J Velkova
Biographic Data
| ID | 45088 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Velkova |
| GIVEN NAMES | J |
| FAMILY NAME | Velkova |
| SIGNATURE | VELKOVA J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Linköping University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1643-7392 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 35 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Reimagining Media Historiographies and Satellite Technologies in Bulgaria: From Intersputnik to Nanosats
In 2023, a retrofitted satellite earth station in Bulgaria received international acclaim as the world's fastest-growing satellite interconnection service provider. Originally inaugurated in 1977 as part of the Soviet-led Intersputnik network, the station— now known as Plana Teleport—reported a 24 percent revenue increase between 2020 and 2021.1 This growth reflects the station's strategic diversification into a broad portfolio of services, which…
Critical Perspectives on Communicative Ai
Current media coverage surrounding ChatGPT, LaMDA, and Luminous has brought questions about the automation of communication into the mainstream. Artificially intelligent media are no longer merely mediating instances of communication but are themselves becoming communicative participants. This has generated broad public discussion about these systems and others and the challenges they bring to domains such as education, public discourse, and jour…
From flatlands to livable futures: Unflattening carbon metrics in the energy and data industries
The increasing energy demand of data center infrastructures is at the heart of debates about the environmental sustainability of the internet. Expanding these debates, this paper analyses how the electricity needed to power data centers interact with power grid decarbonisation and thus climate change. We trace this interaction by using a relational approach and by unflattening a dominant metric used in the data industries to define sustainability…
Critical Data Studies Meet Sociology
Critical Data Studies Meet Sociology life today is data driven -and the basis of data collection.Industries and institutions gather more digital data for their potential to generate value and action than ever before.These range from health data (Stevens et al. 2018; Vezuridis & Timmons 2021) to environmental data (Deitz 2023; Vardy 2020) to "alternative" data which are cleaned, repackaged and sold for use by industries in need of predictive model…
Data centers and the infrastructural temporalities of digital media: An introduction
While data centres are predominantly studied via their spatial and territorial dimensions, we investigate this critical part of the contemporary Internet infrastructures via its temporalities and their multiple mediations. With this introduction and the articles of this special issue, we collectively complement existing scholarship on critical data studies and media infrastructure by investigating the role that data infrastructure plays in shapin…
Retrofitting and ruining: Bunkered data centers in and out of time
The political economy of the “cloud” depends on the continuous transformation of physical space to support the flow of digital commodities. Retrofitting disused infrastructure has been one of the strategies of data center operators to gain cheap access to such space. Tracking the temporal story of a retrofitted bunker in Helsinki, Finland, its conversion into a data center, and its subsequent dismantling, this article advocates for a processual p…
This site is a dead end? Employment uncertainties and labor in data centers
Would technological changes increase the need for human workers or eliminate them altogether? This uncertainty has produced an unresolved tension, from the industrial revolution to the rise of the information society. The data center industry has been largely invisible in public debates about this question. Yet the same tensions exist within the industry itself: Will automation create data center jobs or kill them? In this article, we work inside…
Cloud ruins: Ericsson's Vaudreuil-Dorion data centre and infrastructural abandonment
The past decade has seen the accelerated growth and expansion of large-scale data centre operations across the world to support emerging consumer and business data and computation needs. Built out rapidly, these emergent digital infrastructures carry the promise for new local industrial futures, all while their paths to obsolescence are shortened. Their lifespans are dependent on financial speculation, shifting corporate strategies, and advances …
Algorithmic resistance: Media practices and the politics of repair
The article constitutes a critical intervention in the current, dramatic debate on the consequences of algorithms and automation for society. While most research has focused on negative outcomes, including ethical problems of machine bias and accountability, little has been said about the possibilities of users to resist algorithmic power. The article draws on Raymond Williams’ work on media as practice to advance a framework for studying algorit…
Thermopolitics of data: Cloud Infrastructures and Energy Futures
This article develops the notion of a thermopolitics of data to describe an ongoing infrastructural integration of the platform economy with energy politics through the mediation of heat. Building on fieldwork conducted at a data centre owned by a major Russian digital platform that, since 2016, has been the main source of heating for the Finnish town of Mantsala, the article analyzes the ways in which the materialities of heat and data get mobil…
