Teaching Digital Methods: Interview with Richard Rogers

Abstract

Richard Rogers is the Director of the Digital Methods Initiative, one of Europe’s leading Internet studies research groups. He is Professor of New Media and Digital Culture in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam and Academic Director of the Netherlands Research School for Media Studies. Rogers is author of Information Politics on the Web (MIT Press, 2004), Digital Methods (MIT Press, 2013) and Doing Digital Methods (Sage, 2019). In this interview, originally conducted for The Pedagogy of Methodological Learning study (Nind & Lewthwaite, 2018) and updated for its publication in Diseña, Rogers speaks about the teaching philosophy behind digital methods, including a particular approach to learning about information design for the humanities and social sciences. He also discusses how he repurposes certain formats traditionally associated with computer science (hackathons) for digital methods ‘data sprints’.