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This paper adds an algorithmic epistemology perspective to previous works that examine the datafication of subjective social and emotional characteristics, perceptions, and behaviours. The paper employs a comparative epistemological approach to explore two behavioural educational platforms: RedCritter Teacher and Panorama Education. We unpack these platforms' epistemic arrays of data extraction, interfaces, justifications, and representations and the knowledge arrangements they aim to constitute in schools. Borrowing Knorr-Cetina's notion of 'epistemic machineries,' which entails the material and discursive apparatuses of knowledge production in specific 'epistemic cultures,' we analyse the platforms' empirical apparatuses, ontological assumptions, and referential constructions. This exploration unearths two different digital epistemes: a gamified, engagement-based recognition system; and a bureaucratic-scientific framework that aims to produce actionable data for educators and schools. We explore the ramifications of these different human-machine entanglements and question how these bring to bare on pertaining to school life, such as human agency, knowledge practices, and educational decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased datafication of schooling, a common trend in Australia, the UK, Canada, and the USA, involves the use of standardized testing and its associated systems and practices to achieve high-stakes goals. The purpose of this study, set in an urban, low-income, predominately Black neighborhood in the southeast USA, was to better understand the influence of increased datafication on caregiver perceptions of learning. The qualitative study involved one-on-one semi-structured interviews with caregivers of K-8 public school children. Results show that although children learned many new concepts when examined through the lens of funds of knowledge, these caregivers repeatedly returned to ideas of what counts for schooling as it related to test scores. Implications include how the datafication of schooling devalues the families' funds of knowledge in their homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how non-experts reflect on and come to understand 'data uses', a phrase we used to refer to data collection, analysis and sharing. In recent years, research into what people think and feel about data uses has proliferated, whereas this paper focuses on how they do their thinking and feeling. We argue that imagining – that is, building or creating a mental image of something that is not present – is an important aspect of reflecting on data uses. We challenge the proposition that imagining takes place when there is a gap in knowledge or a lack of information, arguing instead that imagining plays an agentic role in reflection, enabling critical questioning of data uses. We draw on qualitative research carried out in the UK, in which we provided information about specific public sector data uses and asked participants how they felt about them. We found that imaginings, or 'what ifs', exist in a complex entanglement with different knowledges, including experiential knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article critically examines the implementation and impact of the Digital Urban Waste Tracking System (DUWTS), a 'smart' waste management technology deployed in several towns in Poland to enhance urban waste segregation practices. By integrating critical discard studies with critical data studies, the article introduces the concept of 'waste data reflectivity' to investigate how data representation in DUWTS influences perceptions and responsibilities within waste management. The study highlights how DUWTS employs advanced dataveillance technologies to monitor waste disposal, creating distorted reflections that obscure the complexities of municipal waste management. These distortions are analyzed through the metaphorical lenses of three mirrors – concave, kaleidoscopic, and ceiling – which reveal the illusory effects on municipalities, waste disposal companies, and residents. Additionally, the article discusses how DUWTS exemplifies 'technologies of (un)knowing', which systematically obscure or misrepresent waste management issues, leading to the marginalization of true responsibilities and challenges. The findings demonstrate that while DUWTS represents a technological advancement, it can also perpetuate the existing challenges in waste management by masking the true nature of waste issues and obscuring the responsibilities of different stakeholders. The article concludes by emphasizing the socio-technological consequences of such systems and the importance of a critical analysis in evaluating the effectiveness and ethics of data-driven waste management technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While audience data are pivotal to producing journalism, audiences' perspectives on the issue have received relatively little attention. Addressing this gap, the paper examines audience members' tactics for making sense of and engaging with the datafied journalism into which they contribute with their data. Empirically grounded in group interviews and instant-messaging group chats with 21 readers of prominent Finnish tabloid Iltalehti, the author identified four tactics, along a continuum from permissive to resistive: an audience member may 1) happily benefit from datafied journalism; 2) be resigned to it yet reflect critically on it; 3) act to prevent effects on personal news-consumption patterns, by curating the content; or 4) entirely restrain themselves from engaging with it. Awareness of these tactics, which help individuals cope with and navigate the datafied-journalism landscape, facilitates grasping the factors in audiences' relations to datafied journalism and, thereby, understanding their consumption of news and their relationship with journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital platforms such as Spotify have specific characteristics and properties that influence, to some extent, how the platform is used. However, users develop their own interpretations of these