Data by design: Shaping data-producing subjectivities through self-tracking

Abstract

Recent research into self-tracking devices challenges dominant understandings that such technologies provide wearers with “mechanical objectivity” over their monitoring of their bodies, instead highlighting how the so-called “objectivity” is situated within broader social contexts. In this article we explore the social phenomena arising from the introduction of multiple sensor technologies (activity trackers, productivity monitoring software, and video cameras) in Hong Kong secondary school classrooms within the context of an interdisciplinary research project on digital citizenship. Using participant observation of social interactions between the school students and the research team amidst the implementation of self-tracking technologies in the classroom, our study documents the negotiations surrounding the generation of self-tracking data. It shows how shortcomings in self-tracking data produced call into question persistent expectations of objectivity attached to self-tracking devices, alongside hopes that their use would engender specific forms of engagement with data amongst students. In response, we propose the concept of “data producing subjectivities” as a complement to the existing concept of “situated objectivity.” Taken together, these concepts could contribute to scholarship beyond the realm of self-tracking, providing ways to more fully account for the co-constitutive nature of the production of data and personhood in the contemporary information era.

Keywords:

• Education
• objectivity
• self-tracking
• subjectivity
• technology

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Nancy Law, Xiao Hu, Kong Runzhi and the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 https://ecitizen.hk

2 Academic engagement was measured by means of supplementary electronic questionnaires that could be analyzed against self-tracking data.

3 The fieldwork contributing to this article describes an early pilot phase of the project.

4 The research procedures were approved by the HKU Human Research Ethics Committee, approval number EA1604035.

5 In Hong Kong secondary schools, it is common practice for students to remain in the same classroom while different teachers filter in and out of the room throughout the day to teach different subjects.

6 Direct quotations from these conversations are appended with either (C) or (E), marking that they were originally spoken in Cantonese or English, respectively.

7 A deeper, generalized ideal of mutual assistance underlay these immediate imperatives. The research team also believed that their analyzed findings could contribute to improving the school, while the school was motivated to work with education researchers because they shared the same goal of improving teaching and learning. However, the routes via which such desired outcomes would be achieved were often indirect in nature. Therefore, such effects were not always immediately tangible, nor easily discernible.

8 Pseudonyms have been used in order to protect the anonymity of participants.

9 Following the fieldwork period on which this article is based, the research team indeed went on to embark upon a program of school-based activities which guided students to interpret and reflect on the data that they generated for better well-being and regulation.

Additional information

Funding

The work described in this paper was fully supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. T44-707/16N).