Data and agency

Abstract

This introduction to the special issue on data and agency argues that datafication should not only be understood as the process of collecting and analysing data about Internet users, but also as feeding such data back to users, enabling them to orient themselves in the world. It is important that debates about data power recognise that data is also generated, collected and analysed by alternative actors, enhancing rather than undermining the agency of the public. Developing this argument, we first make clear why and how the question of agency should be central to our engagement with data. Subsequently, we discuss how this question has been operationalized in the five contributions to this special issue, which empirically open up the study of alternative forms of datafication. Building on these contributions, we conclude that as data acquire new power, it is vital to explore the space for citizen agency in relation to data structures and to examine the practices of data work, as well as the people involved in these practices.

The Pleasure and Pain of Visualizing Data in Times of Data Power

“…As one of us has written elsewhere, as data acquire new power, a space for agency in relation to data structures opens up (Kennedy, Poell, and van Dijck 2015). This is because data power, neoliberal, capitalist power and other kinds of power are not monolithic, as a number of commentators have pointed out.…”

“…To make sense of these aspects of data visualisation, and of their (Gill, 2009) of datafication and neoliberal working conditions, we turn first to research on creative labour, including ' account (2004) of the interplay of passionate commitment and profound anxiety in digital media industries, which helps us make sense of the pleasure and pain of data visualisation. Literature which acknowledges the limitations of neoliberal power, such as Gibson-G (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics, is also helpful here, as is scholarship which acknowledges that in the context of the exponential rise of data power, agency, advocacy and pleasure are also possible (Kennedy, Poell, andvan Dijck 2015, Ruckenstein 2014). But there is not much scholarship like this, as the emerging field of data studies has been dominated by critiques of the troubling and opaque forms of ' ways in which they produce neoliberal, entrepreneurial subjects aligned with Silicon Valley ideals of good worker subjectivity (Gregg 2015, Irani 2015 it does not address the pleasures that engagement in such events might invoke or the acts of resistance or advocacy that they might enable.…”

The social power of algorithms

“…63-101;Crang & Graham, 2007, p. 792;Mackenzie, 2006;Ziewitz, 2016b, p. 7). Such observations have recently been placed into broader debates about the status of agency as processes of 'datafication' continue to expand and as data feeds-back into people's lives in different ways (Kennedy, Poell, & van Dijk, 2015).…”

The big data divide and its consequences

“…, , p. 3). Data making stands in sharp contrast to other notions of data collection in that individuals are not simply passive sources of data, but with the right resources, are active producers and consumers of data, highlighting the need for a more nuanced view of agency in big data studies, that differs from the prevailing view within data divide scholarship that data subjects have little to no agency (Kennedy, Poell, & van Dijck, ; Lash, ).…”