Ethical Questions in Feminist Data Studies: Lessons Learned From Researching Young Londoners’ Digital Identities

• In Event: ICA Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Paper Session: Feminist Scholarship Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

What can 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 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. Data studies, in turn, show the urgency for renewed feminist ethical reflection on dataficiation from the perspective of responsibility, intersectional power relations, human subjectivity, and the autonomy of research participants over their own data. Drawing on experiences of a 2-year study on young Londoner’s digital identities, I offer a roadmap for an alternative data-analysis practice, which is more situated, reflexive and accountable.

Author

• Koen Leurs, Utrecht U