From Analog to Digital: Numbers that Ignite Cyberactivism

• In Event: Critical Data Studies: Ethics and Human Contexts of Data Science III

Abstract

Numbers are seen as objective, self-evident, and static representations of the world we are living. Endowed with the power of representing the “fact” in this age of information, numbers become the foci of political debates and competitions. Politicians use numbers as weapons to defeat rivalries. Activists refer to numbers to challenge governments. All these strengthen the power of numbers. This paper examines an online hacktivist campaign in Taiwan, “Open Political Donations”, by tracing the social life of a special set of numbers—the numbers of donations to politicians and political parties—through the venture from its analog appearance to a digital one. The numbers travel across spaces and mediums, from being held as documents in the government office, to photocopies with watermark,.pdf files in the computer, pieces of pictures on the campaign website, digits in the database, and visualized graphs on news platforms. The numbers are in continuously transformation. They are kept, freed, torn apart, recaptured, reassembled, and translated—until they are reborn as “open data” (a type of data that is freely available online and can be read by computers), which claims to bring “transparency” to democracy. Following the footsteps of this particular set of numbers, this paper examines the discourse of numbers and reveals how they tell stories, carry value, excite emotion, and trigger actions. Numbers urge us to see and believe, judge and act. They make politics.

Author

• Mei-chun Lee, Department of Anthropology, UC Davis