In the Shadows of the Digital Economy: The Ghost Work of Infrastructural Labor
What does digital piecework have in common with laboring in the warehouse of a large online shopping platform? How is data cleaning related to digitization work and AI training in prisons? This panel suggests bringing these diverse ways of laboring in the digital economies together by considering these practices as infrastructural labor that takes the shape of shadow work (Illich, 1981) and ghost labor (Gray & Suri, 2019). Work and labor in moder…
Audience-metric continuity? Approaching the meaning of measurement in the digital everyday
This article argues for an expansion of existing studies on the meaning of metrics in digital environments by evaluating a methodology tested in a pilot study to analyse audience responses to metrics of social media profiles. The pilot study used the software tool Facebook Demetricator by artist Ben Grosser in combination with follow-up interviews. In line with Grosser’s intentions, the software indeed provoked reflection among the users. In this…
Repairing and developing software infrastructures: The case of Morevna Project in Russia
This article discusses how alternative software infrastructures can emerge out of frictions, failure, and repair in the attempts of media creators to evade piracy. Using a case from the geographical fringes of Russia called Morevna Project, and theories of infrastructures and repair, the article suggests how repair can lead to the slow, mundane and fragile formation of what I refer to as ‘situated’ digital infrastructures for cultural production.…
Free Software Beyond Radical Politics: Negotiations of Creative and Craft Autonomy in Digital Visual Media Production
Free software development and the technological practices of hackers have been broadly recognised as fundamental for the formation of political cultures that foster democracy in the digital mediascape. This article explores the role of free software in the practices of digital artists, animators and technicians who work in various roles for the contemporary digital visual media industries. Rather than discussing it as a model of organising work, …
Open cultural production and the online gift economy: The case of Blender
The economies of the Internet are largely driven by sharing. Much of it is often veiled in a celebratory discourse that emphasizes how sharing artifacts online through gift exchanges removes hierarchies and creates broader access to public knowledge, such as in projects of free culture and open source software development. The article critically interrogates these assumptions and the gift economy of open cultural production more generally. Using …
Data that warms: Waste heat, infrastructural convergence and the computation traffic commodity
This article explores the ways in which data centre operators are currently reconfiguring the systems of energy and heat supply in European capitals, replacing conventional forms of heating with data-driven heat production, and becoming important energy suppliers. Taking as an empirical object the heat generated from server halls, the article traces the expanding phenomenon of 'waste heat recycling' and charts the ways in which data centre operat…
At the intersection of commons and market: Negotiations of value in open-sourced cultural production
This article explores the way in which producers of digital cultural commons use new production models based on openness and sharing to interact with and adapt to existing structures such as the capitalist market and the economies of public cultural funding. Through an ethnographic exploration of two cases of open-source animation film production – Gooseberry and Morevna, formed around the 3D graphics Blender and the 2D graphics Synfig communitie…
Thermopolitics of data: Cloud Infrastructures and Energy Futures
This article develops the notion of a thermopolitics of data to describe an ongoing infrastructural integration of the platform economy with energy politics through the mediation of heat. Building on fieldwork conducted at a data centre owned by a major Russian digital platform that, since 2016, has been the main source of heating for the Finnish town of Mantsala, the article analyzes the ways in which the materialities of heat and data get mobil…
Data that warms: Waste heat, infrastructural convergence and the computation traffic commodity
This article explores the ways in which data centre operators are currently reconfiguring the systems of energy and heat supply in European capitals, replacing conventional forms of heating with data-driven heat production, and becoming important energy suppliers. Taking as an empirical object the heat generated from server halls, the article traces the expanding phenomenon of 'waste heat recycling' and charts the ways in which data centre operat…
Data centers and the infrastructural temporalities of digital media: An introduction
While data centres are predominantly studied via their spatial and territorial dimensions, we investigate this critical part of the contemporary Internet infrastructures via its temporalities and their multiple mediations. With this introduction and the articles of this special issue, we collectively complement existing scholarship on critical data studies and media infrastructure by investigating the role that data infrastructure plays in shapin…
Retrofitting and ruining: Bunkered data centers in and out of time
