Carolin Gerlitz
Biographic Data
| ID | 252946 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carolin Gerlitz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carolin |
| FAMILY NAME | Gerlitz |
| SIGNATURE | GERLITZ C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Siegen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5716-9355 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 335 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The datafied web: A round-doc discussion
Following the 6th RESAW conference held at the University of Siegen in June 2025, we extended the conversation through follow-up discussions with selected participants, including both keynote speakers, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup and Jonathan W. Y. Gray. This round-doc discussion brings them into dialogue with Miglė Bareikytė, Carolin Gerlitz, Sebastian Giessmann, Anne Helmond, and Ian Milligan, creating a space for interdisciplinary exchange. It re-ex…
Tracing the Seams: A Historical Exploration of X’s Software Ecosystem
Jenseits von Trending, Top & Featured – Interventionen in Plattform-Popularität mit digitalen Methoden
Lists are essential elements of social media platforms: Lists of popular topics, accounts, followers, likes, clicks, views, search results or feeds provide orientation, structure our attention and guide practices of content reception and production. Content, they suggest, is particularly relevant when it is noticed by many, shared by many, commented by many. At the same time, researchers employ platform data and create lists themselves to approac…
Digital methods for sensory media research: Toolmaking as a critical technical practice
‘Digital methods’ turn to medium-specific and online avenues for social and cultural research. While these approaches foster empirical media studies, it has become increasingly challenging to ‘follow the medium’ and ‘repurpose’ its methods. The prominence of sensory media such as ‘smart’ networked devices (e.g. mobile phones) in mundane practices and their infrastructural dependencies confront media scholars with highly contingent objects of stud…
Partizipation als Herausforderung
Getting Noticed by Many: On the Transformations of the Popular
This article argues that the transformations of the popular, which began in Europe around 1800 and introduced the powerful distinction between low culture and high culture, have established a competitive distinction between the popular and the non-popular that has become dominant over the course of the 20th century. As a result, the popular is no longer either the culture of the ‘lower classes’ or the inclusion of the ‘people’ in the service of h…
Testing and Not Testing for Coronavirus on Twitter: Surfacing Testing Situations Across Scales With Interpretative Methods
How was testing-and not testing-for coronavirus articulated as a testing situation on social media in the Spring of 2020? Our study examines everyday situations of Covid-19 testing by analyzing a large corpus of Twitter data collected during the first 2 months of the pandemic. Adopting a sociological definition of testing situations, as moments in which it is no longer possible to go on in the usual way, we show how social media analysis can be u…
Interrogating Datafication: Towards a Praxeology of Data
What constitutes a data practice and how do contemporary digital media technologies reconfigure our understanding of practices in general? Autonomously acting media, distributed digital infrastructures, and sensor-based media environments challenge the conditions of accounting for data practices both theoretically and empirically. Which forms of cooperation are constituted in and by data practices? And how are human and nonhuman agencies distribu…
Was bei vielen Beachtung findet: Zu den Transformationen des Populären
Being popular means getting noticed by many. Popularity is measured as well as staged. Rankings and charts provide information on what is popular while vying for popularity themselves. They do not speak to the quality or originality of the popular, only to its evident success across different scales of evaluation. People do not buy good products, they buy popular ones; they do not listen to the best music, but to popular music; they do not share,…
What happens to ANT, and its emphasis on the socio-material grounding of the social, in digital sociology
Data-intensive platform media bring up, but also reconfigure the question of the socio-material grounding of the social. This chapter explores how recent engagements with platforms and digital sociology do more than just vindicate ANT’s outlook of a flat socio-material account of the social without inbuilt levels of ‘micro’ and ‘macro.’ It argues that social media platforms reconfigure who or what can count as an actor, what counts as social and …
Multi-Situated App Studies: Methods and Propositions
This article discusses methodological approaches to app studies, focusing on their embeddedness and situatedness within multiple infrastructural settings. Our approach involves close attention to the multivalent affordances of apps as software packages, particularly their capacity to enter into diverse groupings and relations depending on different infrastructural situations. The changing situations they evoke and participate in, accordingly, mak…
Data infrastructure literacy
