Out/sourcing Knowledge

The almost immediate access to a wealth of information in contemporary society brings also about changed ways for relating to our nowadays often digitally produced and mediated social memory. Through a number of empirical studies, this project investigates how our contemporary social memory is produced, communicated and used.

The almost immediate access to a wealth of information in contemporary society brings changed ways for relating to our nowadays often digitally produced and mediated social memory. Search engines, digital encyclopaedias, mobile applications and other epistemological tools are situated in all kinds of practices in our lives. These tools are increasingly produced in a media ecology in which open data plays an important role. More and more, instead of being able to remember things, dates, facts, processes and so forth, the focus is on how to handle digital tools to do the work of memorising for us.

Through a number of empirical studies, this project investigates two key aspects of how our contemporary social memory is produced, communicated and used. Firstly, how conceptions of information (literacy) practices are co-created by how digital tools for memorising evolve; secondly how notions of trust in information shift with our increased reliance on digital tools. Methodologically, an explorative ethnographic approach dominates the material collection.

How is open data aggregated into digital resources and how is this data communicated online? How are memorising and mastery of digital resources constructed in relation to each other in school contexts? How is trust in digital resources established and challenged in relation to the relevance of memorising? How can we understand changes in peoples’ information practices as enactments of transformed information literacies?