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Jill Walker Rettberg

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Jill Walker Rettberg
cand.philol., dr.art.
Dr. Rettberg at a panel debate at Nordiske mediedager in 2011.
Born1971 (age 52–53)
NationalityNorwegian
Other namesJill Walker
Known forblogging, social media, digital narratives
Scientific career
FieldsInternet studies, Digital humanities, Science and Technology Studies
InstitutionsUniversity of Bergen
ThesisFiction and interaction how clicking a mouse can make you part of a fictional world (2004)
Websitejilltxt.net

Jill Walker Rettberg (born Jill Walker in 1971) is co-director of the Center for Digital Narrative[1][2] and Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen. She is "a leading researcher in self-representation in social media"[3] and a European Research Council grantee (2018–2023) with the project Machine Vision in Everyday Life: Playful Interactions with Visual Technologies in Digital Art, Games, Narratives and Social Media[4][5]. Rettberg is known for innovative research dissemination in social media, having started her research blog jill/txt in 2000,[6] and developed Snapchat Research Stories in 2017.[7][8]

Education and academic career

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After completing an MA in Comparative Literature at the University of Bergen in 1998,[9] Rettberg worked for a year on a research project developing educational MOOs,[10] and in 2003 completed a doctoral degree in Humanistic Informatics at the University of Bergen under the supervision of Espen Aarseth.[11]

Rettberg was hired as an associate professor at the University of Bergen after her PhD, and was promoted to full Professor of Digital Culture in 2009. In addition to her tenured position at the University of Bergen, Rettberg has been a visiting scholar at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, University of Illinois Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago.[12]

In addition to her academic positions, Jill Walker Rettberg is a member of the Research Council of Norway's portfolio board for Humanities and Social Sciences (2019–2023),[13] and was previously a member of Arts Council Norway's research and development committee.[14] She co-authored the official Norwegian report NOU 2013:2 on hindrances for digital growth[15] and was a member of the Norwegian Privacy Commission.[16]

Rettberg is a frequently cited expert in Norwegian media.[17]

Blogging and social media

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Described as a "prolific blogger",[18] Rettberg started her research blog jill/txt in 2000 and was thus one of the earliest academic bloggers.[19] In 2002 she co-authored the first scholarly paper on blogs with Torill Mortensen.[20] In 2003 she wrote a definition of weblog for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, posting a first draft[21] to her blog and asking readers for feedback that she then integrated into the final definition.[22] In 2006 she published a paper describing the transition from blogging as a PhD student to blogging as an established academic as being challenging,[23] and identifying three types of academic blogging. As described by Melissa Gregg, these three types are: 1) public intellectuals with large audiences whose blogs are a defining feature of their reputation or notoriety, 2) the research log, an online version of the traditional notebook or record-book, and 3) pseudonymous blogs about academic life.[24] Building on this, Gregg characterised academic blogs as a "subcultural form of expression favored by young academics as part of constructing a professional identity".[24]

Rettberg's book Blogging was published by Polity in 2008, with a second editing published in 2014. The book was praised for its "intelligent theoretical and critical attitude",[25] its accessible style[26][27] and "its recognition that blogging is ultimately about humans, not metrics".[28]

Selfies and machine vision

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With the book Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves Rettberg examined three key modes of self-representation in social media: textual, as in blogs, visual, as in selfies, and quantitative, as in self-tracking and the growing quantitative self movement.[29] She argued that seeing these modes in combination is key to understanding social media as a whole.

The book was described as a "goldmine of historical and contemporary case studies"[30] and is listed on the syllabus at at least 60 universities according to Open Syllabus.[31]

In 2018 Rettberg launched a research project on Machine Vision funded by the European Research Council. The project developed the Database of Machine Vision in Art, Games and Narratives, which contains structured analyses of situations involving machine vision technologies from 500 creative works. The data is available for download and is analysed in several scholarly papers.[32][33][34]

The book Machine Vision: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We See the World[35] comes out of this project.

Books

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  • Machine Vision: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We See the World. Polity Press. 2023.
  • Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves. Basingstoke: Palgrave, October 2014.
  • Blogging. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008, 2nd ed. 2014. (1st ed. trans.: Polish, Korean.)
  • (co-editor, with Hilde Corneliussen) Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2008.

