Definition
Datafication refers to the process by which subjects, objects, and practices are transformed into digital data. Associated with the rise of digital technologies, digitization, and big data, many scholars argue datafication is intensifying as more dimensions of social life play out in digital spaces. Datafication renders a diverse range of information as machine-readable, quantifiable data for the purpose of aggregation and analysis. Datafication is also used as a term to describe a logic that sees things in the world as sources of data to be “mined” for correlations or sold, and from which insights can be gained about human behavior and social issues. This term is often employed by scholars seeking to critique such logics and processes.
Overview
The concept of datafication was initially employed by scholars seeking to examine how the digital world is changing with the rise of big data and data economies. However, as datafication itself becomes more widespread, scholarship in...
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Further Reading
Birchall, C. (2017). Shareveillance: The dangers of openly sharing and covertly collecting data. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
boyd, d., & Crawford, K. (2011). Six Provocations for Big Data. Presented at the a decade in internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society, Oxford. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1926431.
Kitchin, R. (2014). Big data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts. Big Data & Society, 1(1), 1–12.
Leurs, K., & Shepherd, T. (2017). Datafication & Discrimination. In M. T. Schäfer & K. van Es (Eds.), The Datafied society: Studying culture through data (pp. 211–234). Amsterdam: Amsterdam Press.
Lupton, D. (2019). Data selves: More-than-human perspectives. Cambridge: Polity.
Mayer-Schönberger, V., & Cukier, K. (2013). Big data: A revolution that will transform how we live, work, and think. London: John Murray Publishers.
Ruckenstein, M., & Schüll, N. D. (2017). The Datafication of health. Annual Review of Anthropology, 46(1), 261–278.
Taylor, E. (2013). Surveillance schools: A new era in education. In E. Taylor (Ed.), Surveillance schools: Security, discipline and control in contemporary education (pp. 15–39). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
van Dijck, J. (2014). Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big data between scientific paradigm and ideology. Surveillance & Society, 12(2), 197–208.
Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: Surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology Impact, 30(1), 75–89.
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Southerton, C. (2022). Datafication. In: Schintler, L.A., McNeely, C.L. (eds) Encyclopedia of Big Data. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32010-6_332
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32010-6_332
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