I just signed a petition calling for Norwegian universities to use research expertise on AI when deciding how to implement it, rather than having decisions be made mostly administratively. , If you are a researcher in Norway, please read it and sign it if you agree – and share with anyone else who might be interested. The petition was written by three researchers at UiT: Maria Danielsen (a philosopher who completed her PhD in 2025 on AI and ethics, including discussions of art and working life), Knut Ørke (Norwegian as a second language), and Holger Pötzsch (a professor of media studies with many years of research on digital media, video games, disruption, and working life, among other topics). This is not about preventing researchers from exploring AI methods in their research. It is about not uncritically accepting the hype that everyone must use AI everywhere without critical reflection. It is about not introducing Copilot as the default option in word processors, or training PhD candidates to believe they will fall behind if they do not use AI when writing articles, without proper academic discussion. Changes like these should be knowledge-based and discussed academically, not merely decided administratively, because they alter the epistemological foundations of research. Maria wrote to me a couple of months ago because she had read my opinion piece in Aftenposten in which I called for a strong brake on the use of language models in knowledge work. She was part of a committee tasked with developing UiT’s AI strategy and was concerned because there was so much hype and so few members of the committee with actual expertise in AI. I fully support the petition. There are probably some good uses for AI in research, but the uncritical, hype-driven insistence that we must simply adopt it everywhere is highly risky. There are many researchers in Norway with strong expertise in AI, language, ethics, working life, and culture. We must make use of this expertise. This is also partly about respect for research in the humanities, social sciences, psychology, and law. Introducing AI at universities and university colleges is not merely a technical issue, and perhaps not even primarily a technical one. It concerns much more: philosophy of science, methodological reflection, epistemology, writing, publishing, the working environment, and more. […]
Luca
Hi Jill,
maybe you could find interesting a recent post made by my colleague Fabio Giglietto about growing trends of several Social Networks in different countries (http://larica-virtual.soc.uniurb.it/nextmedia/2007/12/21/paese-che-vai-social-networks-che-trovi/). We started asking why Facebook usage is so low in Italy and we discovered that Badoo is used by the 36% of italian teenagers between 18 and 19 yo. Understandig which SN fits better every country’s expectation about how a Social network should be it’s a interesting question.
cheers
Luca
ilan
hey there, i was wondering what’s the difference between the number you specify
and the one i get from this page > facebook.com/networks/67109325/Norway
where it say (by the time i write this comment) the norwegian network has 515,721 members.
does the advertising platform has different stats from the ‘open’ stats?
Jill Walker Rettberg
Hey ilan – if you follow my link in the post above (to “trusty old method”) you’ll see I describe using the advertiser’s demographic info to see how many people have signed up as “Norwegains”. The network “Norway” has far fewer members because a lot of people don’t choose to join the netowrk – yit’s not compulsory, and in fact, many people don’t even know it exists.
The short version of how to see Facebook demographics is to click the advertisers link at the bottom of each page, pretend you’re making an ad (just give it a fake website you’re going to promote) and then you get to play with the demographics. You don’t have to actually buy the ad.
ilan
thank you 🙂
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