This Open Access book examines the ambivalences of data power. Firstly, the ambivalences between global infrastructures and local invisibilities challenge the grand narrative of the ephemeral nature of a global data infrastructure. They make visible local working and living conditions, and the resources and arrangements required to operate and run them. Secondly, the book examines ambivalences between the state and data justice. It considers data justice in relation to state surveillance and data capitalism, and reflects on the ambivalences between an entrepreneurial state and a welfare state. Thirdly, the authors discuss ambivalences of everyday practices and collective action, in which civil society groups, communities, and movements try to position the interests of people against the big players in the tech industry. The book includes eighteen chapters that provide new and varied perspectives on the role of data and data infrastructures in our increasingly datafied societies.
New Perspectives in Critical Data Studies: The Ambivalences of Data
PowerAn Introduction.- Part I Global Infrastructures and Local
Invisibilities.- Data Power and Counter-power with Chinese
Characteristics.- Transnational Networks of Influence: The Twitter Presence
of the Quantified Self and Maker Movements Organizational Elites.- The Power
of Data Science Ontogeny: Thick Data Studies on the Indian IT Skill Tutoring
Microcosm.- Fighting the System: A Pilot Project on the Opacity
of Algorithms in Political Communication.- Indigenous Peoples, Data, and the
Coloniality of Surveillance.- Part II State and Data Justice.- The Datafied
Welfare State: A Perspective from the UK.- The Value Dynamics of Data
Capitalism: Cultural Production and Consumption in a Datafied World.- Mapping
Data Justice as a Multidimensional Concept Through Feminist and Legal
Perspectives.- Reconfiguring Education Through Data: How Data
Practices Reconfigure Teacher Professionalism and Curriculum.- Public Values
and Technological Change: Mapping how Municipalities Grapple with Data
Ethics.- Welfare Data Society? Critical Evaluation of the Possibilities
of Developing Data Infrastructure Literacy from User Data Workshops to Public
Service Media.- Part III Everyday Practices and Collective Action.- (Not)
Safe to Use: Insecurities in Everyday Data Practices with Period-Tracking
Apps.- Community Rankings and Affective Discipline: The Case
of Fandometrics.- Affinity Spaces as an Analytical Lens for Attending
to Temporality in Critical Data Studies: The Case of COVID-19-Related,
Educational Twitter Communication.- Party like its December 31, 1983:
Supporting Data Literacy at CryptoParties.- Researching Public Trust in
Datafication: Reflections on the Deliberative Citizen Jury as Method.- Worker
Perspectives on Designs for a Crowdwork Co-operative.- Counting, Debunking,
Making, Witnessing, Shielding: What Critical Data Studies Can Learn from Data
Activism During the Pandemic.
Andreas Hepp is Professor of Media and Communications and Head of ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, University of Bremen, Germany. He is the author of 12 monographs including The Mediated Construction of Reality (with Nick Couldry, 2017), Transcultural Communication (2015) and Cultures of Mediatization (2013). His latest book is Deep Mediatization (2020).
Juliane Jarke is a senior researcher at the Institute for Information Management Bremen (ifib) and Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) at the University of Bremen, Germany. Jarke co-edited The Datafication of Education (with Andreas Breiter, 2019) and Probes as Participatory Design Practice (with Susanne Maaß, 2018). Her most recent book is Co-creating Digital Public Services for an Ageing Society (2020).
Leif Kramp is a post-doctoral media, communication and history scholar and ResearchCoordinator of the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research at the University of Bremen (ZeMKI), Germany. Kramp has authored and edited various books about the transformation of media and journalism and is a founding member of the German Association of Media and Journalism Criticism (VfMJ).
