Current project

Imagining Sustainable Digital Futures: Outlines for Eco-Digital Citizenship (2022–2025)

The project Imagining Sustainable Digital Futures: Outlines for Eco-Digital Citizenship (Research Council of Finland 2022-2025) studies the social and ecological unsustainability of our digitalised society. Digitalisation and technology have often been put forward as solutions to address climate change, environmental pollution, and biodiversity loss. Nevertheless, the latest technologies, such as artificial intelligence, are only partial and perhaps delusive solutions to the planetary crises if their sustainability is not addressed.

In the project, the concept of eco-digital agency is developed to meet the need for creative and radical imagination that challenges and resists the taken-for-grantedness of the injustices and unsustainabilities in the digitalised society. At their best, images of alternatives can spark action toward futures that are sustainable and fair. Although the ability to imagine alternatives is crucial in fostering hope for more just futures, breaking away from the present and the familiar is not easy. In fact, it has been argued that the lack of imagination has prevented finding effective solutions to the urgent planetary crises, and our time is characterised by the decline of political and utopian imagination pressingly needed to challenge capitalism. By tackling these issues, the project contributes to nascent research that explores and experiments with so-called speculative methods in the field of critical media and infrastructure studies.

In the project, alternative futures are imagined together with young people. Their perceptions, hopes, and fears about the future matter because the future concerns them particularly. Yet, their voices often remain unheard in politics, and strategy or urban planning despite the growing recognition of their anxiety associated with climate change and environmental problems. The core of the project are experiments in which art-based methods are used to imagine sustainable digital futures. These include, for example, workshops with generative AI, creative writing, and design fiction. The project has been organising Alternative Futures movie series at Turku Book Café in the winter-spring 2024 together with Turku Book Café and Cultural Interaction Researcher Network (Kultva). As part of the project, a repair café has been initiated in Turku in the winter 2024.

Ketonen-Oksi, S. & Vigren, M. (2024). Methods to imagine transformative futures. An integrative literature review. Futures 157, article no: 103341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2024.103341

Ylipulli, J. & Vigren, M. (2023). From skilled users to critical citizens? Imagining and future- making as part of digital citizenship. In D. Radovanović (ed.) Digital Literacy and Inclusion: Stories, Platforms, Communities, pp. 15–31. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30808-6_2

Olsson, T., Pyyhtinen, O., Rantasila, A., Laaksonen, S-M., Vigren, M., Ylipulli, J., & Sawhney, N. (2023). A User-Centered Lens into Digital Excess: Exploring the Superfluity and Environmental Burden of the Digital World. Workshop on Computing within Limits, Virtual, Online. https://doi.org/10.21428/bf6fb269.a5916a92

Past projects

Social accountability of media platforms: Dynamics, practices and discourses (MAPS) (2022)

In this postdoc project, my research focuses on the environmental responsibility of digital platforms. In the MAPS project, we examine digital media platforms as crucial sites for accountability processes and debates across a range of global contexts. The primary question motivating the project is: How is accountability is produced, enacted and articulated in the contemporary media environment? The project produces new knowledge and public understanding of the ways in which social media platforms and media organizations intervene and influence accountability processes, both facilitating and threatening democratic participation.

Media & Viestinnän teemanumero Media ja Vastuu (1/2023) (yhteistoimitettu N. Hatakan kanssa) https://journal.fi/mediaviestinta/issue/view/9087

Securing things: Human-Centred Internet of Things Security (2020–2021)

In my first postdoc project, I studied hacking. The overall goal of the Securing Things project, funded by The Swedish Research Council, was to develop the cultural, political and empirical understandings that will be needed to regulate, manage, and design for secure IoT. The objectives of the project were double edged: make IoT better, but also regulate and understand its impacts and the new worlds we make with technology. I conducted the research as part of Stockholm Technology and Interaction Research group at Stockholm University.

Rostami, A., Vigren, M., Raza, S. and Brown, B. (2022). Being hacked: Understanding victims’ experiences of IoT hacking. Proceedings of the Eighteenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2022). August 8–9, 2022, Boston, MA, USA.

Brown, B., Vigren, M., Rostami, R., Gloss, M. (2022). Why users hack: Conflicting interests and the political economy of software. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. Article No.: 354, pp 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1145/3555774

Young people imagining media(ted) futures: developing a method for change (2020–2021)

In my second postdoc project, I developed with colleagues an Imagining Workshop model for young people for use by the media industry and other interested stakeholders. The one-year project was funded by Media Industry Research Foundation of Finland and lasted from June 2020 to June 2021. The project was a collaboration between Tampere University and Aalto University. Partners from media industry were Turun Sanomat and YLE (Finland’s national broadcasting company). The aims of the project were to (1) understand how people young people experience their everyday life with media and media technology, (2) produce new information on how especially young people perceive their mediated everyday life and how they would like it to be in the future, (3) develop a workshop method on imagining the future.

