Datafication

Abstract

Datafication is not just the making of information, which, in one sense, human beings have been doing since the creation of symbols and writing. Rather, datafication is a contemporary phenomenon which refers to the quantification of human life through digital information, very often for economic value. This process has major social consequences.Disciplines such as political economy, critical data studies, software studies, legal theory, and-more recently-decolonial theory, have considered different aspects of those consequences to be important. Fundamental to all such approaches is the analysis of the intersection of power and knowledge.

Exploring the dark and unexpected sides of digitalization: Toward a critical agenda

“…It submits more and more social and economic interactions to the simultaneous collection, analysis, and manipulation of digital data in real-time, and consequently influences individual or collective behavior in significant ways. So conceived, digitalization relates to, or can be considered inclusive of, various other terms, such as digitization, which refers to transforming analog into digital information (Karsten, 2021; Plesner and Husted, 2020: 7); and datafication, which similarly relates to how phenomena can be recorded and analyzed in digital and quantifiable forms (Mejias and Couldry, 2019).…”

Algorithmic governance

“…'Datafication' (cf. Mejias & Couldry, 2019 as part of this special section) also benefits from increasingly powerful infrastructures which enable more and faster data analysis, and societal norms that benefit quantification, classification and surveillance (Rieder & Simon, 2016). Research about algorithmic governance has nevertheless always been concerned with the many risks of datafication and surveillance.…”

“…With that, the discourse around algorithmic governance often overlaps and intersects with debates about datafication (cf. Mejias & Couldry, 2019 as part of this special section) and artificial intelligence (AI). Yet, algorithms sometimes also operate on 'small data' and use calculus-based procedures that do not learn and that are not adaptive.…”

Plataformização

“…A primeira dimensão é o desenvolvimento de infraestruturas de dados, que tem sido explorado especialmente pelos estudos de software. Como processo, o desenvolvimento de infraestruturas de dados tem sido apreendido por meio da noção de dataficação, referindo-se às maneiras pelas quais as plataformas digitais se transformam em dados, práticas e processos que historicamente escaparam à quantificação (KITCHIN, 2014; MAYER--SCHÖNBERGER; CUKIER, 2013; VAN DIJCK, 2014;MEJIAS;COULDRY, 2019). Esse processo não se refere apenas a dados demográficos ou de dados de perfil oferecidos pelos usuários ou solicitados por meio de pesquisas online, mas principalmente a metadados comportamentais.…”