It is well established that the advent of big data brings with it new and opaque regimes of population management, control, discrimination and exclusion. The expansion of data mining practices of major social media corporations and the recent activities of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in the UK rightly gives rise to critical claims about systematic surveillance, privacy invasion and inequality.
These
serious developments notwithstanding, this special issue shows how these
troubling consequences are not the whole story of our datafied times. At the
same time as big business and big government embrace the capacities of dataveillance,
small-scale public organisations, community groups and activists are
experimenting with the possibilities of datafication, pursuing objectives which
are distinct from those of big brother’s uses of big data. Datafication refers
to the process of rendering into data aspects of the
world not previously quantified. This means not just demographic or profiling
data, but also behavioral meta-data, such as those automatically derived from
smartphones, like time stamps and GPS-inferred locations. While such data are
often used for surveillance purposes, they can also be employed towards other
ends.
In this light, datafication can be
understood not only as collecting and analysing data about internet users, but
also as feeding such metrics back to users, enabling them to orient themselves
in the world. Moreover, data can be generated, collected and analysed by alternative
actors to enhance rather than undermine the agency of the public. Indeed, it is
precisely because the massive flows of data circulating between devices,
institutions, industries and users usher in new and troubling practices of dataveillance
that it becomes vital to reflect on whether there are alternative forms of big
data, forms which enable the less powerful to act with agency in the face of the
rise of data power.
The questions at the heart of this special theme on Data and Agency reflect the
tension between big data structures and citizen agency, between control and
resistance. The five articles consider the relations between datafication, the
possibility of agency, and the spaces in between. At the same time, the
contributions seek to combine critical perspectives on datafication with
perspectives of actors within data mining practices. The aim is to enrich our
understanding of data and datafication, by bringing together structural
analyses with recognition of individual agency in the context of these
structures.
The various contributions demonstrate that
agency, in the context of Big Data, is a complex and multifaceted
concept. It encompasses many kinds of users and many kinds of data contexts.
Data subjects may be citizens or consumers, professionals or amateurs,
conscious hackers or unwitting bystanders as data streams increasingly direct our
everyday lives. As data acquire new power, it is especially important that we
understand citizen agency. To participate in datafied social, political,
cultural and civic life, ordinary people need to understand what happens to their
data, the consequences of its analysis, and the ways in which data-driven
operations affect us all. Such empirical inquiries should open up new avenues
to think critically and creatively about ways in which datafication can be
repurposed and redirected to enhance rather than undermine citizenship.