Major grants and awards

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  • ERC Consolidator grant (€2 million) 2018–2023.
  • John Lovas Award for Best Academic Weblog for Snapchat Research Stories[36]
  • The Meltzer Prize for Excellence in Research Dissemination, 2005.[37]
  • The Inaugural Ted Nelson Newcomer Award at the ACM Hypertext conference in 1999.[38]

References

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  1. ^ Svarstad, Jørgen; Lie, Tove (23 September 2022). "Tre på rad for Moser-miljøet. 5 av 9 sentre til Universitetet i Oslo". Khrono (in Norwegian Bokmål). Retrieved 27 April 2023. Det nye senteret vil utforske de estetiske og samfunnsmessige effektene av nye former for digitale fortellinger. Det vil skape dypere kunnskap om hvordan digitale teknologier påvirker en av de mest fundamentalt menneskelige aktivitetene: Hvordan vi forteller historiene som former våre liv og hvordan vi forstår verden. University of Illinois at Chicago er samarbeidspartner. Scott Rettberg og Jill Walker Rettberg er senterledere.
  2. ^ "Center for Digital Narrative". University of Bergen. Retrieved 27 April 2023.
  3. ^ Ramanathan, Lavanya (13 February 2018). "Brows, contour, lips, lashes: How the 'full-beat face' took over the Internet". The Washington Post.
  4. ^ "Machine Vision". University of Bergen. Retrieved 7 February 2022.
  5. ^ "Machine Vision in Everyday Life: Playful Interactions with Visual Technologies in Digital Art, Games, Narratives and Social Media". European Commission: CORDIS - EU Research Results.
  6. ^ Ewins, Rory (2005). "Who are You? Weblogs and Academic Identity". E-Learning and Digital Media. 2 (4): 369. doi:10.2304/elea.2005.2.4.368. ISSN 2042-7530. S2CID 144210088.
  7. ^ "Filmscalpel | How Snapchat Uses Your Face". Retrieved 7 February 2022.
  8. ^ "Snapchat Research Story". Introduction to Digital Studies. 6 September 2017. Retrieved 7 February 2022.
  9. ^ Walker, Jill (1998). Hypertextual criticism. Comparative readings of three web hypertexts about literature and film. University of Bergen. hdl:1956/1039.
  10. ^ "Face-to-face MOO session". www.wordcircuits.com. Retrieved 7 February 2022.
  11. ^ Walker, Jill (2003). Fiction and interaction how clicking a mouse can make you part of a fictional world. The University of Bergen. ISBN 978-82-8088-413-8.
  12. ^ Rettberg, Jill Walker (18 January 2022). "Visiting scholar at the University of Chicago". jill/txt.
  13. ^ "Portfolio Boards: Humanities and Social Sciences - Members". The Research Council of Norway. 15 April 2019.
  14. ^ "Digital kultur, estetiske praksiser – en forskningssatsing fra Norsk kulturråd". Arts Council Norway. Retrieved 7 February 2022.
  15. ^ Norge. Digitutvalget (2013). Hindre for digital verdiskaping. Torgeir A. Waterhouse. Oslo: Departementenes servicesenter, Informasjonsforvaltning. ISBN 978-82-583-1161-1. OCLC 1028489004.
  16. ^ Moen, John Arne; Næss, Ingvild; Busch, Tor-Aksel; Grande, Trine Skei; Haugli, Trude Margrethe; Hertzberg, Haakon; Høyer, Marianne; Myrstad, Finn Lütkow-Holm; Nag, Toril (2022). Your privacy – our shared responsibility. Time for a privacy policy. Official Norwegian Reports NOU 2022: 11.
  17. ^ Schei, Amanda (8 March 2023). "Disse kvinnene sier ja når journalister ringer, selv om det koster". khrono.no (in Norwegian Bokmål). Retrieved 27 April 2023.
  18. ^ Hammond, Michael (1 July 2016). "How ideas of transformative learning can inform academic blogging". International Journal for Transformative Research. 3 (1): 36. doi:10.1515/ijtr-2016-0006. S2CID 152000259.
  19. ^ Blanchard, Antoine (2010). "Ce que le blog apporte à la recherche". In Dacos, Marin (ed.). Read/Write Book. OpenEdition Press. ISBN 978-2-8218-0952-9. OCLC 1229605166.
  20. ^ Mortensen, Torill; Walker, Jill (2002). "Blogging thoughts: personal publication as an online research tool". In Morrison, Andrew (ed.). Researching ICTs in Context. Oslo: Intermedia, University of Oslo.
  21. ^ "final version of weblog definition". jill/txt. 28 June 2003. Retrieved 27 April 2023.