A recent report from the UN makes the case for "global data literacy" in order to realise the opportunities afforded by the "data revolution". Here and in many other contexts, data literacy is characterised in terms of a combination of numerical, statistical and technical capacities. In this article, we argue for an expansion of the concept to include not just competencies in reading and working with datasets but also the ability to account for, …
Interface Methods: Renegotiating Relations between Digital Social Research, STS and Sociology
This paper introduces a distinctive approach to methods development in digital social research called 'interface methods'. We begin by discussing various methodological confluences between digital media, social studies of science and technology (STS) and sociology. Some authors have posited significant overlap between, on the one hand, sociological and STS concepts, and on the other hand, the ontologies of digital media. Others have emphasized th…
Social media and self-evaluating assemblages: On numbers, orderings and values
This paper takes tools of self-valuation in social media as an empirical focus. By way of a case-study of Klout, an influential measure of influence, we suggest that the forms of reactivity and self-fulfilling prophecy that have been identified as a problem with some forms of measurement are actually an intentional effect of such tools: that is, the measurements that such tools produce are not designed to capture a separate reality, but are delib…
The Politics of Real-time: A Device Perspective on Social Media Platforms and Search Engines
This paper enquires into the politics of real-time in online media. It suggests that real-time cannot be accounted for as a universal temporal frame in which events happen, but explores the making of real-time from a device perspective focusing on the temporalities of platforms. Based on an empirical study exploring the pace at which various online media produce new content, we trace the different rhythms, patterns or tempos created by the interp…
The like economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive web
The paper examines Facebook’s ambition to extend into the entire web by focusing on social buttons and developing a medium-specific platform critique. It contextualises the rise of buttons and counters as metrics for user engagement and links them to different web economies. Facebook’s Like buttons enable multiple data flows between various actors, contributing to a simultaneous de- and re-centralisation of the web. They allow the instant transfo…
Mining One Percent of Twitter: Collections, Baselines, Sampling
Introduction Social media platforms present numerous challenges to empirical research, making it different from researching cases in offline environments, but also different from studying the "open" Web. Because of the limited access possibilities and the sheer size of platforms like Facebook or Twitter, the question of delimitation, i.e. the selection of subsets to analyse, is particularly relevant. Whilst sampling techniques have been thoroughl…
The like economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive web
The paper examines Facebook’s ambition to extend into the entire web by focusing on social buttons and developing a medium-specific platform critique. It contextualises the rise of buttons and counters as metrics for user engagement and links them to different web economies. Facebook’s Like buttons enable multiple data flows between various actors, contributing to a simultaneous de- and re-centralisation of the web. They allow the instant transfo…
The Politics of Real-time: A Device Perspective on Social Media Platforms and Search Engines
This paper enquires into the politics of real-time in online media. It suggests that real-time cannot be accounted for as a universal temporal frame in which events happen, but explores the making of real-time from a device perspective focusing on the temporalities of platforms. Based on an empirical study exploring the pace at which various online media produce new content, we trace the different rhythms, patterns or tempos created by the interp…
Interface Methods: Renegotiating Relations between Digital Social Research, STS and Sociology
This paper introduces a distinctive approach to methods development in digital social research called 'interface methods'. We begin by discussing various methodological confluences between digital media, social studies of science and technology (STS) and sociology. Some authors have posited significant overlap between, on the one hand, sociological and STS concepts, and on the other hand, the ontologies of digital media. Others have emphasized th…
Social media and self-evaluating assemblages: On numbers, orderings and values
This paper takes tools of self-valuation in social media as an empirical focus. By way of a case-study of Klout, an influential measure of influence, we suggest that the forms of reactivity and self-fulfilling prophecy that have been identified as a problem with some forms of measurement are actually an intentional effect of such tools: that is, the measurements that such tools produce are not designed to capture a separate reality, but are delib…
Mining One Percent of Twitter: Collections, Baselines, Sampling
