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Steve Jankowski

@textaural.bsky.social

200 followers 270 following 150 posts

Assistant Professor in New Media Histories at UvA. Curator of Keywords for Studying Media, Culture & Information https://textaural.com/keywords/. I study Wikipedia, utopian computation, design and consensus politics, often all at once.

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Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · Jul 17

manifesto.wiki is a statement that I think all Wikimedia researchers should read. It was composed through the hard work of many leading the field right now: Heather Ford, Bunty Avieson, Francesco Bailo, Michael Davis, Michael Falk, Sohyeon Hwang, Andrew Iliadis, Amanda Lawrence, Francesca Sidoti.

A manifesto for Wikimedia research: Critically studying Wikimedia as infrastructure

manifesto.wiki

Reposted by Steve Jankowski

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 7d

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

650 8.2K 25K

Reposted by Steve Jankowski

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 11d

Today, it was my pleasure to present the Computer History Museum book prize (on behalf of the committee) to Dr. Avery Dame-Griff, for his new book The Two Revolutions: nyupress.org/978147981831...

The Two Revolutions

Winner of the 2023 Ángel David Nieves Book Award, given by the American Studies AssociationThe internet origins of the American transgender movementThe Two ...

nyupress.org

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Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · 15d

Or at least, killed it for now.

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · 15d

I'm sorry but as someone who studies Wikipedia for a living, Wikipedians wouldn't allow this to happen – their principled ethos would demand that they fork Wikipedia and then remove the content of the shell that was left.

When Wikimedia tried to rollout AI summaries, the community killed it.

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · 26d

A colleague of mine uses this meme for "The Internet" media.mas.to/media_attach...

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · 26d

Here's my "AI" slide from this past Monday for one course and "The Internet" for a Lecture on Tuesday (although I double-down on the stock photos).

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · 27d

Abbate, J. (2012). _Recoding gender : women's changing participation in computing_. MIT Press.

Rosner, D. (2018). _Critical fabulations : reworking the methods and margins of design_. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · 27d

Stevenson, M., & Kavka, M. (2025). Doing Media Research. SAGE Publications Limited.

Jørgensen, M. W. and Phillips, L. J. (2002). _Discourse analysis as theory and method_. Sage. (Especially the sections on Mouffe & Laclau)

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · 27d

Jameson, F. (2013). The political unconscious: Narrative as a socially symbolic act. Routledge.

Marvin, C. (1988). _When old technologies were new_. Oxford University Press New York.

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · 27d

Since grad school, I struggled to work through what discourse analysis was as a method. Inspired by a number of historians and works on method (below), here's my general model for thinking through the process.

A flowchart of Jankowski's model of discourse analysis which includes steps for inquiry, primary sources, secondary sources, contexts, interpretation of discursive practices, historization, and mediation

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Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · 29d

Also, did you write the ALT text? so evocative.

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Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · 29d

"And with that, yet another slide for his seminar on digital practices was filled."

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Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · 29d

As someone trained in typography, this read that tells me that academic writing knows how to use the typographic colours in the writer's toolbox 😀. But, actually we should be using MORE em dashes. clivethompson.medium.com/weird-19th-c...

Weird 19th-Century Punctuation Marks You Should Try Using

Ever heard of the “colash”? Or the “commash”?

clivethompson.medium.com

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · Sep 6

I think the question of what it means to teach about AI is not answerable with the smoking analogy. The amount of university investment, public concern, and critical pushback on the impact of the technology on education points to the analogy of the Web in the 1990s.

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Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · Sep 6

Which, I do understand, runs counter to the requests of the open letter.

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · Sep 6

The assignment also compares these tasks with what Google and Wikipedia also produces. Both of which are useful, both of which are limited and problematic in their own ways. So I'm asking students to use an LLM chatbot.

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · Sep 6

I had not seen this. And I will say I am currently conflicted as I fall in the "critical technical practice" crowd, and I've designed an assignment to demonstrate how an LLM chatbot malfunctions when _specific_ (not general) facts, sources, and contexts are the goal.

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · Sep 6

Perfect timing as I'm updating my lecture slides for the first class next week of "Digital Practices". That list of definitions will follow this slide I had for last year. Great work.

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Reposted by Steve Jankowski

The Verge @theverge.com · Sep 4

The world’s largest encyclopedia became the factual foundation of the web, but now it’s under attack.

Read more from @joshdzieza.bsky.social: www.theverge.com/cs/features/...

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Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · Sep 4

It's nice to see a piece that carefully reminds people of Wikipedia's importance and what's at stake politically and culturally. If interested, there's a lot of recent and good work exploring these ideas further. Come check out what we've been up to. meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Critica...

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Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · Aug 29

"Republicans investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias" thehill.com/homenews/hou... 👀

thehill.com

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · Aug 27

With the school year approaching, a number of scholars and myself have assembled together a Critical Wikimedia Research Bibliography. If you are teaching a course or doing research, we think you might find some good resources here. meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Critica...

Critical Wikimedia Research Bibliography - Meta-Wiki

meta.wikimedia.org

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Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · Aug 26

Over a million views of an AI impersonation ad of Canada's prime minister. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN7d.... Published yesterday.

Motion Daily 1

YouTube video by Life in Motion

www.youtube.com

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Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · Aug 19

It's a two-car garage obviously

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · Aug 17

I've read the draft guideline for researching Wikipedia's neutrality (meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Researc...) & I will add my thoughts to the discussion.

But Heather Ford has already raised a number of important concerns about it that shouldn't be ignored.
theconversation.com/wikipedias-n...

Wikipedia’s ‘neutrality’ has always been complicated. New rules will make questioning it harder

Wikipedia is built on a “neutral point of view”. But who decides what neutral means?

theconversation.com