  22. ^ Hoffmann, Christian R. (2012). Cohesive profiling : meaning and interaction in personal weblogs. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. Co. p. 15. ISBN 978-90-272-7469-4. OCLC 784997754.
  23. ^ Walker, Jill (2006). "Blogging from inside the ivory tower". In Bruns, A.; Jacobs, J. (eds.). Uses of Blogs. Peter Lang.
  24. ^ a b Gregg, Melissa (2009). "Banal Bohemia: Blogging from the Ivory Tower Hot-Desk". Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 15 (4): 470–483. doi:10.1177/1354856509342345. ISSN 1354-8565. S2CID 143173277.
  25. ^ Maceviciute, Elena (2014). "Review of: Rettberg, Jill Walker. Blogging. (2nd. ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014". Information Research: An International Electronic Journal. 19 (3).
  26. ^ Kreiss, Daniel (2009). "Review of Blogging Jill Walker Rettberg Polity Press, Malden, MA, 2008$59.95 (hard), $19.95 (paper), pp. 184". Journal of Communication. 59 (2). doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2009.01430.x.
  27. ^ Lowrey, Wilson (24 December 2009). "A Review of: "Jill Walker Rettberg. Blogging"". Mass Communication and Society. 13 (1): 111–114. doi:10.1080/15205430902962117. ISSN 1520-5436. S2CID 145364725. "The writing style is a strength of this book. The author's 8 years of practicing blogging is evident in the breezy, matter-of-fact manner in which she maps her subject matter. (..) It is accessible to undergrads, the conceptual depth makes it appropriate for graduate-level courses, and there are insights here that should spur ideas for future research."
  28. ^ Nolan, Sybil (2014). "Book Review: Blogging: Digital Media and Society Series (Second Edition)". Media International Australia. 152 (1): 204–205. doi:10.1177/1329878X1415200141. ISSN 1329-878X. S2CID 150359884.
  29. ^ Rettberg, Jill Walker (2014). Seeing ourselves through technology : how we use selfies, blogs and wearable devices to see and shape ourselves. Basingstoke. ISBN 978-1-137-47666-1. OCLC 892563828.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  30. ^ Abidin, Crystal (2016). "Book review: Jill Walker Rettberg, Seeing ourselves through technology: How we use selfies, blogs and wearable devices to see and shape ourselves". Mobile Media & Communication. 4 (2): 290–292. doi:10.1177/2050157916633942b. ISSN 2050-1579. S2CID 192598806.
  31. ^ "Open Syllabus: Explorer". Open Syllabus. Retrieved 27 April 2023.
  32. ^ Rettberg, Jill Walker; Kronman, Linda; Solberg, Ragnhild; Gunderson, Marianne; Bjørklund, Stein Magne; Stokkedal, Linn Heidi; Jacob, Kurdin; de Seta, Gabriele; Markham, Annette (1 June 2022). "Representations of machine vision technologies in artworks, games and narratives: A dataset". Data in Brief. 42: 108319. Bibcode:2022DIB....4208319R. doi:10.1016/j.dib.2022.108319. ISSN 2352-3409. PMC 9344297. PMID 35928587.
  33. ^ Rettberg, Jill Walker (2022). "Algorithmic failure as a humanities methodology: Machine learning's mispredictions identify rich cases for qualitative analysis". Big Data & Society. 9 (2): 205395172211312. arXiv:2305.11663. doi:10.1177/20539517221131290. ISSN 2053-9517.
  34. ^ Solberg, Ragnhild (15 December 2022). ""Too Easy" or "Too Much"? (Re)imagining Protagonistic Enhancement through Machine Vision in Video Games". Przegląd Kulturoznawczy (in Polish). 2022 (Numer 4 (54) Playing While the World Burns: Games in a Time of Crisis): 548–569. doi:10.4467/20843860PK.22.037.17091. hdl:11250/3059992. ISSN 2084-3860.
  35. ^ Rettberg, Jill Walker (2023). Machine Vision: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We See the World. Basingstoke: Polity. ISBN 978-1-5095-4522-3. OCLC 1353961655.
  36. ^ "John Lovas Award Winners". Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy.
  37. ^ "List of Awardees". Meltzer Foundation.
  38. ^ Wingert, Bernd (14 December 1999). ""Back to the Roots": The 10th ACM Hypertext Conference Met in Darmstadt" (PDF). Dichtung Digital. 7.
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