properties as well as unique ways to engage with the platform. This study applies a critical realist framework to explore how reflexivity modes are practiced in the context of Spotify as an example of algorithmic recommendation systems. From this perspective, reflexivity is a person's capacity to reflect on their contexts, data, previous experiences, and knowledge, among other elements, before deciding how to act. Findings from interviews with Spotify users suggest that participants practice multiple reflexivity modes when interpreting Spotify's recommendations and deciding what to listen to. These modes depend on each participant's concerns and algorithmic knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Datafication, across private and public sectors demonstrably touches upon, and indeed, alters, with profound consequences, diverse domains of people's daily lives. However, also, increasingly, critical scholarship on datafication is the locus of careful attention to not solely platform and algorithmic power but also people's sociocultural practices to make sense of, cope with, feel and show new literacies with data and datafied systems. It is in this context of genuinely listening to what people do with, through and around data, and to what end, that this special issue invites us to ponder the notion of data reflexivity. In this paper, I adopt a working definition of data reflexivity as – a vernacular and relational set of practices and strategies in relation to data and data infrastructures, working with, within and sometimes against platforms, where, such practices and strategies morph and change across the life course, through a web of cross-cutting relationships with individuals, communities and institutions. I draw upon illustrative instances from a project in England which explored parents' perspectives on personal data and algorithms in the context of raising children. First – I suggest that we approach data reflexivity through a relational lens rather than as an individual and inward-looking strategy, where such relationality is experienced in relation to institutions, individuals, families, friendships, and networks. Second – I suggest that we look at data reflexivity as a fluid, lifelong journey – where a life course approach enables us to consider how data reflexivity morphs, adapts and transitions through the course of life, involving numerous acts of unspectacular, ephemeral agency. I conclude with a reminder that attention to data reflexivity, or indeed, more broadly, people's agency, must not mean a shift of focus away from scrutinising and holding accountable, powerful institutions, both public and private. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractWidespread popular discourse, at the time of writing, is centring on the capabilities of AI technologies, among others, in utilising the readily available mass of data to augment claimed educational problems. These positions often elide the unobjective nature of algorithms and the socio-politically infused assemblages of data available, situated within the neoliberalist scientism dominating educational policy discourse. The simplicity with which datafication treats education has led to a global culture of data-driven techno-rationality that affords ultra-rapid forms of free-floating control settled on an ideology of dataism. Dataism rests on the assumption that sociality and subjectification can be reduced to quantifiable data whereby the student rather than being treated as a subject comes to be treated as data doppelganger. The injustices inherent in datafication and its associated epistemes ignore hidden neoliberal inequalities and maintain the insidious coloniality inherent in advanced capitalism, while simultaneously fuelling the rapid and cyclical stripping of purpose from education itself. There is a need to problematise the hidden logics of coloniality that are both maintained and reproduced within the datafication agenda. The current article draws on decolonial theory to animate the logics of datafication through a Deleuzian reading, situated within the learnification of neoliberal education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each year, Spotify nudges users to share aesthetically pleasing data stories ‘wrapped’ and repackaged from their listening behavior. This article approaches Spotify Wrapped as an annual algorithmic event, defined as a moment in time in which there is a collective orientation towards a particular algorithmic system and its associated data. It offers a methodological contribution to research on datafication of music taste and identities through the development of a workshop format aimed at ordinary Spotify users. The workshop delivers insights into practices of datafication and the normative assumptions baked into Spotify data stories. Drawing on a data feminist framework, we outline three interconnected but distinct creative exercises, which take participants on an analytical journey. We combine feminist arts-based research methodologies with critical reflection and the walkthrough method to centre people’s experiences and equip them to analyze different layers of Wrapped. Our theoretical and methodological approach seeks to destabilize the logics of data extraction that further Spotify’s commercial aims and its associated claims of ‘knowing us’ through the aggregation of user data. As such, our workshop transforms the marketing campaign into a site for critical reflection on Wrapped as an algorithmic event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research presented here explores the nuances of data collection and sharing via digital platforms in everyday CrossFit coaching practice. There is a growing body of work on data and digital platforms in CrossFit, though currently there is a lack of understanding of the role of coaches in these processes. Empirically grounding the digital fitness practices of CrossFit coaching is essential for our understanding of the sport, as well as to critically engage with the dominant socio-technical narratives of the digital fitness revolution: narratives that obscure the agency of coaches. This research foregrounds the coaches' agency