While many have started to experience symptoms of climate crises immediately in everyday life, climate change as such is a data-driven, algorithmic construct that we only know and perceive through mediation. Modelling how the impacts of climate change will manifest for a larger region contains elements of concordant speculation but, perhaps counter-intuitively, such modelling gets more experimentalist when we are concerned with a precise location, such as a farm, where the enormous complexity of the climate intersects with the specific complexities of situated ecosystems that matter in farming. How do data-and AI-driven models in smart farming insert themselves in the liminal spaces between dominant disciplines (physics and biology), scales (the planetary scale of climate change and the scales of situated ecosystems), and models (climate models and weather models)? In this talk, I search for a critique that draws inspiration from the philosophy of science of Isabelle Stengers in combination with media theories of computational cultures. I outline the politics of digital models in smart farming by exploring the consequences of what I call paradigmatic logics in modelling. I conceive climate injustice through the lens of liminality, thereby showing how digital media studies and STS can add a particular lens to our understandings of climate (in)justice.

Speaker's info:

Rolien Hoyng is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Digital Media at Lancaster University, UK, with interests in computational cultures, ecomedia studies and STS as well as environmental humanities and cultural studies. Her research addresses the cultural and political implications of digital infrastructures and data-centric technologies in particular contexts of practice, including smart cities, waste, and farming. Currently, she is working on a book project exploring the role of digital-computational politics in climate adaptation. She has conducted extensive research in Turkey, China, and Europe. Recent publication outlets include Big Data & Society, Cultural Studies, The Journal of Cultural Economy, Antipode, and Oxford University Press’ Handbook of Cosmopolitanism. She co-edited a book (with GPL Chong) entitled Communication Innovation and Digital Technology: A Critique of the New in a Multipolar World, published by Michigan State University Press. She also edited a special issue entitled “Digital infrastructure, liminality and world-making via Asia,” published with the International Journal of Communication.