EVERYDAY DATA CULTURES

Abstract

This panel deploys a range of qualitative methodologies to investigate how processes of datafication meet with the subjective experiences of ordinary people, and the practices of everyday life. We draw on the model of ‘everyday data cultures’ proposed by Burgess (2017) to explore the ways diverse data practices – including the production and circulation of data visualisations, modes of data storage and vernacular engagements with data literacy – can be understood as aspects of culture. Following Burgess, we define everyday data cultures as the practices that form around and in response to the social media and other data (and data trails) that people generate as we go about our daily lives. These practices form from our diverse engagements with, experiences of, and approaches to understanding and negotiating these data Across these four papers, we address the everyday politics of social media platforms; the development of vernacular pedagogies of AI and machine leaning practices; the historical datafication of sex and gender, and mundane workplace practices of storing, concealing and revealing personal data. In doing so, we seek to highlight and amplify everyday human agency, as well as explore its limits and uneven distribution, and consider how it is being transformed through the logics of data and the machines that feed on them.