and lived experiences, focusing on their everyday coaching practices around data and digital platforms. Six semi-structured in-depth interviews with CrossFit coaches in Sweden were undertaken in 2023. These focused on if, when, how and why they collect, or encourage their participants to collect, data on their training and share this via digital platforms. The findings reveal several different, though interrelated, areas where the CrossFit coaches can be seen as mediating between often competing narratives around data and digital platforms. These everyday practices include mediating between group vs. individual training, data collection and sharing vs. "moving well", CrossFit's methodology of quantification of fitness vs. the needs of the participants and navigating the techno-solutionist vs. reductionist narratives around digital fitness tracking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this editorial, we outline origins and evolutions of (studying) intermediaries in the field of education. While intermediaries have played a significant role since the establishment of mass education in the 19th century, it was not until the broader transformation from government to governance from the 1970s onwards that intermediaries became visible – and investigated – as a distinct field of powerful actors. The more recent digital transformation of education can, on the one hand, be situated within these broader evolutions. On the other hand, the rise of digital technologies, data infrastructures and platform has also significantly impacted, and further empowered, the field of intermediaries. With this Special Issue, which consists of five contributions, we aim at a closer disentanglement of these recent transformations. In this editorial, each contribution is briefly discussed individually, before outlining some overall findings of the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary education is being undeniably shaped by datafication, and while new algorithmic and automated decision-making processes can have educational benefits, they also raise issues about children's digital rights and education policy responses to these rights. This study mapped how children's digital right to privacy and related human rights concepts are present in education policy documents of Australia's three largest state government departments of education. A children's rights coding framework was developed from the United Nation's 'General comment No. 25 (2021) on children's rights in relation to the digital environment' and used to code the dataset. Two levels of analysis were then undertaken. Level 1 involved code and subcode frequency analyses of concepts related to children's digital rights in policy documents. Level 2 was a descriptive qualitative analysis designed to understand how digital rights were expressed in policy. The study found that although all state government departments of education reflected some elements of children's digital rights, some states had a more complex, sustained and public-facing commitment to expressing these in policy. The study concluded that Australian government departments of education should work towards providing more transparent public-facing policy on children's digital rights that can empower students and their families to make informed decisions within a rapidly shifting digital environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Big Tech Platforms: What Are the Limits to 'Big Brother' Surveillance and Influence?" by Annabelle Gawer discusses the unprecedented economic power and influence of Big Tech platforms like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. These platforms dominate various sectors, such as digital advertising, e-commerce, and social media, raising concerns about privacy, data exploitation, and manipulation of user behavior. The article highlights the need for both public regulation and self-regulation to address these issues and prevent exploitation, emphasizing the importance of users' sovereignty in decision-making within platform ecosystems. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the possibilities and pitfalls of using Big Data to address sexual and reproductive health concerns as related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), paying particular attention to contextual difference in development settings. The global datafication of sexual and reproductive life has taken place at great speed. However, evidential deficiencies and a lack of critical engagement of the specific issues around working with sexual and reproductive health Big Data in development contexts is apparent. Informed by critical data studies, and framed by a political economy perspective which calls attention to power structures, we seek to deepen our understanding of the role and challenges that Big Data around sexual and reproductive health in the Low and Middle-Income Countries can play in addressing the SDGs. First, we explore the ways in which sexual datafication processes produce Big Data. We then consider how such Big Data could directly contribute to addressing the SDGs beyond simply monitoring and evaluating. Next, we unpick how the sensitive and stigmatised nature of sexual and reproductive health can have ramifications in data-driven contexts where significant power asymmetries exist. By doing so, we provide a more nuanced articulation of the challenges of datafication by contextualising the stigma around sexual and reproductive in a datafied context. We argue that whilst Big Data in relation to sexual and reproductive health shows potential to support the SDGs, there are specificities that must be considered to ensure that the push for data-driven approaches does no harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2019, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) identified Grindr, a hookup app that predominantly caters to men who have sex with men, as a "national security threat" and compelled the Chinese conglomerate Kunlun Tech to divest from it entirely. The CFIUS-Grindr ruling is indicative of larger regulatory debates over increasing datafication trends in the dating app industry. Through a