Situating Data

Karin van Es is Associate Professor of Media and Culture Studies and project lead Humanities at Data School, both at Utrecht University. Nanna Verhoeff is Professor of Screen Cultures and Society in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. She initiated the research group [urban interfaces] and is co-lead of the Open Cities platform at Utrecht University. Her research on urban media combines perspectives from (digital) media and performance studies contributes to the interdisciplinary methodological development of the creative humanities.

This carefully curated book brings together a stellar group of scholars to tackle the relationship between data and culture, and their implications for theory, empirical research, and creative practice. The collection paints a rich and detailed picture of the myriad ways culture is being datafied, and demonstrates that cultural and media studies can help us better understand the politics of data. Through a diverse and imaginative set of contributions and a wide range of fascinating examples, the book shows how mundanity, meaning, mediation, and materiality shape datafication's social and environmental consequences, and how they might guide our responses to it in the future. The book is a much-needed contribution to the critical data studies scholarship and should be essential reading for researchers and students in this field. , Jean Burgess, Professor of Digital Media, Queensland University of Technology (AUS),What can data do, not just for us but to us? This formidable collection of essays offers timely lessons on the importance of data in contemporary cultural practices, from the craft of coffee roasting to the performances of Janelle Monáe. I recommend this book to anyone who seeks to understand data, not just as facts, but as cultural artifacts. With precision and panache, it illustrates how data shape experience and power relations across radically different contexts. , Yanni Loukissas, Associate Professor of Digital Media, Georgia Tech (US)

• List of Figures, Acknowledgements, Introduction: Situating Data as Cultural Inquiry (Nanna Verhoeff and Karin van Es), Practices, Coffee Roasters' Data Vernacular: On the Entanglement of Digital Data and Craft (Markus Stauff, Pauline van Romondt Vis, and Karin van Es),The Agricultural Data Imaginary: Precision Farming's Reinforcement of the Productivist Approach to Agriculture (Eggo Müller), Controversing Datafication through Media Architecture (Corelia Baibarac Duignan, Julieta Matos Castaño, Anouk Geenen, and Michiel de Lange), Streaming Against the Environment: Digital Infrastructures, Video Compression, and the Environmental Footprint of Video Streaming (Marek Jancovic and Judith Keilbach), Out of the Bin, into the Open: Looking at the Mediating and Performing Material Afterlives of Data (Tamalone van den Eijnden), Justice,Data as Boundary Objects, Datafication as Boundary Work (Koen Leurs), The Datafication of Racialization and the Pursuit of Equality: The Case of the Barometer Culturele Diversiteit (Gerwin van Schie), Caged by Data: Exposing the Politics of Facial Recognition Through Zach Blas' Face Cages (Rosa Wevers), Dirty Computers versus the New Jim Code: Janelle Monáe's Datafied Performance (Dan Hassler-Forest),Knowledges, How Eva Louise Young (1861-1939) Found Me: On the Performance of Metadata in Knowledge Production (Iris van der Tuin), Interstitial Data: Tracing Metadata in Archival Search Systems (Jasmijn Van Gorp),Data and Algorithms in Transition: A Diachronic Affordance Analysis Perspective (Stefan Werning), Schooled by Dashboards? Learning Platforms' Performance-Centered Pedagogy and its Impact on Teaching (Niels Kerssens), Agendas, Creative Urban Methods for the Datafied City (Nanna Verhoeff, Michiel de Lange, and Sigrid Merx), Investigating the Datafied Society: Entrepreneurial Research as Approach (Mirko Tobias Schäfer, Karin van Es, and Iris Muis), Big Data and the Global South: A Case for Dialogue (Bruce Mutsvairo), Situating the Marketization of Data (Anne Helmond and Fernando van der Vlist), Index, List of Contributors.