Newsletter from Center for Digital Welfare
Newsletter from the Center for Digital Welfare - February 2022
Welcome to the new year of 2022..!
With many great plans in store, the year is starting on a refreshing note, as we cautiously hope that consecutive cancellations are a thing of the past.

One thing we especially look forward to, is the upcoming collaboration with our two newest members, Alexandra Instituttet and Gate21. Alexandra Instituttet is a leading research-based IT consultancy, and Gate21 is a partnership, which gathers municipalities, regions, and knowledge institutions for testing out green solutions for a sustainable Denmark. Welcome both, to the Center for Digital Welfare (CDW)!

In other news, a research member of the working group Sustainable Digitalization, and Associate Professor of Computer Science, Luca Maria Aiello, recently secured a prestigious fellowship for the project COCOONS focusing on sustainability and collective action. The project’s ultimate goal is to provide a blueprint for online participatory platforms that empower users to find common solutions to major problems; problems that can only be addressed by mass action, such as global pandemics and rapid climate change. The project includes three positions for PhDs and Postdocs, and if you are interested in applying, keep an eye out for their announcement here. Congratulations on the project to Aiello!

In this newsletter, you will be able to get a quick overview of all recent and upcoming activities in the Short News, dive into ongoing research about Predicting Unemployment, and get a sneak peek into a new publication about video consultations in Danish healthcare provision during the pandemic.

We hope you enjoy reading.

Sincerely,
 
Laura Juncker and Brit Ross Winthereik,
Center Management

 
Short News
 
Predicting unemployment
PhD Fellow Kristian Haug recently completed his research exchange at the CDW, which extended from September to December 2021.

In his research, Haug examines the application of profiling algorithms at job centers and unemployment insurance funds. His interest lies in the social and technical construction of profiling algorithms, along with the implementation of such tools, including the interactions between managers, caseworkers, and developers. As existing research on profiling in the public sector remains sparse, a holistic approach to studying profiling tools is acutely needed for a more thorough and meaningful understanding of their intends, their use and their effects, as they are currently being rolled out widely in society.

Previously, Haug has identified five general social and technical ‘dimensions of profiling’ and scrutinized how these are internally related. This is described in more detail in the article A Framework for Profiling the Unemployed: A Systematic Literature Review of Algorithmic Profiling, currently in review at the journal Government Information Quarterly.

Currently, Haug is examining how AI is legitimized, which stands as a counterpart to more well-known debates of whether AI is legitimate or not. In addition, he is examining algorithmic accountability and fairness concerns in the case of the STAR algorithm (Styrelsen for Arbejdsmarked og Rekruttering - Danish Agency for Labour Market and Recruitment). This latter work is in pending review at ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency.  

Haug's home institution is the Department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde University, and he is a member of the research group Roskilde School of Governance. His work is central to issues shaping digital welfare in the Danish society today and his enrollment at the CDW has been a valuable contribution to the research environment. If you wish to know more about his work, Kristian Haug can be contacted at kbhaug@ruc.dk.

 
Person with laptop in video call with health practitioner
Relationships and care in video healthcare
Digital reforms in the Danish public sector and the Covid-19 pandemic have catapulted the implementation of video consultations in healthcare provision. As digital technologies increasingly mediate consultations, scholars are paying attention to relations between digital technologies, clinicians, patients, and their significant others.

This is the case of PhD Fellow Cæcilie Sloth Laursen, who is currently studying video consultations as sites for understanding relationships of care and repair during the pandemic, where in-person consultations are limited, and the health care sector is under intense pressure.

As Cæcilie unfolds in one of her papers (Video Consultations During Covid-19: Repairing the Lack of Embodied Encounters with Patients in Outpatient Clinics, 2021), video consultations provide more flexibility than phone consultations. In some cases, patients prefer video consultations as these are more convenient and can reduce the burdens of meeting in person. Yet not all clinicians and patients find digital technologies easy to navigate and use, and there are many questions regarding how to meet both clinicians’ and patients’ needs when video consultations are scaled across the health care sector.

Understanding when it makes sense to use video consultations in relation to the preferences of patients and clinicians continues to be crucial. If you want to read Cæcilie’s paper on video consultations, you can access it online here.

 
New Publications!
Ertner, M. & Winthereik, B. R (2022). Policy Concepts and Their Shadows: Active Ageing, Cold Care, Lazy Care, and Coffee-Talk Care. Science & Technology Studies.

Galis, V. & Makrygiannis V. (2022). Analog Flows in Digital Worlds: ‘Migration Multiples’ and Digital Heterotopias in Greek Territory. Political Geography.

Bak Jørgensen, M. Galis, V. & Sandberg, M (eds.) (2022). The Migration Mobile: Border dissidence, sociotechnical resistance and the construction of irregularized migrants. Rowman and Littlefield.

Bak Jørgensen, M., Rossi, L. Galis, V. & Sandberg, M. (eds.) (2022). Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies: Caring For (Big) Data?. Springer International Publishing.

Galis, V. & Makrygianni, V. (2022). Migration and counter-information practices: enhancing mobility while subverting the mainstream media. In Bak Jørgensen, M. Galis, V. & M. Sandberg (eds.) (2022). The Migration Mobile: Border dissidence, sociotechnical resistance and the construction of irregularized migrants. Rowman and Littlefield.  

Galis, V. (2022). The Redundant Researcher: Fieldwork, Solidarity, and Migration. In Sandberg, M. et al. (eds). Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies. Springer International Publishing.

Duff, C., Simonsen, T & Sturge, J (2022). Healing Architecture in Healthcare: A Scoping Review. Health Environments Research & Design (HERD). 

Person with laptop in video call with health practitioner
 
Accessibility
Dear readers, we are working on improving the accessibility of our newsletter. If you run into any issues while browsing our newsletter, or you have suggestions to make the newsletter more enjoyable, email our co-editor Laura Juncker at laju@itu.dk.


 
 
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