through inclusive, data driven and participatory engagement. She has previously reviewed The Platform Society in Cultural Sociology in 2021. She holds an MSc in Digital Society from the University of Edinburgh and a BA in Sociology and Communication from Trinity University in San Antonio, TX USA.

Other events in the series

Event 1: Literacies - Wednesday 27th April 4-5pm

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Event 3: Inequalities - Wednesday 11th May 4-5pm

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Following the three events with guest speakers, we will consider a further event for networking and ideas generation relating to potential University of Southampton projects.

The series will be convened by Dr Dan Ashton (Fellow in Disparate Data and Unexpected Evidence with Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities) with postgraduate and early career researchers taking on chairing/discussant roles. Please contact Dan with any queries (d.k.ashton@soton.ac.uk).