Jill Walker Rettberg
Position
Professor, Co-Director of the Center for Digital Narrative
Affiliation
Research groups
- Research Group Electronic Literature
- Research Group for Digital Culture
- Center for Digital Narratives
Short info
Research
Jill Walker Rettberg is Professor of Digital Culture and Co-Director of the Center for Digital Narrative (CDN), a Norwegian Center of Research Excellence that has received a €15 million grant from the Norwegian Research Council (2023-2033). She is also Principal Investigator of the ERC Advanced grant AI Stories: Narrative Archetypes for Artificial Intelligence (2024-2029), and of the ERC Consolidator project Machine Vision in Everyday Life: Playful Interactions with Visual Technologies in Digital Art, Games, Narratives and Social Media (2018-2024).
Current research
Rettberg is currently developing new research on how new language-based AI is impacting the kinds of stories we tell and that spread online. She argues that generative AI has deep cultural biases that are less easy to spot than the biases that are evident in, for example, facial recognition. This emerging work draws upon the research on AI and visual technologies in the Machine Vision project as well as on Rettberg's decades of narratological research into digital genres of storytelling, such as electronic literature, blogging and transmedia narrative.
Books
- Machine Vision: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We See the World (Polity Press, 2023). Watch an unboxing video or listen to a conversation on BBC's Start the Week where Jill discusses how machine vision connects not only to contemporary AI art but also to the new technologies of impressionists like Monet.
- Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves, was published as an open access monograph by Palgrave in October 2014, and can be freely downloaded.
- Blogging was published in a 2nd edition by Polity Press in 2014, and has also been translated to Korean and Polish.
- Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader. Co-editor with Hilde Corneliussen. (MIT Press 2008).
Bridging the humanities and technologies
Since the start of her career Rettberg has participated in cross-disciplinary research arenas with the goal of increasing the understanding of each other's methods and research questions.
Rettberg is a member of UiB AI, a cross-faculty platform for AI research at the University of Norway, and a PI in LEAD AI, a university wide COFUND network supporting postdocs in AI across disciplines. She is a frequent participant in NORA events, and keynoted NORA's 2023 conference.
The first conference she presented at was Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Hypertext in 1999, where she won the Ted Nelson Newcomer Award for the best paper by a newcomer to the conference. 24 years later Rettberg keynoted the 2023 edition of the same conference.
Outreach
Jill Walker Rettberg has shared her research in social media since October 2000, when she started her still-active research blog, jill/txt. In 2016, she began making research stories for Snapchat, which you can follow by adding jilltxt on Snapchat, or you can see an archive of selected Snapchat Research Stories on YouTube. Rettberg's pioneering use of Snapchat was written up in the Chronicle of Higher Education in April 2016, and was awarded the John Lovas Memorial Award by Kairos Journal in June 2017. Rettberg is also an active participant in debates on Twitter, Facebook and in Norwegian newspapers, and is a frequent expert source in Norwegian media.
Maskinsyn is a dissemination project connected to the MACHINE VISION research project where we have made an exhibition in collaboration with the University Museum (open to the public 18.03.2021-29.08.2021) and are developing a live action roleplaying game (a larp) called Sivilisasjonens venterom that will be held in November 2021.
Rettberg won the Meltzer Foundation Prize for Excellence in Research Dissemination in 2006 and the John Lovaas Award for Research Dissemination in Social Media in 2017.
Teaching
Course development and teaching
Jill Walker Rettberg has been responsible for developing and teaching courses at the undergraduate and graduate level on games, electronic literature, digital art, social media, critical digital culture theory, web design and machine vision.
PhD Supervision
Rettberg is currently the main supervisor for one PhD student, Henning Skarbø, who was recently awarded a public sector PhD. His project is a collaboration between Digital Culture at UiB and the hospital, and will develop a conversational app for chronic patients, combining humanistic theories of digital culture with human-computer conversational design.