Vigren, M., Harju, A. & Ridell, S. (2021). Media/arki 2030 -kuvittelutyöpajamalli. https://www.mediaalantutkimussaatio.fi/wp-content/uploads/media-arki-2030_final.pdf

Harju, A., Saariketo, M., Hiltunen, K., Koski, K. & Ridell, S. (2021). Vähemmän koukuttavia algoritmeja. Tulevaisuuden media-arki nuorten kuvittelemana -tutkimushankkeen loppuraportti. Tampereen yliopisto: Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta. Saatavilla: https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-2037-9

Vigren, M., & Ridell, S. (2021). Imagining alternative mediated futures? Reflections on experimental workshops with young people. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2021. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12237

Imaginaries of Agency in the Landscapes of Code

In my media studies dissertation, I examine how understandings of human agency and the technologically mediated everyday entwine in the ‘landscapes of code’. I am interested in how imaginaries of one’s own agency and that of others are constructed and stabilised in the contemporary world. I also look at how societal power structures and arrangements are produced, reproduced, and possibly challenged in the processes of constructing imaginaries of agency. My research navigates at the intersections of critical media studies, domestication theory, and science and technology studies as well as critical software and algorithm studies. I unite these fields of research using the encoding/decoding model of the critical cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall. The dissertation comprises an introduction and four empirical case studies that have been published as peer-reviewed research articles.  All case studies have different data sets and research methods. The main finding of the dissertation concerns the resigned sense of agency shared by people in the context of contemporary landscapes of code. The dissertation is published in Finnish with an English abstract. The title in English is Imaginaries of Agency in the Landscapes of Code.

Vigren, M. (2021). Rhythmanalysis of the digital everyday life: Lefebvrian interpretations on self-tracking of digital device use. In SAGE Qualitative Doing Research Online Dataset.

Saariketo, M. (2020). Kuvitelmia toimijuudesta koodin maisemissa. Tampereen yliopisto. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-1531-3

Saariketo, M. (2020). Kytköksinen mediateknologia tarvitsee haastajakseen rohkeaa mielikuvitusta. Media & Viestintä 43(2). Lektio. https://journal.fi/mediaviestinta/article/view/95677

Saariketo, M. (2020). Subversive imagination and possibilities of critical agency in the landscapes of code? AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2020. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2020i0.11323

Digital Face (2017–2019) 

The Digital Face project, funded by Academy of Finland’s Digital Humanities Programme, studied networked interaction and how people present themselves to others. The main objective was to study the formation of face in digital environments. As part of the project, I conducted the fourth case study of my dissertation. It was an experiment of using self-tracking of ICT devices to better understand how people experience their code-based everyday life. The results of the case study are published in two peer-reviewed articles. I also worked in a case study to understand how the face recognition technology was domesticated at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport.

Saariketo, Minna (2019). Encounters with self-tracked data on ICT use. Nordicom Review, 40 (Special Issue 1): 125-140. https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2019-0018

Saariketo, Minna (2018). Koodin rytmittämät kokemusmaisemat. Kulttuurintutkimus 35(1–2), 37–49.

Saariketo, M. (2018). Feeling the rhythms of code. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2018i0.10505.

Saariketo, M. (2018). The unchallenged persuasions of mobile media technology. The pre-domestication of Google Glass in the Finnish press. Proceedings of the Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries 3rd Conference, Helsinki, Finland, March 7–9, 2018.

Network Society as a Paradigm for Legal and Societal Thinking (2012)

I started as a doctoral researcher in 2012 in a project called Network Society as a Paradigm for Legal and Societal Thinking, funded by Academy of Finland funding. The aim of the project was to generate basic knowledge of the theoretical foundations and context of the network society development and to discover the subsequent changes in the legal, communicational and societal aspects of the process. In the project, I worked on the first case study of my dissertation which was a narratological analysis of the Digital Agenda for Europe by European Union. The results of the case study were published as a peer-reviewed article in Finnish. The translated title is The production of an ideal actor in the Digital Agenda for Europe. 

Saariketo, M. (2013). Tulevaisuuden ihannetoimijan tarinallinen tuottaminen Euroopan digitaalistrategiassa. Hallinnon Tutkimus 32(4), 270–283.

Public Agency in Spaces of Internet (2010)

In 2010, I worked as a research assistant in the project Public Agency in Spaces of Internet, funded by Academy of Finland. In the project, we conducted a large-scale online survey on internet and especially Facebook use as well as five focus groups. The focus of the project was to understand better how Facebook users experience and perceive the social media platform as a space. The main findings of the project point to the taken for grantedness by many Facebook users vis-à-vis the material-economic infrastructure of the platform. This observation served as a starting point for my PhD dissertation that examines more deeply questions of agency in the code-based daily life. The report on the project is published in Finnish as a book. The translated title of the book is Life in the Facebook Wonderland.

Ridell, S. (2011). Elämää Facebookin ihmemaassa: Sosiaalinen verkkosivusto käyttäjiensä kokemana. Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto, Viestinnän, median ja teatterin yksikkö.