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ABSTRACT
Critical scholarship about datafication reveals the implications of algorithmically driven digital transformations for both social processes and human experiences of subjectivity. Digital transformations embed ontological beliefs in the information systems that drive new organizational processes and are accompanied by techno-positivist discourses that promote the benefits of these schemes. The dual power of new information systems plus strong discursive influences has led to fears that data subjects will come to be defined by data and information systems – that their subjectivity will be subordinated by the algorithm. However, in this paper, we argue that real experiences of data sharing offer a means to reveal actual experiences with subjectification, and that often these experiences are multiple and complex. Drawing on the results of five digital literacy interventions carried out by partner organizations in Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay in 2021, we consider participants’ lived experiences with datafication. Our work reveals how people experience, negotiate, reject, and accept data power’s multiple manifestations in ways that strategically mobilize data resources, constituting a fractured data subjectivity that overlaps the bounds of any one information system. This leads us to suggest the idea of the ‘unhomed’ as a useful concept for understanding data subjectification in the contemporary moment.
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Esteban Morales
Esteban Morales is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of British Columbia. His research focus explores the processes by which citizens and communities learn, resist, and appropriate digital media. Esteban has experience studying data, online violence, digital literacies, and peace education, among others.
Katherine Reilly
Katherine Reilly is an associate professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. She works at the intersection of social change and digital transformation where she studies how data and information systems mediate social relations. Her most recent project explored 'citizen data audits' as a means to build data literacy and her current project addresses 'data activation gaps' in individual and community responses to environmental degradation.