The political economy of the “cloud” depends on the continuous transformation of physical space to support the flow of digital commodities. Retrofitting disused infrastructure has been one of the strategies of data center operators to gain cheap access to such space. Tracking the temporal story of a retrofitted bunker in Helsinki, Finland, its conversion into a data center, and its subsequent dismantling, this article advocates for a processual p…
This site is a dead end? Employment uncertainties and labor in data centers
Would technological changes increase the need for human workers or eliminate them altogether? This uncertainty has produced an unresolved tension, from the industrial revolution to the rise of the information society. The data center industry has been largely invisible in public debates about this question. Yet the same tensions exist within the industry itself: Will automation create data center jobs or kill them? In this article, we work inside…
Audience-metric continuity? Approaching the meaning of measurement in the digital everyday
This article argues for an expansion of existing studies on the meaning of metrics in digital environments by evaluating a methodology tested in a pilot study to analyse audience responses to metrics of social media profiles. The pilot study used the software tool Facebook Demetricator by artist Ben Grosser in combination with follow-up interviews. In line with Grosser’s intentions, the software indeed provoked reflection among the users. In this…
Repairing and developing software infrastructures: The case of Morevna Project in Russia
This article discusses how alternative software infrastructures can emerge out of frictions, failure, and repair in the attempts of media creators to evade piracy. Using a case from the geographical fringes of Russia called Morevna Project, and theories of infrastructures and repair, the article suggests how repair can lead to the slow, mundane and fragile formation of what I refer to as ‘situated’ digital infrastructures for cultural production.…
At the intersection of commons and market: Negotiations of value in open-sourced cultural production
This article explores the way in which producers of digital cultural commons use new production models based on openness and sharing to interact with and adapt to existing structures such as the capitalist market and the economies of public cultural funding. Through an ethnographic exploration of two cases of open-source animation film production – Gooseberry and Morevna, formed around the 3D graphics Blender and the 2D graphics Synfig communitie…
Free Software Beyond Radical Politics: Negotiations of Creative and Craft Autonomy in Digital Visual Media Production
Free software development and the technological practices of hackers have been broadly recognised as fundamental for the formation of political cultures that foster democracy in the digital mediascape. This article explores the role of free software in the practices of digital artists, animators and technicians who work in various roles for the contemporary digital visual media industries. Rather than discussing it as a model of organising work, …
Open cultural production and the online gift economy: The case of Blender
The economies of the Internet are largely driven by sharing. Much of it is often veiled in a celebratory discourse that emphasizes how sharing artifacts online through gift exchanges removes hierarchies and creates broader access to public knowledge, such as in projects of free culture and open source software development. The article critically interrogates these assumptions and the gift economy of open cultural production more generally. Using …
Data that warms: Waste heat, infrastructural convergence and the computation traffic commodity
This article explores the ways in which data centre operators are currently reconfiguring the systems of energy and heat supply in European capitals, replacing conventional forms of heating with data-driven heat production, and becoming important energy suppliers. Taking as an empirical object the heat generated from server halls, the article traces the expanding phenomenon of 'waste heat recycling' and charts the ways in which data centre operat…
Repairing and developing software infrastructures: The case of Morevna Project in Russia
This article discusses how alternative software infrastructures can emerge out of frictions, failure, and repair in the attempts of media creators to evade piracy. Using a case from the geographical fringes of Russia called Morevna Project, and theories of infrastructures and repair, the article suggests how repair can lead to the slow, mundane and fragile formation of what I refer to as ‘situated’ digital infrastructures for cultural production.…
In the Shadows of the Digital Economy: The Ghost Work of Infrastructural Labor
What does digital piecework have in common with laboring in the warehouse of a large online shopping platform? How is data cleaning related to digitization work and AI training in prisons? This panel suggests bringing these diverse ways of laboring in the digital economies together by considering these practices as infrastructural labor that takes the shape of shadow work (Illich, 1981) and ghost labor (Gray & Suri, 2019). Work and labor in moder…
Audience-metric continuity? Approaching the meaning of measurement in the digital everyday
This article argues for an expansion of existing studies on the meaning of metrics in digital environments by evaluating a methodology tested in a pilot study to analyse audience responses to metrics of social media profiles. The pilot study used the software tool Facebook Demetricator by artist Ben Grosser in combination with follow-up interviews. In line with Grosser’s intentions, the software indeed provoked reflection among the users. In this…
