Understanding data studies: a conceptual and methodological inquiry into research on datafication

Higher seminar in Media and Communication Studies with Irina Zakharova, University of Bremen (on Zoom)

Data politics and how they are enacted in datafication processes of “translating everything under the sun in a data format” (van Dijck 2017) is a key concern of the interdisciplinary field of data studies. In this field, multiple concepts about datafication are produced relevant for understanding and imagining technoscientific futures. These concepts are grounded in various disciplinary, theoretical, epistemological, and methodological approaches to studying datafication. As Haraway (2016) reminds us, however, “[i]t matters what matters we use to think other matters with” (p.12). In relation to data studies, it means that a conceptual and methodological reflection of the field is needed.

My contribution aims to provide such a reflection. I expand on the methodological debates of the double social lives of methods (Ruppert et al. 2013) and the concept of methods’ performativity (Barad 2007) by applying the notion of methods assemblage (Law 2004)—human and non-human elements of research process held together through research practices.

I report results of a quantitative and qualitative literature analysis of 51 empirical research articles about datafication published between 2015-2019 and of expert interviews with 32 datafication scholars at different career stages. I inductively develop three methods assemblages applied in data studies. These methods assemblages are distinctive in relation to what ‘datafication’ means empirically, kinds of knowledges sought by researchers applying them, extent of collectivity of addressed actors, and these actors’ positioning in datafication processes between the poles of data use/production. These methods assemblages can be applied for 1) exploring encounters with data representations, 2) tracing dynamics of data movement, and 3) reconstructing datafied regimes.

I argue that these methods assemblages allow a methodological and conceptual mapping of the field of data studies and provide it with additional vocabulary sensitive to ontological multiplicities (Mol 2002) and technoscientific politics of ongoing and future datafication processes.

The seminar is held on Zoom, please see attached link. For more information, please contact Saga Hansén (contact below).