Data literacies for the postdemographic social media self

Abstract

In a postdemographic world, characterized by the continuous production and calculation of social data in the form of likes, comments, shares, keywords, locations or hashtags, social media platforms are designed with techniques of market segmentation in mind. “Datafication” challenges the agency of participatory social media practices and traditional accounts of the presentation of self in the use of social media. In the process, a tension or paradox arises between the personal, curative or performative character of social media practices and the calculative design and commercial usefulness of platforms and apps. In this paper I interrogate this paradox, and explore the potential role of metrics and analytics for emergent data literacies. By drawing together common self-oriented metrics across dominant platforms, the paper emphasizes analytics targets around a) profile, b) activity, c) interactivity and d) visibility, as a step toward developing new data literacies.

Social Media Bullshit: What We Don’t Know About facebook.com/peace and Why We Should Care

“…Numbers such as these are part of a long-term trend toward quantification-"a constitutive feature of modern science and social organization" (Espeland & Stevens, 2008, p. 402)-and convey a sense of objectivity (Kovacic, 2018) that derives from the centrality of statistics both in policymaking and in everyday life (Alonso & Starr, 1987). Moreover, this kind of quantification, or metrification (Beer, 2016;McCosker, 2017), is precisely what we expect from companies such as Facebook; after all, social media users are by now quite used to seeing affective responses to content transformed in real time into numbers, such as Likes and Shares (Gerlitz & Helmond, 2013;Gerlitz & Lury, 2014).…”

Tensions and trade-offs of participatory learning in the age of machine learning

“…The desire to share and publish new media artifacts is often motivated by the fact that these contributions will be a part of an appreciative community, watched, or used by others (Ito et al, 2009). Social media sites have often been understood as performative spaces for self-presentation and related identity formation (McCosker, 2017). However, individual needs for participation, selfexpression, voice, influence, information, learning, empowerment, and connection also provide unforeseen value for those who can capture and harvest these computer-mediated actions for information capitalism (Zuboff, 2015).…”

“…Personal and behavioral data, once a mere byproduct of online participation, have now become a valuable economic resource for platform owners (Van Dijck, 2013). Nowadays, leading tech companies -the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon -collect massive amounts of contextual information about people's daily actions and interactions, such as browsing habits, locations, purchases, reservations, status updates, ratings, comments, emotional reactions, schedules, meetings, friends, hobbies, love life, and media sharing and consumption, among endlessly many other things (McCosker, 2017;Zuboff, 2015). User-generated data that most people voluntarily share constitute long timelines of personal trajectories, starting from first fetal ultrasounds and the baby's first steps to pictures and videos from childhood, school years, dating, weddings, and family life (Van Dijck, 2013).…”

“…While datafication of everyday life has become ubiquitous, the problem is that virtually none of the users knows exactly how these companies are parceling our social interactions and cultural experiences (Hallinan & Striphas, 2014;Striphas, 2015). Researchers are also concerned that when individuals are blocked from accessing data by proprietary and commercial restrictions, it also restricts their potential of being data literate (McCosker, 2017).…”

“…At the moment, many researchers prefer to discuss "data literacies" to emphasize the ability to understand and use data (Data-Pop Alliance and Internews, 2015). While definitions of data literacies differ in terms of the skills and knowledge they emphasize, they often include skills such as the ability to identify how and where personal data are generated and processed , the ability to control personal data trails and practices (Education Development Centre Inc, 2016;McCosker, 2017), as well as ability to constructively engage in society through and about data (Data-Pop Alliance and Internews, 2015). As such, data literacies are seen as important forms of civic engagement and social inclusion, where citizens have a voice in how and by whom data are used, as well as what they are used for, and where citizens may use data to fulfill their goals in an ethical and equitable manner (Data-Pop Alliance and Internews, 2015).…”