She is also co-supervisor for Elisabeth Nesheim here at UiB, who is writing a PhD on haptic interfaces in digital art, and is a dissertation committee member for Sara Raffel, who is writing her PhD on storytelling in virtual reality, at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
Rettberg has been an opponent at three PhD defences, at the University of Copenhagen, Tallinn University and the University of Stavanger. She was a mentor at the Doctoral Consortium at the 2015 Association of Internet Researchers conference, and in 2017, she was a jury member for the Association of Internet Researchers' prize for best PhD dissertation.
Publications
Report
- Rettberg, Jill Walker; Gunderson, Marianne; Kronman, Linda Maria Jessica et al. (2024). Machine vision in everyday life: Final report. (external link)
- Storsul, Tanja; Rettberg, Jill Walker; Brandtzæg, Petter Bae et al. (2023). 1. notat fra rådgivende ekspertgruppe for KI-satsingen: Nåsituasjon og forventninger. (external link)
- Krogstie, John; Storsul, Tanja; Frigessi, Arnoldo et al. (2023). Overordnede tiltak - Andre notat fra rådgivende ekspertgruppe for KI-satsingen. (external link)
- Moen, John Arne; Næss, Ingvild; Nag, Toril et al. (2022). NOU 2022: 11 Ditt personvern – vårt felles ansvar — Tid for en personvernpolitikk. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker; Due, Beathe; Pedersen, Per Egil et al. (2013). NOU 2013: 2 Hindre for digital verdiskaping. (external link)
Academic article
- Rettberg, Scott Robert; Rettberg, Jill Walker (2024). Algorithmic narrativity: Literary experiments that drive technology. (external link)
- Askanius, Tina; Rettberg, Jill Walker; Skogerbø, Eli (2024). Media and gender: A Nordic perspective. (external link)
- Torres, Rui; Rettberg, Scott Robert; Rettberg, Jill Walker et al. (2023). Digital Narratives — Theories, Criticism(s), Achievements: Introduction. (external link)
- Gunderson, Marianne; Solberg, Ragnhild; Kronman, Linda Maria Jessica et al. (2023). Machine vision situations: Tracing distributed agency. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2022). Algorithmic failure as a humanities methodology: Machine learning's mispredictions identify rich cases for qualitative analysis. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker; Kronman, Linda Maria Jessica; Solberg, Ragnhild et al. (2022). Representations of Machine Vision Technologies in Artworks, Games and Narratives: Documentation of a Dataset. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2021). “Nobody is ever alone”: The use of social media narrative to include the viewer in SKAM. (external link)
- Siglen, Elen; Vetti, Hildegunn Høberg; Lunde, Aslaug Beathe Forberg Lunde et al. (2021). Ask Rosa – The making of a digital genetic conversation tool, a chatbot, about hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2021). Speculative Interfaces: How Electronic Literature Uses the Interface to Make Us Think about Technology. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2020). Situated Data Analysis: A New Method for Analysing Encoded Power Relationships in Social Media Platforms and Apps. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2019). Et algoritmisk blikk: Algoritmers rolle i produksjonen av hverdagsfotografier. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker; Gunderson, Marianne; Kronman, Linda et al. (2019). Mapping Cultural Representations of Machine Vision: Developing Methods to Analyse Games, Art and Narratives. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2019). Snapchat Research Stories. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2017). Hand Signs for Lip-syncing: The Emergence of a Gestural Language on Musical.ly as a Video-Based Equivalent to Emoji. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker; Berry, David M.; Helmond, Anne et al. (2015). The Data Sprint Approach: Exploring the field of Digital Humanities through Amazon’s Application Programming Interface. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker; Gajjala, Radhika (2015). Terrorists or cowards: negative portrayals of male Syrian refugees in social media. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2014). Visualising Networks of Electronic Literature: Dissertations and the Creative Works They Cite. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2014). "Angsten for medienes umenneskeliggjørende virkning”: Fremtidsmedier sett gjennom science fiction. En respons til Jon Bing. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2012). Electronic Literature Seen from a Distance: The Beginnings of a Field. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2009). 'Freshly Generated for You, and Barack Obama' How Social Media Represent Your Life. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2009). "Freshly Generated for You, and Barack Obama": How Social Media Represent Your Life. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2009). Blogs, Literacies and the Collapse of Private and Public. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2007). Litteratur på nettet: en innføring i elektronisk litteratur. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2005). Links and Power: The Political Economy of Linking on the Web. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2005). Weblogs: Learning in Public. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2001). Child's Game Confused: Reading Juliet Ann Martin's oooxxxooo. (external link)