Cloud ruins: Ericsson's Vaudreuil-Dorion data centre and infrastructural abandonment
The past decade has seen the accelerated growth and expansion of large-scale data centre operations across the world to support emerging consumer and business data and computation needs. Built out rapidly, these emergent digital infrastructures carry the promise for new local industrial futures, all while their paths to obsolescence are shortened. Their lifespans are dependent on financial speculation, shifting corporate strategies, and advances …
Algorithmic resistance: Media practices and the politics of repair
The article constitutes a critical intervention in the current, dramatic debate on the consequences of algorithms and automation for society. While most research has focused on negative outcomes, including ethical problems of machine bias and accountability, little has been said about the possibilities of users to resist algorithmic power. The article draws on Raymond Williams’ work on media as practice to advance a framework for studying algorit…
Thermopolitics of data: Cloud Infrastructures and Energy Futures
This article develops the notion of a thermopolitics of data to describe an ongoing infrastructural integration of the platform economy with energy politics through the mediation of heat. Building on fieldwork conducted at a data centre owned by a major Russian digital platform that, since 2016, has been the main source of heating for the Finnish town of Mantsala, the article analyzes the ways in which the materialities of heat and data get mobil…
Data centers and the infrastructural temporalities of digital media: An introduction
While data centres are predominantly studied via their spatial and territorial dimensions, we investigate this critical part of the contemporary Internet infrastructures via its temporalities and their multiple mediations. With this introduction and the articles of this special issue, we collectively complement existing scholarship on critical data studies and media infrastructure by investigating the role that data infrastructure plays in shapin…
Retrofitting and ruining: Bunkered data centers in and out of time
The political economy of the “cloud” depends on the continuous transformation of physical space to support the flow of digital commodities. Retrofitting disused infrastructure has been one of the strategies of data center operators to gain cheap access to such space. Tracking the temporal story of a retrofitted bunker in Helsinki, Finland, its conversion into a data center, and its subsequent dismantling, this article advocates for a processual p…
This site is a dead end? Employment uncertainties and labor in data centers
Would technological changes increase the need for human workers or eliminate them altogether? This uncertainty has produced an unresolved tension, from the industrial revolution to the rise of the information society. The data center industry has been largely invisible in public debates about this question. Yet the same tensions exist within the industry itself: Will automation create data center jobs or kill them? In this article, we work inside…
Critical Perspectives on Communicative Ai
Current media coverage surrounding ChatGPT, LaMDA, and Luminous has brought questions about the automation of communication into the mainstream. Artificially intelligent media are no longer merely mediating instances of communication but are themselves becoming communicative participants. This has generated broad public discussion about these systems and others and the challenges they bring to domains such as education, public discourse, and jour…
From flatlands to livable futures: Unflattening carbon metrics in the energy and data industries
The increasing energy demand of data center infrastructures is at the heart of debates about the environmental sustainability of the internet. Expanding these debates, this paper analyses how the electricity needed to power data centers interact with power grid decarbonisation and thus climate change. We trace this interaction by using a relational approach and by unflattening a dominant metric used in the data industries to define sustainability…
Critical Data Studies Meet Sociology
Critical Data Studies Meet Sociology life today is data driven -and the basis of data collection.Industries and institutions gather more digital data for their potential to generate value and action than ever before.These range from health data (Stevens et al. 2018; Vezuridis & Timmons 2021) to environmental data (Deitz 2023; Vardy 2020) to "alternative" data which are cleaned, repackaged and sold for use by industries in need of predictive model…
Reimagining Media Historiographies and Satellite Technologies in Bulgaria: From Intersputnik to Nanosats
In 2023, a retrofitted satellite earth station in Bulgaria received international acclaim as the world's fastest-growing satellite interconnection service provider. Originally inaugurated in 1977 as part of the Soviet-led Intersputnik network, the station— now known as Plana Teleport—reported a 24 percent revenue increase between 2020 and 2021.1 This growth reflects the station's strategic diversification into a broad portfolio of services, which…
Sociology (14 works) · Political science (12 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Economics (7 works) · Engineering (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Business (5 works) · Digital Games and Media (5 works) · Law (4 works)