political economy approach to communication, this paper examines how this ruling was predominantly constructed by various stakeholders as a public controversy in light of the ongoing US–China trade conflict. This interpretation of the controversy relies on a prejudicial trope that construes queer dating app users as vulnerable targets of potential blackmail schemes operated by Chinese intelligence agencies. Through the Lavender Scare, a historical period referring to state-led investigations into the presence of LGBTQ+ employees in Western federal workforces, this paper historicizes this blackmail trope to highlight how the politicization of queer vulnerabilities amid global hegemonic conflicts is a tactic that predates the US-China trade conflict. It argues that the CFIUS-Grindr ruling weaponizes Grindr's queer data publics as threats against which the US government should protect itself, while failing to fully recognize the urgency for the state to protect the data privacy rights of the LGBTQ+ communities in the digital economy. In light of the CFIUS-Grindr ruling, this paper examines the implications that datafication raises for the LGBTQ+ communities whose sexual lives and identities are increasingly being datafied and exploited by digital media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Datafication is changing from the value of concept to the value of layer for the present world. It describes every aspect of our lives with data. In this paper, the researchers put the datafication in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Also, the authors examine some aspects changed by datafication. The researchers look at several aspects (put in context with the industrial evolution) and also to the effect of datafication on several areas of human activity. By using a qualitative approach, the research examines the datafication and its various dimensions. The results suggest the need for robust, transparent systems to manage the complexity of data and advocate for ethical and privacy considerations. These insights are crucial for policymakers, businesses, and academics, providing a comprehensive understanding of the legal environment, societal impacts, and innovation potential in the European Union.

AbstractThis paper explores how the conditions for leadership are produced in datafied schooling regimes by the data infrastructures developed and utilised in departmental systems of education. Drawing on Hong’s (2020) theorisation of recessivity, this paper considers those tools and instruments as recessive technologies: technologies that know for us in quantified ways that are beyond the comprehension available to humans alone. This paper interrogates two specific data platforms used by Australian state departments of education as key examples of recessive technologies: i) the Victorian Department of Education’s Panorama, and ii) the New South Wales Department of Education’s Scout. Using a Deleuzian-Guattarian framework of assemblage, I provide an analytical discussion that considers, first, the epistemological foundation of datafication on which recessive technologies reside, before, second, attending to the implications this has for how educational leadership can be enacted. Finally, I conclude by arguing the need for further critical research around recessive technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a rapidly expanding and proliferating number of commercial early childhood platforms, competing for market share in what has become a crowded marketplace. Early childhood platforms provide a wide range of functions including an all-in-one digital ecosystem offering a learning management system; social media communication between educators, families and children; invoicing and payment; attendance monitoring; data tracking; individual profiling; documentation; pedagogic advice and even policy interpretation. Platforms are a sociocultural and ideological phenomenon that 'can replace or profoundly disrupt educational systems' (Cobo and Rivas) and hence their advent demands urgent critical thinking. However, within early years there is comparatively limited research of platforms' impacts upon families, educators and children. The aims of this colloquium are firstly to open a critical space to think about the political economy of commercial education platforms and secondly, to ask questions about platforms' impacts upon the neoliberal subjectivities of educators, families and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores an emerging methodological approach called doppelganger as method. This method uses the idea of a doppelganger or double to explore the social world. It is specifically used to examine datafication, or the increase in the production and use of data and its impact on education. Doppelganger as method begins by locating doubles, finding that doubles of the child and teacher are created through the focus on data production in early childhood education. It then asks how this doubling operates as an instrument of power, using understandings of the literary genre of the doppelganger along with its psychoanalytic interpretations to formulate novel interpretations. Doppelganger as method has been used as a tool to reconceptualize datafication, the increase in the volume and use of data in educational contexts. Using interpretations of Freud's work on the uncanny, a psychoanalytic understanding of the doppelganger is established. This is then applied in an educational context to interpret the function of various doppelgangers. Findings from this method include an ambivalent relationship with data, the marginalization of bilingual children and changes to both teacher and child subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore datafication through a specific kind of evaluative practice in Swedish early childhood education and care (ECEC): the creation of quality reports by individual preschools. A theoretical framework is developed based on Dahler-Larsen's descriptions of three 'evaluation imaginaries' (the modern, reflexive modernity and audit society), with elaboration of their respective characteristics and complementary notions from other sources. We