A Space to Think Together

The IAS fellowship gave us something that is rare in academic life today: time to think slowly and collaboratively. We used this time to read together, to write, map, visualize, and discuss the ethical challenges of studying publicly available data. Working across disciplines, that is, data science, ethics, and media studies, pushed us to speak in a language that was both precise and shared.

We often met other fellows over lunch or during seminars. These informal exchanges helped us clarify our own ideas and enter previously undiscovered avenues tangential to our questions. They confirmed our conviction that ethics in research is not a checklist. It is something that happens in everyday choices, taken under both enabling and disabling conditions: how we collect produce and data with the tools that are available, how we interpret findings, and how we represent those that we study.

From Kick-Off to First Paper

Our fellowship began with a public kick-off lecture. The discussion that followed was lively. The questions from the audience helped us see the broader relevance of our topic and encouraged us to focus our first paper on what we call “Platformed Childhood: Reconceptualizing Child Vulnerability in Family Vlogs”.

In this paper, we investigate the factors that can render vulnerability precarious. By creating situational maps of different forms of online presence as well as studying the complex arena of actors involved in the monetization of family live online, we decenter the vulnerable subject and study instead processes of vulnerabilisation. Combining conceptual reflection with empirical investigation allows us to distinguish between various forms of family vlogging, associated business models, and modes of reporting about this phenomenon, each entangled in socio-technical infrastructures that shape the precarisation of child vulnerability.

We submitted the paper during the fellowship and would like to thank Ella Streefkerk, our research assistant, whose careful and consistent work greatly strengthened the project. The IAS funding made it possible to include her in the team, which proved invaluable.

Continuing the Conversation

Our second paper, now in progress, builds directly on these insights. It asks how data-driven research itself can create or amplify the precarity of vulnerabilities. We focus again on family vlogs as a case study but shift the perspective to the researchers’ own tools and methods.

We are asking: how does data analysis aimed to expose problematic practices itself contribute to the precarisation of vulnerability? How can we design research methodologies and protocols that stay attentive to these tensions?

We are developing a small, reflective ethics toolkit to help researchers working with AI in socially sensitive settings. It will include questions and exercises that invite teams to think through their assumptions, methods, and responsibilities and provide protocols to navigate the fine line between data science practices aimed at restoring justice while at the same time inevitably contributing to vulnerabilisation.

What We Take With Us

Professionally, the fellowship has been a space of grounding and exchange. It gave us time to pause and to think collectively. It also showed us the value of working across disciplines and of taking ethics not as an external constraint but as part of research itself.

Personally, the fellowship strengthened our sense of care in academic work: care for the people we study, but also for how we collaborate and communicate as researchers.

The conversations we started here will continue, both in our writing and in future collaborations

Looking Ahead

We plan to continue our joint research on the ethics of AI and public data. The next steps include finalizing our second paper and developing the ethics toolkit into a shareable format for researchers in different fields. We also hope to organize a small workshop that brings together scholars working on the intersection of AI, vulnerability, and digital culture.

To anyone thinking about applying for a fellowship at IAS: come with an open question rather than a fixed plan. The space, time, and community here will help you discover new complexities while at the same time deepening insights.

Related Outputs

· Platformed Childhood: Reconceptualizing Child Vulnerability in Family Vlogs (submitted, 2025)

· From Vulnerable Data Subjects to Vulnerabilizing Data Practices: The Case of AI-Based Analysis of Platformed Lives (in progress)

· IAS Kick-Off Lecture: Enacting Vulnerability: AI, Childhood, and the Co-construction of Vulnerable Data Subjects (21 May 2025)