Welcome to the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies
The Center brings together a diverse range of scholars to tackle questions that are driven by the rapid changes in our sociotechnological, data-intensive worlds. The issues of those addressed by faculty affiliated with the Center are wide ranging, but focus primarily on data privacy, citizen freedoms, information accessibilities and inequities, human-nonhuman relations, digital life, and art-science collaborations.
Recent News
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The Center Director has established a grant with the Research & Development branch of the U.S. Forest Service to make historical data forestry data records avaialble for research and management. The US Forest Service operates four long-term experimental areas from its office in Flagstaff, Arizona. We are starting a project to 1) digitally preserve and organize and 2) publish the research... Read More
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The director of this center, Bryan Heidorn was selelected to be a participant in a National Science Foundation (NSF) strategic planning event, May 20-25, 2019. Each of the 30 particpants in the IdeasLab was selected based on a big ideas proposal submitted to NSF. Dr. Heidorn's, "Idea" is a system to integrate big data and processing capacity from the hundreds of biological field stations that... Read More -
The Center for Digital Society and Data Studies has established a partnership with the Network for Earth-space Research Education and Innovation with Data (NEREID), an initiative of the Associated Universities, Inc. NEREID (ˈnirēˌid) advances research and innovation through education and engagement with big data in earth-space sciences. Why NEREID and why now? As the 20th century came to a close... Read More
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Our very own, Betsy Williams, PhD, was quoted in the Pew Research Center publication this past December. A snipit of that quote was also used in the publication inc.com. See the full quote below. Betsy Williams, a researcher at the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies at the University of Arizona, wrote, “AI’s benefits will be unequally distributed across society. Few will reap meaningful... Read More -
Dr. Sarah Young, CDSDS Research Associate, will be presenting new research at the iConference. Her work, "Continuous Evaluation: Background Investigations, Classified Information, and Informing in the 21st Century," details the proposed Continuous Evaluation (CE) program with the National Background Investigations Bureau where applicants for security clearances will be subjected to continuous... Read More -
Center faculty are presenting work at the 2019 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), on 'Deepfakes' as part of a symposium of research papers entitled, Credibility Assessment and Screening Technologies, January 8-11, Maui, HI. Click here for more information! -
CDSDS helps sponsor a new course offered to iSchool undergraduates, which is a great way to share research with today's learners. The class entitled "Surveillance and Social Media" is full and closed to further enrollment, until we can run it again at a later date! -
"It used to be that cameras never lie. We tend to privivilege visual content, trust what we see, and rely on police cams, mobile recording tools and similar devices to tell us about what is really happening on the streets, in local businesses, and more." "This kind of ‘justice’ only works as long as we can trust the videos we see—and faked videos are on the horizon." Click on the link below to... Read More -
In a big data world, scholars need new guidelines for research. User information from Facebook and other social-media sites is invaluable to political and social scientists, but it must be treated with care. -
Tech firm will be even more reluctant to share with legitimate researchers who want to learn more about how it affects our lives. -
Given that Arizona shares its southern border with Mexico, residents need to pay special attention to illegal searches of mobile devices during border crossings. Customs officials are increasingly collecting mobile devices at border crossings and in the nation’s airports, searches that often target minority travelers. Overall, border searches of electronics more than doubled from ... Read More -
The media fevor that followed special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of a Russian internet organization for intentionally sowing discord in the US political system has missed one crucial implication: We still know far too little about the potential impact of social media on individuals and society.... Read More -
UA researchers are calling for a collective approach to a host of emerging ethical issues in the rapidly changing technological world, where today there are more questions than answers. -
Candidates are busy fundraising for their campaigns for 2018 elections. Usually, the candidate with the most money wins. However, research from University of Arizona School of Information indicates the emergence of a new type of campaign currency generated on social media. Yotam Shmargad explained how retweets from certain social media influencers could help candidates overcome fundraising... Read More -
The semester we welcome our two new Social Media and Web interns, Carley Kaiser and Rachel Pollack. We are so lucky to have them. Meet the interns: "Hello! My name is Carley Kaiser and I am currently a junior with a double major in Communication and eSociety. I’ve been working at the CDSDS this year as the social media and web intern. I’ve had so much fun helping out at events for the Center and... Read More -
This course provides an introduction to the fundamentals of information privacy, with applications developing privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs). Topics include: formal and informal conceptions of privacy; best practices for PET development/privacy by design; anonymous communication; obfuscation; database privacy; privacy in authentication; biometric privacy. -
CDSDS Director, Catherine Brooks was selected for 2017-2018 as a year-long fellow for The OpEd Project’s Public Voices Fellowship. The fellowship is a "national initiative first piloted at Yale, Stanford and Princeton Universities, and now at top universities and foundations across the nation....The goal is to dramatically increase the public impact of our nation's top underrepresented thinkers,... Read More -