then apply the framework, and a qualitative text analytical approach, to analyse eight quality reports from diverse Swedish preschools, purposefully selected to represent preschools that vary in terms of ownership, geographical location, size and pedagogical profile. We find that the reflexive modernity imaginary is most clearly influential in the ECEC quality reports, but there are emerging indications of the audit society imaginary's influence. We also find variations in prioritised focus in the reports among ECEC providers, underscoring the need for further exploration. The study calls for future research to delve into provider-specific nuances, expand the investigation to other kinds of evaluations and scrutinise the broader implications for ECEC operations and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we ponder the ecologies of spacetimematterings folded into resistance practices and their relationality with figurations of agency outside and beyond datafication agendas. Accountability cultures bound up with datafication have consequences that include a diminished agency for both children and educators. We take inspiration from the idea that enactments of resistance can cause cracks to appear that forge creative spaces where different kinds of doings related to agency emerge. The context, potentiality and storyings of cracking encounters is where our interest lies. To ponder crackings, we play with feminist posthuman and materialist theorising with research-creation approaches to notice resistances as material-discursive intra-actions amongst the lively materiality of educational life. From there we notice resistance practices as ecologies. Those ecologies are complex and lively yet often concealed in more-than-human cracks by the grand narrative of datafication. Through storytelling, we reimagine these cracks as dynamic resistances, often unresolving the relationality between power and the collective more-than-human modes of resistance we witnessed. Different kinds of noticing mattered and amplifying the sharing of resistance stories brings attention to hopeful agencies already and always at work. Sharing stories can strengthen the connectivity of resistances to datafication and build a stronger autonomy and agency for early childhood education and care. Our provocation is to pay attention to the spacetimematterings of ecologies where resistance practices are already at work cracking cracks for different doings. From there, further activisms can mobilise a larger fracturing to the dominance of datafication narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents autoethnographic short stories that describe an early childhood education and care (ECEC) centre director's work for one year in a municipality in Finland. The purpose of this article is to provide a glimpse into what it is like to enter into an ECEC director position and live everyday ECEC life with economic data that are produced by frequently fluctuating child–staff ratios. This study contributes to a better understanding of the transformational implications of datafication by providing insight into affective interrelations held together by economic aspirations. It shows that datafication is a powerful tool to affect and to be affected in the female-dominated care work of ECEC. The study highlights the possibilities of using an autoethnographic analysis to recognise how data affect the body in data dominated ECEC and how to utilise this very recognition as resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares surveillance-related experiences and attitudes of two generations of media users in countries with different historical surveillance regimes (Estonia, Portugal, and Sweden) and analyzes the predictors of the attitudes toward contemporary surveillance. A large-scale online survey (N = 3221) reveals that attitudes toward online state and corporate surveillance are interrelated; the two attitudinal components are, however, generation-specific, having different predictors. Tolerance toward state surveillance is more characteristic of the older group, being predicted by trustful and obedient attitudes toward state authorities and institutions. Tolerance toward corporate dataveillance is more characteristic of the younger group, being predicted by active and self-confident media use. While the socio-historical context molds the intergenerational gaps in surveillance-related experiences and attitudes, individual-level experiences of state surveillance do not predict tolerance toward either type of contemporary surveillance, suggesting that global techno-cultural developments are probably more powerful factors than past experiences in forming generation-specific attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of digital transformation in welfare provision argue that digital technologies can take over tedious tasks and free resources to provide better care for those in need. Digital technologies, however, are often developed in line with a logic of control and dispositions around surveillance and efficiency which challenge careful engagements. In this conceptual article, we explore emerging tensions in digital welfare arrangements and propose an analytical framework to illuminate interrelations between care and control in values, infrastructures, and work related to the provision of welfare services. Illustrating the application of this framework with three empirical vignettes, we discuss how digital welfare technologies shape relations between state care and control. Considering theories of care in relation to the digital welfare state, we give a nuanced perspective on the contingencies of the digital transformation and add to the literature concerned with social justice by attending to everyday lived experiences in-between control and care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid the increasing reliance on digital tools and services in education, this article examines the datafication and commodification of student life in Denmark. We analyse the web and app (iOS and Android) versions of 45 tools and services that teachers in Danish public primary schools use as part of their teaching, the