I often receive messages from students who are interested in the fuzzy and interdisciplinary world of Critical AI Studies (aka Critical Algorithms Studies, Critical Data Studies, Critical Platform Studies, Digital STS, and many related terms–after all, what even is AI, as Lucy Suchman writes). This is a non-exhaustive list of public-facing resources. Many of these places have newsletters, so I encourage students to sign up.
- Centers and Institutes
Algorithmenetik (Gütersloh)
Algorithmic Fairness and Opacity Group (Berkeley)
Bristol Digital Futures Institute (Bristol)
Center for Applied Data Ethics (USF)
Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing (Michigan)
Center on Digital Culture and Society (Penn Annenberg)
Centre for Digital Cultures (Leuphana)
CRISP (Center for Research Into Information, Surveillance, and Privacy)
Crockett Lab (see Ethical Costs and Epistemic Risks of LLMs)
Data Justice Lab (Cardiff)
Data & Society Research Institute
Digilabour (UNISINOS)
Digital Civil Society Lab (Stanford)
Digital Democracies Institute (SFU)
DipLab (Digital Labor Platform)
Edinburgh Futures Institute (Edinburgh)
Fairwork (Oxford Internet Institute, WZB)
HIIG (Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society)
Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab (Princeton)
Institute for Public Knowledge: “Co-Opting AI” (NYU)
Lavits (Rede Latino-Americana de Estudos Sobre Vigilância, Tecnologia e Sociedade)
MASTS (Media as SocioTechnical Systems) (USC Annenberg)
Médialab (Sciences Po)
LSE Digital Ethnography Collective (LSE)
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics (Santa Clara)
Oxford Internet Institute (Oxford)
Plamadiso (WZB)
Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab (IAS)
Social Media Collective (Microsoft Research New England)
Surveillance Studies Centre (Queen’s University)
The Engine Room (Berlin)
UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (UCLA)
Yale Critical Computing Initiative (Yale)
- Reading Lists, Syllabi, Lexicons
Critical Algorithms Studies Reading List (h/t Tarleton Gillespie and Nick Seaver)
Critical Data Science Zotero (h/t Katja Mayer and Momin M. Malik)
Digital Ethnography Reading List (h/t Zoë Glatt)
Critical Race and Digital Studies Syllabus (h/t Lori Kido Lopez & Jackie Land)
A New AI Lexicon (AI Now)
Tech Ethics Curricula (h/t Casey Fiesler)
My Politics of Algorithms Syllabus
- Slack channel (with CFPs)
Sociologists of Digital Things (you can sign up on the website) (h/t Matt Rafalow)
- Conferences and sections
Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR)
ASA, especially CITAMS (Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology)
ICA, especially CAT (Communication and Technology) and Philosophy, Theory, and Critique
- (Kind of) Specialized academic journals, magazines, and proceedings
Information, Communication, & Society
And then a LOT of other options depending on the discipline: in Communication (International Journal of Communication, Journal of Communication, First Monday), Sociology (ASR, AJS, Work & Occupations, Theory & Society, Poetics), Management (Organization Science, ASQ), STS (Science, Technology, & Human Values, Social Studies of Science), Information Science (The Information Society), Policy (Internet Policy Review), Law, ACM proceedings…