Introduction Social media platforms present numerous challenges to empirical research, making it different from researching cases in offline environments, but also different from studying the "open" Web. Because of the limited access possibilities and the sheer size of platforms like Facebook or Twitter, the question of delimitation, i.e. the selection of subsets to analyse, is particularly relevant. Whilst sampling techniques have been thoroughl…
Multi-Situated App Studies: Methods and Propositions
This article discusses methodological approaches to app studies, focusing on their embeddedness and situatedness within multiple infrastructural settings. Our approach involves close attention to the multivalent affordances of apps as software packages, particularly their capacity to enter into diverse groupings and relations depending on different infrastructural situations. The changing situations they evoke and participate in, accordingly, mak…
Data infrastructure literacy
A recent report from the UN makes the case for "global data literacy" in order to realise the opportunities afforded by the "data revolution". Here and in many other contexts, data literacy is characterised in terms of a combination of numerical, statistical and technical capacities. In this article, we argue for an expansion of the concept to include not just competencies in reading and working with datasets but also the ability to account for, …
Getting Noticed by Many: On the Transformations of the Popular
This article argues that the transformations of the popular, which began in Europe around 1800 and introduced the powerful distinction between low culture and high culture, have established a competitive distinction between the popular and the non-popular that has become dominant over the course of the 20th century. As a result, the popular is no longer either the culture of the ‘lower classes’ or the inclusion of the ‘people’ in the service of h…
Was bei vielen Beachtung findet: Zu den Transformationen des Populären
Being popular means getting noticed by many. Popularity is measured as well as staged. Rankings and charts provide information on what is popular while vying for popularity themselves. They do not speak to the quality or originality of the popular, only to its evident success across different scales of evaluation. People do not buy good products, they buy popular ones; they do not listen to the best music, but to popular music; they do not share,…
The like economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive web
The paper examines Facebook’s ambition to extend into the entire web by focusing on social buttons and developing a medium-specific platform critique. It contextualises the rise of buttons and counters as metrics for user engagement and links them to different web economies. Facebook’s Like buttons enable multiple data flows between various actors, contributing to a simultaneous de- and re-centralisation of the web. They allow the instant transfo…
Mining One Percent of Twitter: Collections, Baselines, Sampling
Introduction Social media platforms present numerous challenges to empirical research, making it different from researching cases in offline environments, but also different from studying the "open" Web. Because of the limited access possibilities and the sheer size of platforms like Facebook or Twitter, the question of delimitation, i.e. the selection of subsets to analyse, is particularly relevant. Whilst sampling techniques have been thoroughl…
Social media and self-evaluating assemblages: On numbers, orderings and values
This paper takes tools of self-valuation in social media as an empirical focus. By way of a case-study of Klout, an influential measure of influence, we suggest that the forms of reactivity and self-fulfilling prophecy that have been identified as a problem with some forms of measurement are actually an intentional effect of such tools: that is, the measurements that such tools produce are not designed to capture a separate reality, but are delib…
The Politics of Real-time: A Device Perspective on Social Media Platforms and Search Engines
This paper enquires into the politics of real-time in online media. It suggests that real-time cannot be accounted for as a universal temporal frame in which events happen, but explores the making of real-time from a device perspective focusing on the temporalities of platforms. Based on an empirical study exploring the pace at which various online media produce new content, we trace the different rhythms, patterns or tempos created by the interp…
Interface Methods: Renegotiating Relations between Digital Social Research, STS and Sociology
This paper introduces a distinctive approach to methods development in digital social research called 'interface methods'. We begin by discussing various methodological confluences between digital media, social studies of science and technology (STS) and sociology. Some authors have posited significant overlap between, on the one hand, sociological and STS concepts, and on the other hand, the ontologies of digital media. Others have emphasized th…
Data infrastructure literacy
A recent report from the UN makes the case for "global data literacy" in order to realise the opportunities afforded by the "data revolution". Here and in many other contexts, data literacy is characterised in terms of a combination of numerical, statistical and technical capacities. In this article, we argue for an expansion of the concept to include not just competencies in reading and working with datasets but also the ability to account for, …
