This article elaborates on the prospects for research interventions that repurpose the means of datafication to create possibilities for people to reflect on what it means in their daily lives. The research data consist of qualitative research interviews (n=13) in which media diaries and tracking data from the participants’ smartphones and computers served as prompts for reflection. The experiences from the self-monitoring and the encounters with tracked data by self-identified avid ICT users are analysed to gain a better understanding of the kinds of possibilities for reflexivity that are enabled when people have access to data that are rarely available to them.

Käyttäjien ja ei-käyttäjien suhtautuminen Facebookiin teknologiavälitteisenä tilanaFacebookin kaltaisten verkkoympäristöjen käytön nivoutuminen osaksi arkea herättää kysymyksen siitä, miten tekniset alustat muovaavat ihmisten toimintaa ja miten ihmiset ymmärtävät näiden alustojen vaikuttavan toiminnan mahdollisuuksiinsa. Lähestyn tätä kysymystä soveltamalla Stuart Hallin tunnettua sisäänkoodaus-uloskoodaus-mallia Facebookin käyttäjien ja ei-käyttäjien ryhmäkeskusteluiden analyysiin. Esitän Hallin mallia mukaillen, että sosiaalista mediaa tutkittaessa on syytä ottaa huomioon saman aikaisesti se, miten sivustot rakentuvat ja ensisijaistavat merkityksiä sekä miten ihmiset ymmärtävät sivustot ja niiden merkityksen toiminnalleen. Empiirisessä analyysissani hahmottelen viisi erilaista neuvottelu asemaa suhteessa Facebookiin. Nämä ovat hyväksyvä, vähättelevä, normatiivinen, tyytyvä ja torjuva. Ryhmä-keskustelijat ensisijaistivat neuvotteluissaan Facebookin tarjoamat mahdollisuudet yhteydenpitoon. Facebookin yhteyksiä ohjaavaa luonnetta ja alustan arkkitehtuurista valtaa ei pidetty oman toiminnan kannalta merkityksellisenä. Poikkeuksen muodosti torjuva neuvotteluasema, johon asettui ei-käyttäjiä sekä käytön lopettaneita tai lopettamista harkitsevia käyttäjiä. Tutkimus antaakin viitteitä siitä, että alustojen arkistuminen ja myönteiset käyttö-kokemukset saavat internetin toimintaympäristöjen materiaalis-taloudelliset reunaehdot näyttäytymään merkityksettöminä, eikä niitä tunnu mielekkäältä pohtia. Tietojen keräämisen ja myymisen perustuva toimintamalli luonnollistuu eikä kaupallista mallia haastaville vaihtoehdoille nähdä tarvetta.

This paper reflects the intertwinements of ‘agency’, ‘infrastructuration’, and ‘imagination’ in our increasingly networked technological everyday life. The focus of the research, navigating at the interfaces of critical media studies, domestication theory, STS, and critical software studies, is on the ways in which imaginations on agency are constructed and stabilized. Likewise, attention is directed to how societal power structures are produced, reproduced, and possibly challenged in the processes of constructing imaginaries of agency. To study the above mentioned perspectives together, critical cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall’s famous encoding/decoding model is applied and updated in the contemporary media technological context (Hall, 1973; 1980). Hall’s concept of ‘maps of meaning’ is brought in dialogue with the concepts of ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’ by Sheila Jasanoff and ‘social imaginaries’ by Charles Taylor. The multidisciplinary, multimethod, and multidata approach of the research sheds light on the diversity and complexity of imaginaries of agency in our times. Based on the results, it is suggested that there prevails an almost resigned sense of agency that many people share in relation to the conditions of their technologically mediated everyday life. Despite sporadic negotiations and dissonances, it seems that people have become accustomed to the idea that they have very little, if any, chances to influence the structures of their networked daily environments. It is suggested that future research should concentrate on making visible alternatives to modes of technology-related action as well as develop ways to challenge people to creatively (re)imagine the kind of technology they want to live with.

This presentation examines how the softwarization of everyday life is experienced. The point of embarkation is the observation that despite the proliferation computation in the everyday, people pay little attention to the conditions of software and its role in shaping their mundane time-spaces. I will discuss results from a case study that used Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis (1992/2004) to shed light on how the rhythms of code-based technology are experienced. The research design of the intervention was inspired by the idea of privacy mirrors (Ngueyn and Mynatt 2002). Research participants (n=13), who described their relation to their devices as intense, used tracking software (RescueTime, ManicTime, App Usage or RealizD) in their ICTs and kept media diaries. These were used as artefacts in the interviews to enable reflection on the role of ICTs in daily life. The results from the rhythmanalysis show how the complex intertwinement of digital devices and applications in the everyday evokes manifold feelings. Simultaneously, technology is perceived as an aid in organizing and managing the daily life, but it also induces feelings of losing control, chaos, and burden. The results suggest that although people might take for granted the infrastructural conditions of technology, such as data mining, they still actively negotiate their relation to devices and applications vis-à-vis temporality. Outcomes from the intervention encourage developing further research designs that use the means of softwarization itself (e.g. tracking and digital traces) to enable critical reflection.

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