Imagining Citizens as More than Data Subjects

Abstract

The article presents a methodography of a collaborative design workshop conducted with national and international statisticians. The workshop was part of an ethnographic research project on innovation in European official statistics. It aimed to bring academic researchers and statisticians together to collaborate on the design of app prototypes that imagine citizens as co-producers of official statistics rather than only data subjects. However, the objective was not to settle on an end product but to see if relations to citizens could be re-imagined. Through a methodography composed of two ethnographic narratives, we analyse whether and how a collaborative design workshop brought about imaginings of citizens as co-producers. To retrospectively analyse the workshop, we draw on feminist and material-semiotic takes on ‘friction’ as characteristic of collaboration. ‘Friction’, we suggest, can enlarge the repertoire of collaborative speculative practice beyond notions of rupture or consensus. Finally, we suggest that this analysis demonstrates the potential of methodography for opening up and reflecting on method in STS through eliciting the possibilities of collaboration.

Digital transitions in healthcare: the need for transdisciplinary research to overcome barriers of privacy enhancing technologies uptake

“…This case study did not involve broader stakeholders like citizens with cardiovascular risk or policy makers responsible for digitisation in healthcare. The absence of these stakeholders aligns with current literature, where research and development projects frequently exclude citizens and data subjects [43]. Follow-up studies should delve into collaborative dynamics to comprehensively understand stakeholders' value systems in PET adoption.…”

Data, Methods and Writing

“…Yet, not always is ethnographic observation in the 'natural setting' pertinent to the researcher's interests. For instance, research subjects cannot be observed closely when the professional police framework may not allow so (Bleumink et al, 2021), or the research informants might not 'naturally' engage with the question of interest (Grommé and Ruppert, 2021). In such situations, some of the authors engaged in experimental practices.…”