Join us for the Digimethods 2023: Africa Digital Methods Winter School at Rhodes University in South Africa 19-22 June 2023 We invite digital media researchers and postgraduate students to attend a digital methods winter school that will explore topics in the field of Media and Journalism Studies related to the study of digital media, social media and mobile apps. Whether you are a seasoned digital researcher or a total novice, or primarily a qualitative researcher looking to expand your repertoire of methods, this Winter School is for you. The four-day winter school in Makhanda from 19-22 June 2023 will be an immersive experience starting off with a series of masterclasses that will ready participants to take part in small research teams. On the first day we kick off the winter school by exploring a range of tools. Participants will learn methods for scraping, visualising and analysing online textual and visual data and then apply these towards answering actual research questions over the final three days of the winter school. They will tackle uniquely African research questions related to digital and social media and participate in a carefully choreographed research scrum that will result in a range of original findings. Currently topics of interest being developed include: - Textual analysis tools for exploring African News websites - Social media and network analysis - Tools for exploring mobile apps - Visual analysis of social media - Machine learning We have already signed up the following speakers to share their extensive experience in the field: - Dr Dani Madrid-Morales, Sheffield University (Content analysis tools using R-Studio) - Dr Dennis Nguyen, Utrecht University (Data Bias & online content analysis) - Dr Henri-Count Evans, University of eSwatini (Social Network Analysis) - Prof Adam Peruta, Syracuse University (Understanding mobile apps) - Mr Jean le Roux, DFR Lab (Misinformation Online) And online presentations by: - Prof Anne Helmond, University of Utrecht (Mobile App Methods) - Dr Ranjit Singh, Data & Society (AI research agenda for the majority world) We will aim towards: - Showing how certain digital methods lend themselves to specific research questions - Sharing approaches for developing relevant research questions that can be researched through digital methods. - Developing appropriate research questions related to African cultural phenomena, working within specific topics relevant to digital media on the continent. - Getting participants to sign up for a small research team in which they will generate local research questions, scrape, visualise and analyse data. - Furthermore, we will also showcase research methods developed on the continent. - We will develop all of this into a handbook for digital methods for the Global South as well as a MOOC. We are looking to compile a sense of interest in the winter school as well as ideas for local collaborators and possible topics for research through such digital methods. Any enquiries should be directed at Alette Schoon on a.schoon@ru.ac.za. We invite you to fill in this Google Form to indicate your interest in the Winter School: https://forms.gle/vCTKT3EsKG4PgJzh8 The Winter School will be directly followed by a colloquium for journalism and media educators, who are invited to submit a proposal at the following link: https://forms.gle/YjFjBwxykE2vFZjAA. --