6 - 10 January 2025

 

In-person 

Opening Time:
6 January at 9.15am Amsterdam time. Please be punctual!

Opening Day Location:
University of Amsteram
Oudemanhuispoort 4-6 
1012 CN Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Room D1.09

Everyday location:
Digital Methods Initiative
University of Amsterdam
Turfdraagsterpad 9
1012 XT Amsterdam

 

Digital Methods Initiative - Winter School 2025

 

Chatbots for Internet Research?

The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI), Amsterdam, is holding its annual Winter School on 'Chatbots for Internet Research?'. The format is that of a (social media and web) data sprint, with tutorials as well as hands-on work for telling stories with data. There is also a programme of keynote speakers. It is intended for advanced Master's students, PhD candidates and motivated scholars who would like to work on (and complete) a digital methods project in an intensive workshop setting. 

Chatbots and LLMs for Internet Research? Towards a Reflexive Approach

Positions now are increasingly staked out in the debate concerning the application of chatbots and LLMs to social and cultural research. On the one hand there is the question of ‘automating’ methods and shifting some additional part of the epistemological burden to machines. On the other there is the rejoinder that chatbots may well be adequate research buddies, assisting with (among other things) burdensome and repetitive tasks such as coding and annotating data sets. They seem to be continually improving, or at least growing in size and apparent promise. Researcher experiences are now widely reported: chatbots have outperformed human coders, ‘understanding’ rather nuanced stance-taking language and correctly labeling it better than average coders. But other work has found that the LLM labeling also has the tendency to be bland, given how the filters and safety guardrails (particularly in US-based chatbots) tend to depoliticise or otherwise soften their responses. As researcher experience with LLMs becomes more widely reported, there are user guides and best practices designed to make LLM findings more robust. Models should be carefully chosen, persona’s should be well developed, prompting should be conversational and so forth. LLM critique is also developing apace, with (comparative) audits interrogating underlying discrimination and bias that are only papered over by filters. At this year’s Digital Methods Winter School we will explore these research practices with chatbots and LLMs for internet research, with an emphasis on bringing them together. How to deploy and critique chatbots and LLMs at the same time, in a form of reflexive usage?

 

Information

For all details about this Winter School Course, please visit the Digital Methods website below. 

Instructions, project descriptions and welcome package (as they become available)

 

Course information:

• Dates: 6-10 January 2025
• Tuition fee: € 695
• Registration deadline: rolling admissions until 18 December 2023
• Academic director: Richard Rogers
• Academic level: all graduate levels - Master's, PhD candidates and professionals/scholars
• Credits: 6 ECTS 
• Field of study: New Media and Digital Culture
• Location: In-person. University of Amsterdam, Media Studies, Turfdraagsterpad 9, 1012 XT Amsterdam, the Netherlands

School philosophy

The Digital Methods Winter School is exploratory and experimental. It is not a setting for ‘just’ tool training or for principally tool-driven research. Substantive research projects are conceived and carried out. Participants are encouraged to ‘span time with their issue’ and the materials. In other words, we heed Alexander Galloway’s admonition about data and tool-driven work: “Those who were formerly scholars or experts in a certain area are now recast as mere tool users beholden to the affordances of the tool — while students spend ever more time mastering menus and buttons, becoming literate in a digital device rather than a literary corpus.”[1] We encourage device and corpus literacy! The device training we ask you to do prior to the School through online tutorials, and at the School itself, in a kind of flipped learning environment (if you'll excuse the overused phrase), we would like to believe that you have familiarised yourself already with the tools (and are driven, to complete the thought). During the School we will discuss and tinker with the nitty-gritty, aim to invent new methods, techniques and heuristics and create the first iterations of compelling work to be shared.

[1] Alexander Galloway (2014)." The Cybernetic Hypothesis," Differences. 25(1):107-131. See page 127.

About the Winter School

The Digital Methods Winter School, a part of the Digital Methods Initiative, is directed by Professor Richard Rogers, Chair in New Media & Digital Culture, Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. The Winter School is one training opportunity provided by the Digital Methods Initiative (DMI). DMI also has a Summer School, held the first weeks of July. Both Schools have a technical staff as well as a design staff, drawn from the ranks of Density Design in Milan. The Schools also rely on a technical infrastructure of servers hosting tools and storing data. 

In a culture of experimentation and skill-sharing, participants bring their laptops, learn method, undertake research projects, make reports, tools and graphics and write them up on the Digital Methods wiki. The School concludes with final presentations. Often there are subject matter experts from non-governmental or other organizations who present their analytical needs and issues at the outset and the projects seek to meet those needs, however indirectly.

Please see previous Digital Methods Summer Schools, 2007-2024. See also previous Digital Methods Winter Schools, 2009-2024.

The Digital Methods Initiative was founded with a grant from the Piet Mondriaan Foundation, the public cultural funding organization. The Digital Methods Summer and Winter Schools are self-sustaining.

Credits and completion certificate

Completion certificate and transcript for 6 ECTS are granted to participants who follow the School program, and complete a significant contribution to a School project as evidenced by co-authorship of the project report as well as final (joint) presentation slides. Templates for the project report as well as for the presentation slides are supplied. Please note that certificates of completion and the transcripts are the same. There are no other certificates or proof of participation supplied.