CDSDS Director, Catherine Brooks, continues her work on the Advisory Council for the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) in Washington DC. “The best policy outcomes happen when all voices engage in an honest, constructive dialogue. The diversity of views and experiences of this stellar group of individuals will help CDT be an even more effective and influential organization. I’m... Read More -
As part of a research team, David Sidi participated in a series of research talks about transparency in data flows. With his research partners and co-authors, he has presented work at the Usenix Symposium on Usable Privacy, the Americas Conference on Information Systems, and also the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference. This projectc focused on the TD-CHAIN system that was developed... Read More -
We welcome Angelia Giannone, a doctoral student in the School of Information and new CDSDS Student Research Fellow! Angelia studies games, media, technology studies, digital culture, as well as rhetoric and communication in STEM discourses. Angelia is also the director of the Usability and Play Testing Lab. -
CDSDS Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Mark Verstraete, recently partnered with colleagues in the James E. Rogers College of Law to break down and determine how to stop fake news. Verstraete and his colleagues determined there are four categories of fake news and provide insight on what methods we can take as a solution to the debacle. For the UAnews story:... Read More -
Volodymyr Lysenko, Postdoctoral Research Associate for the Center, is training students about Cybersecurity! As part of the MA in International and Security Studies housed in UA's School of Government and Public Policy, Dr. Lysenko is teaching a graduate course on "Issues in Cybersecurity and Cyberwar". He's also busy teaching "Ethics in a Digital World" for the School of Information. -
The Center for Digital Society and Data Studies partners with the College of Law to host a unique speaker series featuring experts in privacy and data security. Speakers discuss their career paths and the particular legal controversies that most affect their area of research and practice. -
Mark Verstraete is a Privacy & Freedom of Speech Post-doctoral Research Fellow for the CDSDS and will be working primarily for faculty in the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law. His research examines how technology and law distribute power across networks (government, civil society, etc.) and the implications of those distributions. He is a graduate of University of... Read More -
Michael Jenkins, partially funded by the Center, spent time in Salt Lake City, Utah with Communication scholars. As a doctoral student, Michael's focus is on philosophical questions in Information, but his theoretical frames are very interdisciplinary. We're pleased to have supported him to share ideas across multiple scholars, ideas meant to aid in the teaching of students about online... Read More -
Introducing, Dr. Volodymyr Lysenko, Ph.D. Information Science from the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Lysenko has published research in peer-reviewed journals on the use of ICT for socio-political transformations, particularly in the former USSR countries. He conducted research as a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford (UK) and Columbia University (USA). Previously he served as an... Read More -
"Silicon Valley has great skills to offer America, but with leadership that is 80 percent men and 83 percent white, it has trouble hearing all citizens," says Williams. We think she's right, and hope you'll check it out here: http://www.nytimes.com/... Read More -
Congratulations to Derek Bambauer, affiliated faculty and Center board member, awarded support for his work on algorithmic decision making and privacy. Bambauer was funded as part of the Program on Economics & Privacy (PEP) at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, one that aims to inject sound economic analysis into policy discussions surrounding privacy, data security, and other... Read More -
Betsy Williams (PhD, Stanford University) is a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies. She believes that the process of exchanging ideas can improve learning, cooperation, and civil society, and she studies how technologies and social contexts shape these outcomes. Her training in economics and education focused on using causal inference methodologies... Read More -
Catherine F. Brooks, Director of the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies, remains concerned with issues of social media and safety. She addressed the media this week about the role social media has played in the recent campus clown incidents and related concerns. "This is as much about the nature of the news as it is about the mode of delivery because today's stories of all kinds move so... Read More -
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http://uacareers.com/postings/13452 The University of Arizona’s (UA) Center for Digital Society and Data Studies, in coordination with faculty from UA’s School of Information and School of Government and Public Policy (SGPP), welcomes applications for three (3) postdoctoral fellows beginning in Late... Read More -
Art and the Archive: From Material Object to the Dataset This seminar will consider the complex interrelationship between artistic practice and “the archive” as a theoretical construct, a practical institution, and a type of collection undergoing substantial change in a digital and social media era. Since the late 1960s, the aesthetic critique of archival practices has been an ever-increasing... Read More -
Catherine Brooks, Director of UA's Center for Digital Society and Data Studies (CDSDS), has been invited to serve as a steering-team member on a recently-awarded grant from the Economic and Social Research Council, UK's largest organization for funding research on economic and social issues. The project "Ways of Being in a Digital Age: A Systematic Review" will be led by the U.K.'s Institute of... Read More -
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February 24, 2016 7:50 am • The Associated Press The University of Arizona is establishing a new academic center to study big-picture issues involving digital technology and data. According to university officials, the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies launched by the School of Information will bridge divides between academic disciplines and involve experts from multiple fields.
Upcoming Events
Currently, there are no Upcoming Events listed. Please visit our Events page to see all past and current events.