Critical data provenance as a methodology for studying how language conceals data ethics

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to a project that maps the concept of ‘data provenance’ into qualitative data research. Data provenance is a concept from computer science that allows us to trace the history of sets of data to determine the accuracy and validity of a database. We transform this into a critical concept by arguing that data provenance can be used to trace the acts of governance and rhetoric. We then analyse the forms of discursive power that shape transactions in data. Our approach can create a history of the governance and justifications that are used to build and assemble datasets from multiple sources. Presently, data often lacks this information about its own discursive origins, unlike other forms of data provenance. Critical data provenance gives us a model for thinking about how governance could be mapped onto data. And thus, critical data provenance is also a framework for critiquing the justifications used when dataset owners acquire data – for instance, whether data stewards or users are encouraged to be ‘open’, to ‘share’, or be ‘transparent’. To this end, we demonstrate this model of thinking and provide the analytical tools necessary to redeploy these ideas into new contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Data ethics
• digital ethics
• critical data studies
• data policy
• qualitative methodology
• qualitative data analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. ‘Application Programming Interface’. Effectively a means of providing external users and software controlled access to data on a database through a series of predefined and coded ‘hardpoints’. Access to APIs may be paid, available upon signup, or, more rarely, freely available.

2. The authors have chosen not to link to these sites due to their objectionable content, however they are readily discoverable.

3. eXtensible Markup Language.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robbie Fordyce

Robbie Fordyce is from Aotearoa and is Lecturer in Big Data/Quantitative Analytics and Research Methods at the School of Media, Film, and Journalism at Monash University. He researches the exploits, manipulations and politics of rule-based systems and their cultures. In 2021, he has published articles in The International Journal of Children's Rights, Games and Culture, and Media International Australia, as well as book chapters in Disentangling and Reading Black Mirror.

Suneel Jethani

Suneel Jethani is a lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney. His research centres on embodied technology, datafication and issues of technology ethics, governance, and design. Suneel has published in International Communication Gazette, Communication, Politics and Culture, M/C Journal, Continuum, Cultural Studies and in Embodied Computing (2020) MIT Press. Suneel has forthcoming books on self-tracking technology (Emerald, 2021) and open data (Palgrave, 2021).