August 15, 2024 Journal article Open Access

The DiLCo Video Reader: A Collection of Lectures on Digital Language and Communication Research

Jannis Androutsopoulos

This document describes the content of The DiLCo Video Reader (http://www.youtube.com/@DiLCo_Video_Reader), a compilation of research talks on digital language and communication research. It comprises 36 lectures that were curated by the DiLCo network (dilco.uni-hamburg.de) and presented between October 2021 and July 2024 by expert researchers from all over the world.

DiLCo (“Digital Language Variation in Context”) was an international scientific network initiated in 2021 and coordinated at the University of Hamburg by two linguists, Jannis Androutsopoulos and Heike Zinsmeister. The network included scholars from Indiana University, Bloomington, King’s College London, Utrecht University, University of Luxembourg, and University of Copenhagen (list of members). During its three years of operation, DiLCo aimed at stimulating scientific exchange in digital language and communication research, bridging gaps between qualitative (interactional, ethnographic) and quantitative (variationist, computational) methodologies, and supporting methodology training and early career development for doctoral students from all participating universities.

To fulfil these aims, the DiLCo network organised various off- and online activities, including: a panel session at Sociolinguistics Symposium 24 in 2022; paper presentations at the 18^th IPrA Conference in 2023, the ICLaVE 12 in 2024, and other venues; an online Lecture Series that showcased cutting-edge research; and three ‘Methods Day’ workshops dedicated to digital research ethics, computational methods, and mixed-method approaches.

The DiLCo Video Reader contains all video-recorded content that was commissioned, curated, and produced by DiLCo from October 2021 to June 2024. This content was made available shortly after release on Hamburg University’s video portal, Lecture2Go. Its reallocation on a YouTube channel draws on the platform’s affordances to group thematically related videos into playlists and makes this content easily accessible to members of the global academic community.