The Impact of a Digital Regime on Academic Knowledge Production : Implications of learning and practicing knowledge production through a digital regime in Work-integrated Political Studies (WIPS) 2019-2021

Sammanfattning: This autoethnographic case study explores the experience of the digital regime on learning and knowledge production brought about by merging university study and research practice within a single digital regime in Work Integrated Political Studies (WIPS) during 2019-2021. The study provides a detailed account of the nature of learning and producing knowledge through this common digital regime, and its political implications. To explain the possibility and impacts of the digital regime, the study employed the concept of digital pharmakon by French philosopher Bernard Stiegler. In the analysis, I have operationalized the concept to the empirical materials I generated in the form of autoethnographic notes taken during the internship in the political science unit of University West, Trollhättan. Based on the analysis of these notes, the study postulates three features of the digital regime in learning knowledge production, which is: 1) to supplement human memory without memorization, 2) the provision of tools with various powerful technics, and 3) as a medium for communication and individuation. Additionally, the regime brought forthsome consequences for learning and practice, for instance, the dangers of forgetting, accelerating dependence on the computational memory and process, weakening thinking for oneself, and short-circuiting the process of individuation. The political implications would be eliminating diverse, negentropic, improbable, and incalculable parts of knowledge, so the knowledge left to be produced is based on computational reasoning, universal, data-driven, negotium, entropic nature of knowledge, lacking the local specialties, and subjective experiences