‘Not the Real Me’: Social Imaginaries of Personal Data Profiling

Abstract

In this article, I present findings from my Data Personas study, in which I invited Australian adults to respond to the stimulus of the ‘data persona’ to help them consider personal data profiling and related algorithmic processing of personal digitised information. The literature on social imaginaries is brought together with vital materialism theory, with a focus on identifying the affective forces, relational connections and agential capacities in participants’ imaginaries and experiences concerning data profiling and related practices now and into the future. The participants were aware of how their personal data were generated from their online engagements, and that commercial and government agencies used these data. However, most people suggested that data profiling was only ever partial, configuring a superficial and static version of themselves. They noted that as people move through their life-course, their identities and bodies are subject to change: dynamic and emergent. While the digital data that are generated about humans are also lively, these data can never fully capture the full vibrancy, fluidity and spontaneity of human experience and behaviour. In these imaginaries, therefore, data personas are figured as simultaneously less-than-human and more-than-human. The implications for understanding and theorising human-personal data relations are discussed.