types of data generated by them, and the market actors harvesting and distributing the user data. The analysis finds that the websites and apps collect significant amounts of user data, use it for functional as well as commercial purposes, and distribute it to a long list of third-party services. In light of these findings, we reflect on how the increasing datafication of school life and the inherent commodification of digital learning challenge established welfare state ideals surrounding public schooling, raise challenges for schools and teachers alike, and create new inequalities amongst students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pressure towards digital education is felt everywhere including in places with extreme digital divides. Resource-constrained educational environments are particularly threatened by datification manifest in the dominant business models of surveillance capitalism as there is less room in such contexts to refuse the 'free' offerings from big tech companies; it is these very contexts which are most vulnerable. Yet educators within such environments are not mere pawns of circumstance. While the realities of their structural constraints may be invisible or obfuscated, educators are driven by their own 'concerns', which in this case pertain to the needs of diverse students in very challenging circumstances as well as to their personal aversion to being monitored. This paper reports on findings from focus groups in a mixture of institutionsin South African education. Archer's theoretical framework provides a lens to show how, despite very little choice, educators critically reflect on their circumstances expressing discomfort and unease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The current paper argues for an onto-genetic account of our relationships with digital technologies, that captures the excessive operation of data and the meta-stabilizing role of emotion in the operation of individuation. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon's (2020a. Individuation in light of notions of form and information. Trans. T. Adkins. London: University of Minnesota Press; 2020b. Individuation in light of notions of form and information: Volume II Supplemental Texts. Trans. T. Adkins. London: University of Minnesota Press.) notions of information and emotion, the paper captures the deep integration of datafication in everyday life, and the operation of emotion to (meta)stabilize the pressure and tension that data generating practices present to psychosocial life. Data can operate across individual and collective life, and therefore present a tension that emotion operates to address in ensuring the persistence of the individual. The paper concludes with an argument for the value of the notion of emotional in-formation for capturing the simultaneity of data and emotion in the ongoing constitution of individuals. This can provide a conceptual foundation for future social scientific analysis focusing on specific data-emotion practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of digital educational platforms has increased in schools, especially during Covid-19, accelerating digital transformation and the expansion of data collection. However, the platformisation phenomenon in this context is still largely unexplored. The present study aims to identify the presence and uses of digital platforms in the educational context of Catalonia and significant changes post-Covid-19 through a validated questionnaire. Results from 491 primary school teachers show that almost 90% of the digital tools used are proprietary platforms belonging to the major technology companies. Many relationships between frequencies and types of tools have been identified as well as a significant evolution of their use in the wake of Covid-19. Some recommendations at different levels are drawn up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘smart city’ has been driven by advances in information and communication technologies, with the aim of integrating these technologies with urban infrastructures for improved optimisation, automation and control. Smart cities have emerged as a response to the challenges faced by megacities and are likely to manifest the ‘datafying’ society in the public space. However, the pervasive nature of data collection, continuous analysis and inference, and long-term data storage result in a potentially problematic reconfiguration of society that undermines individual and collective autonomy. This article proposes the concept of ‘data autonomy’ as a guiding principle for the development of smart cities, addressing challenges related to the potential misuse of personal data, sphere transgression, and datafied gentrification. Section II. explores concerns related to data protection law, which can be understood as a proxy for the relationship between the individual and society, highlighting power dynamics and the autonomy of individuals and communities. Section III. discusses the concept of sphere transgression, where tech giants expand their influence in society without adequate expertise or accountability. Section IV. examines the potential impact of datafied gentrification on individual and collective autonomy. Building on the challenges identified throughout these sections, this paper proposes ‘data autonomy’ as a guiding principle for smart city development in section V., promoting a value-based approach centred on human dignity. To make it practicable, increased interdisciplinary collaboration in the development of smart cities is needed, with a particular focus on improved design and impact assessment methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue aims to problematize past and current socio-technical imaginaries and datafication practices of the rapidly digitizing nation states in South and South East Asia, and gathers critical analyses of where the digital, government and power intersect. The papers in this issue emerge from a workshop on Governing Technologies: Exploring Datafied Practices, Imaginaries, and Digital State Assemblages in Asia convened in October 2022 by Monash University and University of Nottingham Malaysia, where