What happens to ANT, and its emphasis on the socio-material grounding of the social, in digital sociology
Data-intensive platform media bring up, but also reconfigure the question of the socio-material grounding of the social. This chapter explores how recent engagements with platforms and digital sociology do more than just vindicate ANT’s outlook of a flat socio-material account of the social without inbuilt levels of ‘micro’ and ‘macro.’ It argues that social media platforms reconfigure who or what can count as an actor, what counts as social and …
Multi-Situated App Studies: Methods and Propositions
This article discusses methodological approaches to app studies, focusing on their embeddedness and situatedness within multiple infrastructural settings. Our approach involves close attention to the multivalent affordances of apps as software packages, particularly their capacity to enter into diverse groupings and relations depending on different infrastructural situations. The changing situations they evoke and participate in, accordingly, mak…
Interrogating Datafication: Towards a Praxeology of Data
What constitutes a data practice and how do contemporary digital media technologies reconfigure our understanding of practices in general? Autonomously acting media, distributed digital infrastructures, and sensor-based media environments challenge the conditions of accounting for data practices both theoretically and empirically. Which forms of cooperation are constituted in and by data practices? And how are human and nonhuman agencies distribu…
Was bei vielen Beachtung findet: Zu den Transformationen des Populären
Being popular means getting noticed by many. Popularity is measured as well as staged. Rankings and charts provide information on what is popular while vying for popularity themselves. They do not speak to the quality or originality of the popular, only to its evident success across different scales of evaluation. People do not buy good products, they buy popular ones; they do not listen to the best music, but to popular music; they do not share,…
Partizipation als Herausforderung
Getting Noticed by Many: On the Transformations of the Popular
This article argues that the transformations of the popular, which began in Europe around 1800 and introduced the powerful distinction between low culture and high culture, have established a competitive distinction between the popular and the non-popular that has become dominant over the course of the 20th century. As a result, the popular is no longer either the culture of the ‘lower classes’ or the inclusion of the ‘people’ in the service of h…
Testing and Not Testing for Coronavirus on Twitter: Surfacing Testing Situations Across Scales With Interpretative Methods
How was testing-and not testing-for coronavirus articulated as a testing situation on social media in the Spring of 2020? Our study examines everyday situations of Covid-19 testing by analyzing a large corpus of Twitter data collected during the first 2 months of the pandemic. Adopting a sociological definition of testing situations, as moments in which it is no longer possible to go on in the usual way, we show how social media analysis can be u…
Jenseits von Trending, Top & Featured – Interventionen in Plattform-Popularität mit digitalen Methoden
Lists are essential elements of social media platforms: Lists of popular topics, accounts, followers, likes, clicks, views, search results or feeds provide orientation, structure our attention and guide practices of content reception and production. Content, they suggest, is particularly relevant when it is noticed by many, shared by many, commented by many. At the same time, researchers employ platform data and create lists themselves to approac…
Digital methods for sensory media research: Toolmaking as a critical technical practice
‘Digital methods’ turn to medium-specific and online avenues for social and cultural research. While these approaches foster empirical media studies, it has become increasingly challenging to ‘follow the medium’ and ‘repurpose’ its methods. The prominence of sensory media such as ‘smart’ networked devices (e.g. mobile phones) in mundane practices and their infrastructural dependencies confront media scholars with highly contingent objects of stud…
Tracing the Seams: A Historical Exploration of X’s Software Ecosystem
The datafied web: A round-doc discussion
Following the 6th RESAW conference held at the University of Siegen in June 2025, we extended the conversation through follow-up discussions with selected participants, including both keynote speakers, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup and Jonathan W. Y. Gray. This round-doc discussion brings them into dialogue with Miglė Bareikytė, Carolin Gerlitz, Sebastian Giessmann, Anne Helmond, and Ian Milligan, creating a space for interdisciplinary exchange. It re-ex…
Computer Science (12 works) · Sociology (10 works) · World Wide Web (9 works) · Political science (7 works) · Social media (7 works) · Data science (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Artificial Intelligence (4 works) · Business (4 works) · Media studies (4 works)