Briefs
Academic monograph
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2023). Machine Vision: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We See the World. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2014). Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2013). Blogging. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2008). Blogging. (external link)
Museum exhibition
Other product
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2020). Online Diaries and Blogs. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2020). Ways of knowing with data visualizations. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2018). Apps as Companions: How Quantified Self Apps Become Our Audience and Our Companions. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2018). Snapchat: Phatic Communication and Ephemeral Social Media. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2017). Biometric Citizens: Adapting Our Selfies To Machine Vision. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2017). Self-representation in social media. (external link)
- Albury, Kath; Leaver, Tama; Marwick, Alice et al. (2017). The Selfie Course: More than a MOOC. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2016). Machine Vision as Viewed Through Art. Hostile Other or Part of Ourselves?. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2014). Hoaxes. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2014). Email Novel. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker; Tomaszek, Patricia (2014). Electronic Literature Communities. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2013). Norsk blogghistorie: erindringer fra årtusenskiftet. (external link)
- Rettberg, Scott; Rettberg, Jill Walker (2010). Digital Media. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2010). Digitale tekster: blogging, Wikipedia og SMS. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2010). Feral hypertext: When hypertext literature escapes control. (external link)
- Corneliussen, Hilde G.; Rettberg, Jill Walker (2008). Introduction: "Orc Professor LFG," or Researching in Azeroth. (external link)
- Rettberg, Jill Walker (2008). Quests in World of Warcraft: Deferral and Repetition. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2007). A Network of Quests in World of Warcraft. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2006). Blogging from Inside the Ivory Tower. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2005). Distributed Narrative: Telling Stories Across Networks. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2004). Tegnemaskin 1-12: Utsmykking på http://odin.dep.no. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2004). Kunst i bevegelse - elektronisk kunst i offentlige rom. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2004). Art in Motion: Electronic Art in Public Spaces. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2004). How I Was Played by Online Caroline. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2004). Å lære å gi og motta konstruktiv kritikk gjennom medstudentvurdering. (external link)
- Walker, Jill; Mortensen, Torill (2002). Blogging Thoughts: Personal Publication as an Online Research Tool. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2001). Do You Think You're Part of This? Digital Texts and the Second Person Address. (external link)
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
Encyclopedia article
Popular scientific article
- Walker, Jill (2004). Kunst i bevegelse: Elektronisk kunst i offentlige rom. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2004). Kunst i bevegelse: Elektronisk kunst i offentlige rom. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2003). Nettverket som kunstrom - en introduksjon til kunst på internettet. (external link)
- Walker, Jill; Brevik, Thomas (2002). Blogg og bibliotek. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2001). jill/txt. (external link)
- Walker, Jill (2000). Men er det litteratur?. (external link)
See a complete overview of publications in Cristin.
Jill Walker Rettberg is the author of four books:
- Machine Vision: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We See the World (Polity Press, September 2023)
- Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves (Palgrave, 2014)
- Blogging (Polity Press, 2008/2014)
- Digital Culture, Play and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader (MIT Press, 2008; co-edited with Hilde Corneliussen)
Most of Jill Walker Rettberg's publications are open access, and can be accessed either through her Google Scholar profile, her ResearchGate profile or Bergen Open Research Archive.