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Licence: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Cyborg methodologies
T2 - Rewriting the role of digital, social and mobile media technologies in the production of knowledge
AU - Fernandes, Josi
AU - Mason, Katy
PY - 2025/4/7
Y1 - 2025/4/7
N2 - The ubiquitous entanglement of digital, social and mobile media (DSMM) – and increasingly, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) – in everyday life, is reconstituting us (and our methodologies), as cyborg. This paper sets out to explore how cyborg methodologies can positively impact research practice and outcomes. In doing so, we reveal the mediating effects of digital technologies, the promissory and performative knowledge they co-produce and the new temporal-spatial ways of seeing this process affords: the generation of new, long-chains of data that engender new ways of seeing and knowing in situ (in Rocinha) and at large (from Northwest England). Using examples from our own cyborg methodologies we illustrate how WhatsApp and Facebook acted as a constitutive and transformative digital technology, helping to (re)frame the site of inquiry, (re)assemble the methodological tools at hand, and (re)form the knowledge produced in a dynamic process of unfolding understanding in a favela-based market study, in Brazil. Consequently, we argue the need to (re)write accounts of research practice, to provide additional transparency of the co-production of knowledge between human researchers and digital technologies and suggest that doing so will empower scholars to perform new realities, and promissories, future-oriented imaginaries with the power to enact real-world impact.
AB - The ubiquitous entanglement of digital, social and mobile media (DSMM) – and increasingly, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) – in everyday life, is reconstituting us (and our methodologies), as cyborg. This paper sets out to explore how cyborg methodologies can positively impact research practice and outcomes. In doing so, we reveal the mediating effects of digital technologies, the promissory and performative knowledge they co-produce and the new temporal-spatial ways of seeing this process affords: the generation of new, long-chains of data that engender new ways of seeing and knowing in situ (in Rocinha) and at large (from Northwest England). Using examples from our own cyborg methodologies we illustrate how WhatsApp and Facebook acted as a constitutive and transformative digital technology, helping to (re)frame the site of inquiry, (re)assemble the methodological tools at hand, and (re)form the knowledge produced in a dynamic process of unfolding understanding in a favela-based market study, in Brazil. Consequently, we argue the need to (re)write accounts of research practice, to provide additional transparency of the co-production of knowledge between human researchers and digital technologies and suggest that doing so will empower scholars to perform new realities, and promissories, future-oriented imaginaries with the power to enact real-world impact.
U2 - 10.1111/1467-8551.12911
DO - 10.1111/1467-8551.12911
M3 - Journal article
JO - British Journal of Management
JF - British Journal of Management
SN - 1467-8551
ER -