Feminist Data Studies: Using Digital Methods for Ethical, Reflexive and Situated Socio-Cultural Research

Abstract

What could a social-justice oriented, feminist data studies look like? The current datalogical turn foregrounds the digital datafication of everyday life, increasing algorithmic processing and data as an emergent regime of power/knowledge. Scholars celebrate the politics of big data knowledge production for its omnipotent objectivity or dismiss it outright as data fundamentalism that may lead to methodological genocide. In this feminist and postcolonial intervention into gender-, race-and geography-blind 'big data' ideologies, I call for ethical, anti-oppressive digital data-driven research in the social sciences and humanities. I argue that a reflexive data scholarship can emerge from the reintegration of feminist and postcolonial science studies and ethics of care ideals. Although it is not a panacea for all ails of data mining, I offer a road map for an alternative dataanalysis practice that is more power-sensitive and accountable. By incorporating a people-centric and contextaware perspective that acknowledges relationships of dependency, reflects on temptations, and scrutinises benefits and harm, an 'asymmetrically reciprocal' (Young, 1997) research encounter may be achieved. I bring this perspective to bear on experiences of a two-year research project with eighty-four young Londoners on digital identities and living in a highly diverse city. I align awareness of uneven relations of power and knowledge with the messy relation of dependency between human and non-human actors in data analysis. This framework productively recognises that digital data cannot be expected to speak for itself, that data do not emerge from a vacuum, and that isolated data patterns cannot be the end-goal of a situated and reflexive research endeavor. Data-driven research, in turn, shows the urgency for renewed feminist ethical reflection on how digital mediation impacts upon responsibility, intersectional power relations, human subjectivity and the autonomy of research participants over their own data. keywords data studies for social justice; feminist data studies; ethics of care; feminist and postcolonial internet studies; young people; anti-oppressive methods feminist review 115 2017

Diaspora and mapping methodologies: tracing transnational digital connections with ‘mattering maps’

“…Nevertheless, relatively few of the scholars engaging in critical discussion of the big data ethics connect these oftentimes abstract reflections to practical methodological considerations for conducting research with digital tools that scrape data from public web platforms. In this concrete regard, we found feminist and ethnographic research approaches valuable for avoiding de-contextualized analyses of data, bringing up questions of voice (Gajjala 2013), temporalities, location and absence of data (Dourish et al 2016), and trust, reflexivity and researcher's accountability towards participants (Leurs 2017;Pink et al 2016;Preissle and Han 2012). Such perspectives informed our reflections on the relationship between researcher and researched in this case, and led us to think about ethical concerns over privacy in terms of data ownership (Metcalf and Crawford 2016).…”

Doing Digital Migration Studies: Methodological Considerations for an Emerging Research Focus

“…They invited informants to share details for each contact, including the kind of relationship, the frequency of calls and messages, when they last spoke and what they talked about (2005). The first author of the present chapter created ego-network diagrams based on Facebook friendship networks (Leurs 2017). In a study with a diverse group of young Londoners from working, middle and upper-middle class families, he visualized the friendship networks of those young people who had a Facebook account.…”

“…As a researcher, one must keep that essence alive throughout the research cycle. This entails taking accountability for our research not only by taking responsibility of our research, but taking consideration of the consequences of our research on the researched subject or group (Leurs 2017, compare also with Fedyuk and Zentai, Chap. 10 in this anthology).…”

Applying Computational Analysis to Textual Data from the Wild

“…With technologies that afford much larger scale data collection than previously imagined, new ways of handling, processing and interpreting the data are called upon. However, as acknowledged in critical [23] and feminist [29] data studies, data is not neutral, and from collection and analysis through to how we represent and report on data mindfulness of this nonneutrality should be employed. Feminist and critical studies of GIS seek to link individual experiences and agency with an understanding of how 'social, economic, and political processes are constructed, maintained, legitimized, and resisted' [25].…”