Janna Joceli Omena is a Digital Methods Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at King’s College London. She has designed and conducted digital methods-led research since 2013, learning from and repurposing web technologies and AI methods for interdisciplinary research. Janna is the author of the book Métodos Digitais: Teoria-Prática-Crítica (2019), the first edited collection on digital methods in Portuguese, bringing together referential authors in the field with seminal and original texts. In Lisbon, Portugal, she founded the SMART Data Sprint (2016-2023) at NOVA University Lisbon. This initiative provided a platform for teaching and developing digital methods in interdisciplinary research projects, benefiting hundreds of participants and collaborators.

Janna is a member of the Public Data Lab and the Interest Group on Knowledge Graphs at The Alan Turing Institute, and a collaborator with the Digital Methods Initiative. Her previous positions include roles at the University of Warwick (2022-2024), NOVA University Lisbon (2020-2024) and the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) (2021).

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

Janna’s work focuses on understanding the epistemological dimensions of AI, web technologies, digital objects, and research software in designing and implementing methods and their role in research and knowledge production. Her research explores the practice and theory of digital methods, where she investigates the technicity of computational media from conceptual, technical, and empirical perspectives. She applies this knowledge to develop accessible and reproducible methodologies, supporting collaborations that build research software for analysing visual media content and online data.

• Digital Methods and Visual Methodologies
• Semantic Web (APIs, Knowledge Graphs, LLMs) for methodological innovation
• Critical Software/AI Studies
• Philosophies of Technology
• Social and Political Bots (Automation Services, Bot Agency)
• Data Visualisation, Network and Media Visualisation, Visualisation as Methods

Thematic interests: AI; LLMs; digital media, gender and culture; climate change; bots; and political polarisation.

Teaching

Janna teaches courses on digital methods for social, cultural and media studies.

Selected publications

• Omena, J. J., Autuori, A., Leite Vasconcelos, E., Subet, M., & Botta, M. (2024). AI Methodology Map. Practical and Theoretical Approach to Engage with GenAI for Digital Methods Research. Sociologica, 18(2), 109–144.
• Omena, J. J., Lobo, T., Tucci, G., Bitencourt, E., de Keulenaar, E., Kerche, F., Chao, J., Liedtke, M., Li, M., Paschoal, M. L., & Lavrov, I. (2024). Quali-quanti visual methods and political bots: A cross-platform study of pro- & anti-bolsobots. Journal of Digital Social Research, 6(1), 50-73.
• Rogers, R., & Omena, J. J. (Academics). (2023). Analysing meme collections with the computer vision network approach [Video]. Sage Research Methods.
• Omena, J.J.; Cano-Orón, L.; Gobbo, B. & Flores, A. M. (2022). What are data sprints for?. Dígitos. Revista de Comunicación Digital, 8: 9-30 (also available in Spanish)
• Omena, J.J. (2022). Technicity-of-the-mediums. In Elgar Encyclopedia of Technology and Politics. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Retrieved Nov 23, 2022.
• Omena, J.J., Gobbo, B., Pilipets, E., & Chao, J. (2021). The Potentials of Google Vision API-based Networks to Study Natively Digital Images. Diseña, (19), Article.1 (also available in Spanish)
• Omena, J.J., Rabello, E & Mintz, A. (2020). Digital Methods for Hashtag Engagement Research. Social Media & Society, special issue: Studying Instagram beyond selfies.
• Omena, J.J. (ed.) (2019). Métodos Digitais: Teoria-Prática-Crítica. Lisboa: Livros ICNOVA.

Software Development

Omena has conceptualised the Offline Image Query and Extraction Tool and is responsible for the idea generation of Memespector GUI in collaboration with Jason Chao, who developed both research software.

• Chao, T. H. J. & Omena, J. J. (2021). Offline Image Query and Extraction Tool (Version 0.1) [Software]
• Memespector GUI: A Graphical User Interface Client for Computer Vision APIs GitHub