Introduction: Towards an anthropology of data

Abstract

The world is talking ‘data’. The early cross‐disciplinary, business‐orientated hype around the potential of ‘big’ data, with its promises of unprecedented insight into social life, has given way. Data now motivates a sweep of dystopian visions, from rampant commodification to the invasion of privacy, political manipulation, and shadowy data doubles. Yet anthropologists have been cautious in taking data itself as their object, even as the social life of data practices becomes manifest in our ethnographies. In this introduction, we argue for an anthropology of data that is ethnographically specific and theoretically ambitious, putting forward a case for why anthropological engagements with the data moment might be not only politically important but also conceptually generative.

Fostering intimacy on TikTok: a platform that ‘listens’ and ‘creates a safe space’

“…In effect, all forms of intimacy, as Atwood et al (2017) argue, are mediated in the sense that ‘they require a medium through which intimate relations can be established between the subject and the other’ (p. 249). In an era of digital communication technologies, the meaning of social concepts, such as family and identity, change when people turn to digital technologies to make sense of their worlds or to render their attachments meaningful (Douglas-Jones et al, 2021). Moreover, literature on the centrality of media for structuring intimacies suggests that we establish relationships not only with humans through online texts (Berryman and Kavka, 2017; Kanai, 2017), but also with communicative technologies including mobile devices, applications, and social media platforms (Andreassen, 2017; Attwood et al, 2017).…”

“…Critical algorithm scholars’ ethnographic work focuses on diverse and contested ways that individuals make sense, negotiate, and feel the effects of the algorithmic systems in their everyday lives (Bucher, 2017; Douglas-Jones et al, 2021; Lomborg and Kapsch, 2020; Seaver, 2017; Ytre-Arne and Moe, 2021). This growing body of research explores individuals’ understandings of what algorithms are and what they should or should not do based on their everyday use of digital media.…”

“…I begin this article by outlining the contextual framework of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on intimacy and the socio-economic aspects of social media platforms. Then, I will introduce a theoretical framework for understanding the underlying motives of individuals’ choices, whether to connect with (Madianou and Miller, 2013) or disconnect from digital media (Bucher, 2020; Natale and Treré, 2020), anthropological approach to intimacy (Sehlikoglu, 2015; Sehlikoglu and Zengin, 2015), mediation of intimacy (Attwood et al, 2017), and critical approach to algorithms (Bucher, 2017; Douglas-Jones et al, 2021; Lomborg and Kapsch, 2020; Seaver, 2017; Ytre-Arne and Moe, 2021). I will then move to a delineation of the methodology I employed for conducting this research, describing the process of reaching out to the interviewees and explaining why the research focuses on the interviewees’ understandings of algorithms.…”

Infrastructure-as-a-service: Empty skies, bad roads, and the rise of cargo drones

“…Recently, scholars have begun to explore the ways in which the use of digital technologies affect infrastructural provision, highlighting, for instance, the integration of sensors and real-time data analytics into existing material forms such as motorways and ticketing service (Douglas-Jones et al, 2021; Knox, 2021). Digital infrastructure is not only taken to mean the digitization of classical infrastructures but also the cables, wires and other material elements that enable digital technologies.…”

“…Questions of ownership and accountability as well as modes of engagement of users are reconfigured through novel entwinement of digital and material technologies. Making visible these newly assigned roles and responsibilities, our approach is in line with social science scholarship that conceptualizes the interplay between the digital and the material infrastructures and its political effects (Knox, 2021; Pink et al, 2020; Vonderau, 2019). Researching new intertwinements between the digital and the material infrastructures will also highlight the underlying mobilization and orchestration of human actors that make vehicles fly and eventually allow Zipline to claim to operate the world’s first ‘fully autonomous’ drone network.…”