The metricated mindset: Social life in datafied media landscapes

• In Event: Datafied Living: The Everyday of Datafication

Abstract

As the process of digitization of the media has deepened into datafication, few spheres of society have been left unaffected. Following this qualitative shift, it has been suggested that we might be facing a shift in the attitudes or mindsets of media users (which we all are to a greater or lesser extent), where the algorithmic principles of data capturing on the internet and the metrics associated with social networking sites presumably produce what might be called a ‘big data mindset’ (van Dijck 2014), or a ‘metricated mindset’ (Bolin & Andersson Schwarz 2015), developed as a response to the quantitative ‘triggers’ on the interactive web. Metrics and various kinds of measurement systems have, of course, accompanied humans since the early precursors of writing, but it can be argued that the deeper penetration of algorithmically generated metrics into our life-worlds today produces ‘an environment in which we live … an air that we breathe, an atmospheric component of society’ (Brigenthi 2017: 3) – effectively producing the frameworks for a metrics-saturated ‘data living’. A metricated mindset would suggest an increased inclination to quantify human relations, knowledge, friendships, that is, social life more generally (Bolin & Andersson Schwarz 2015, Grosser 2014, van Dijck 2013). The transformative nature of the data environment would presumably impact on people’s disposition to act in relation to others and to the surrounding world, revealing itself in attitudes and ways of evaluating different types of social actions. This paper will account for conceptual and methodological framework for analysing the metrical components of such a data living in various social settings.

Author

• Göran Bolin, Södertörn U