the guest editors worked. The papers engaged with a number of questions that animate our current understandings of how technologies govern and are governed: Who are the (human and non-human) actors propelling these initiatives and new arrangements? What do their discourses around these imaginaries reveal about their ambitions, interests and conflicts? What role do communities and the people play in shaping, adapting and resisting digital plans and practices, and who decides? Providing an introduction to this Special Issue, this editorial presents a conversation amongst the three guest editors of the issue, where they reflect on some aspects of governing technologies as they play out in South and South East Asia, setting the stage for further engagement from the authors in this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the conceptual framework of datafication, dataism and dataveillance, this study investigates beliefs and attitudes regarding datafication and the related privacy and security concerns among individuals with Type 1 diabetes. Qualitative research was conducted through interviews among fifty-two individuals with Type 1 diabetes in Poland and Italy. The findings reveal a dynamic interplay between self-discipline and empowerment. The majority of interviewees emphasized the benefits of technologies for gaining a better understanding of their health condition and for more effective disease management. However, a minority of interviewees perceived the negative effects of datafication, including dataveillance, which leads to hyper-control of the disease, and dataism, characterized by excessive reliance on and dependency on technology. Critical beliefs about technologies fuelled rejection attitudes, leading some interviewees to suspend or abandon their use. Lastly, reflexivity on privacy and security issues appears to be low, particularly among older individuals with lower levels of education and socioeconomic status. This results in a poor understanding and underestimation of the potential risks associated with security and privacy. The findings increase the understanding of the factors that can facilitate or hinder the adoption of technology among people with diabetes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fullness of Black students' experiences in college has yet to be archived. The same can be said of Black people broadly, whose existence has long been reduced by and to what is observable, by systems of power and those at the helm. This is perhaps due to the structural and structural limitations of data collection efforts, or not of interest to decision-makers. Or perhaps, this is a symbol of the impossibility of capturing Black life beyond the physical. Regardless, Black life on college campuses across the globe is systematically reduced to standard institutional measures. This reduction is facilitated by the ongoing datafication of student success—the ways that students' success has been made metric and the ways student success as a socio-political phenomenon has been increasingly governed by data-related practices and discourses. As a result, Black students' material and data realities are (re)constructed, especially through student success data practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates changes in the promissory visions articulated in education reforms around the world. We use structural topic modeling to inductively analyze the content of 9,268 reforms from 215 countries and territories during the period 1970–2018 using the World Education Reform Database. Our findings reveal a decline in traditional management-focused reforms and a rise in reforms related to data and information. We also find an expanding commitment to educational access and inclusion, but reforms framed explicitly in 'rights' language diminish. We argue that the rise of data-centric reforms and the retreat from rights-based approaches may both reflect and contribute to a broader erosion of the liberal world order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital game industry has actively integrated data-driven methods into its core processes. This interview-based study shows how game industry professionals perceive the role of data as part of their everyday work. Analysing the data-related notions and negotiations helps to explicate how mainstream data imaginaries are both reproduced and challenged in the different phases and contexts of game making. The analysis is divided into the following themes: data is everywhere, data is messy, data is constructed and data redefines creativity. The qualitative inquiry shows how the meaning of game data cannot be reduced to individual metrics or analytics services, or new positions like data analysts. Data-driven development is based on particular values and assumptions, and it creates new practices, working cultures and conflicting forms of agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractDatafication, the process where users’ actions online are pervasively recorded, tracked, aggregated, analysed, and exploited by online services in multiple ways, is becoming increasingly common today. However, we know little about how children, especially non-Western children, perceive such practices. Through one-to-one semi-structured interviews with 36 children aged 11–14 from Chinese middle schools, we examined how Chinese children perceive datafication practices. We identified three knowledge gaps in children’s current perceptions of datafication practices online, including their lack of recognition of (i) their data ownership, (ii) data being transmitted across platforms, and (iii) datafication could go beyond video recommendation and include inferences and profiling of their personal aspects. Through contextualising these observations within the Chinese context and its unique online ecosystem, we identified cultural traits in Chinese children’s perceptions of datafication. We drew on education theories to discuss how to support the future digital literacy development and design online platforms for Chinese children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ideal of unfettered data circulation has fallen into crisis. As of today, a growing number of actors are introducing measures to ensure a greater degree of control over the global data pipeline. Combining critical data studies and political theory, this article conceptualises the current technopolitical conjuncture as one of 'planetary data turbulence' in which divergences regarding the production and circulation of data have become the norm. The concept of data turbulence emerges from studies on data friction, but this article contends that the current state of affairs requires expanding the emphasis on technosciences and materiality in these works. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the article shows that attending to antagonism and discourse makes it possible to account for the eminently political forces shaping the circulation of data. The strengths of this framework are illustrated by looking at the articulation of digital sovereignty in different geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines a 'trinity' of interconnected components by Mobileye, a company moving into autonomous driving. However, Mobileye is neither an automotive manufacturer, nor a nominal 'big tech' company, but an established maker of 'bolt-on' advanced driver assist systems (ADAS), able to draw on over 65 million vehicles. Through these devices, Mobileye is undertaking a 'platformisation', transforming from an automotive supplier into a provider of autonomous vehicle (AV) platforms. We characterise this as a 'car-agnostic' approach to autonomous driving. Mobileye represents the advancement, and modulation, of a platform logic into a different type of hardware: the car. To understand the implications of this, we argue that Mobileye acts parasitically in three ways: by inserting itself between driver and vehicle, vehicle manufacturer and vehicle data, and specific vehicles and the emerging AV industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

News outlets have responded to platforms disrupting audience engagement and revenue models by pursuing more stable revenue through paywall subscriptions and membership programs. However, many outlets continue to struggle, and scholars have suggested that outlets experiment with data monetization strategies by asking readers to "pay" with their data – in other words, by implementing a "datawall." We conducted an exploratory landscape analysis of digital news websites and interviewed digital news professionals to evaluate the extent to which datawalls actually exist in the field and to investigate the roles of platformization and datafication. We found that datawalls exist on a spectrum with a complicated relationship to paywalls and that platforms play an important role in the emergence of datawalls that calls for extending the existing conceptual model of platformization. We argue that datawalls represent attempts to adopt platform logics by accumulating audience data; thus, platforms serve as templates for digital news outlets. We discuss the implications of these findings for conceptualizing platformization and datafication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual article theorises the tensioned interplay between digitalization, datafication and automation and subjectness in education by asking what intensifying datafication and automation means for teacher--student relationships and how we understand and approach education. Theoretically, the paper draws on Buber's ideas of the dialogical I--Thou and objectified I--It as the key forms of human relationships. The core argument is that increasing datafication and automation steers the teacher--student relationship towards an objectified I--It relationship instead of the dialogical I--Thou relationship, which Buber (and others such as Biesta, another main influencer of the present paper) saw as the ideal. Literature-informed examples of various forms of educational datafication and automation are provided to support and concretise the arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals and groups increasingly seek to resist the harms and risks of a data-driven society. This essay explores the possibility of individual and collective resistance vis-à-vis datafication, drawing on examples from across the globe. It shows how infrastructure, political agency, and tactics have changed in response to datafication. It reviews six resistance tactics, distinguishing between “defensive resistance” and “productive resistance”: self-defence, subversion, avoidance, literacy, counter-imagination, and advocacy campaigning. Investigating them offers insights on the ability of social actors to contribute to innovation in mobilising practices amidst intrusive surveillance.

The research presented here explores the nuances of data collection and sharing via digital platforms in everyday CrossFit coaching practice. There is a growing body of work on data and digital platforms in CrossFit, though currently there is a lack of understanding of the role of coaches in these processes. Empirically grounding the digital fitness practices of CrossFit coaching is essential for our understanding of the sport, as well as to critically engage with the dominant socio-technical narratives of the digital fitness revolution: narratives that obscure the agency of coaches. This research foregrounds the coaches’ agency and lived experiences, focusing on their everyday coaching practices around data and digital platforms. Six semi-structured in-depth interviews with CrossFit coaches in Sweden were undertaken in 2023. These focused on if, when, how and why they collect, or encourage their participants to collect, data on their training and share this via digital platforms. The findings reveal several different, though interrelated, areas where the CrossFit coaches can be seen as mediating between often competing narratives around data and digital platforms. These everyday practices include mediating between group vs. individual training, data collection and sharing vs. “moving well”, CrossFit's methodology of quantification of fitness vs. the needs of the participants and navigating the techno-solutionist vs. reductionist narratives around digital fitness tracking.