Durán del Fierro, Francisco;
Littlejohn, Allison;
Kennedy, Eileen;
(2024)
Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Sharing and Emerging Postdigital Meaning-Making Practices in the Astronomy Community.
Postdigital Science and Education
10.1007/s42438-024-00473-5.
(In press).
Preview |
PDF
Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Sharing and Emerging Postdigital Meaning-Making Practices in the Astronomy Community.pdf - Published Version Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
For decades, science communities have had digital technology embedded in their everyday work. However, new research infrastructures are amplifying the presence and use of digital technologies for scientists. In that respect, radio astronomy is undergoing a major transformation causing the community to enter a phase of postdigital work, due to the construction of the most sensitive telescope, the Square Kilometer Array Observatory (SKAO), which scales the presence of digital technology and the amount of data generated. As new digital research infrastructure is set up, sociotechnical imaginaries—symbols and visions of a shared future—emerge, while others become obsolete thus impacting structures and practices of meaning-making. In this paper, we explore the disruptive potential of sociotechnical imaginaries and how astronomers using SKA pathfinder and precursor telescope data respond to these imaginaries and incorporate them into their meaning-making. The analysis shows that postdigital imaginaries related to data circulation, storage, archiving, and reuse have been amplified as SKA facilities and services are set up. Two changes are highlighted regarding a new postdigital condition within the astronomy community. Firstly, as astronomers engage in new postdigital forms of collaboration, they need to reach a consensus on what types of analyses to use by agreeing which methods are appropriate. This affects how scientific questions and research proposals are negotiated collectively, impacting the agency of astronomers. Secondly, as digital tools are increasingly part of astronomers’ daily work, they have to rely on new data analysis methods, which determine what evidence is uninteresting. Overall, these changes pose new questions regarding how meaning-making processes are altered and the way science is undertaken because of these new entanglements of human and non-human actors.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Sharing and Emerging Postdigital Meaning-Making Practices in the Astronomy Community |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s42438-024-00473-5 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s42438-024-00473-5 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Sociotechnical imaginaries, Postdigital, Meaning-making, Knowledge, Sharing |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Culture, Communication and Media |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10192264 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
