Tobias Bornakke defends his PhD thesis at the Department of Sociology

Candidate
Tobias Bornakke

Title
“Transactional Data Experiments. On the calibration of digital traces for sociological use“. Prior to the defence, a paper copy of the dissertation is available for reading at the Department of Sociology, room 16.1.23.

Time and venue
October 26, 2017 at 13:00. University of Copenhagen, Centre for Health and Society, Department of Sociology, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 Copenhagen K, room 25.01.53.  Kindly note that the defence will start precisely at the announced time. After the defence the Department of Anthropology will host a reception in room 16.1.62.

• Assessment Committee
  Associate professor Jakob Demant, Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen (chairman)
• Senior lecturer Luke Sloan, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, United Kingdom
• Associate professor Anders Koed Madsen, Aalborg University

Abstract
Can voting behaviour be predicted based solely on a few “likes” on Facebook? Is it possible to measure the intensity of a party, the ‘partiness’, solely through the sensors embedded in your personal smartphone? And what does the same phone’s Bluetooth antenna reveal about the emotional closeness you feel toward your colleagues? Responding to such questions have been the venture of Tobias Bornakke’s dissertation Transactional Data Experiments: On the calibration of digital traces for sociological use.

The dissertation responds to these questions from two distinct perspectives. Firstly, through the participation in more than 10 autonomous experiments, the dissertation explores the social meaning that can be ascribed to some of the digital traces we leave behind; e.g. showing how political Facebook likes can be used as a strong measure for our political orientations. Secondly, the dissertation conceptualises such ‘data experiments’ as a dual focused practice of experimenting both with data, seeking to produce thematic analytical results, and on data, seeking to stabilise traces by linking them to theoretical meanings and methodological conventions.

Through this work the dissertation argues for the concept of ‘data experiments’ as a general applicable approach for transforming untested digital traces into valuable social measures thereby highly relevant for fellow scholars wishing to proceed in a quest to develop new digitally based measures.