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The article explores the concept of privacy for teens in the era of datafication, where personal information is commodified and used for various purposes. It discusses how technologies like mobile phones, privacy settings on social media, and passwords impact teens' ability to control their personal information and maintain privacy. The article highlights the challenges teens face in navigating privacy in a data-driven world and emphasizes the importance of understanding teens' agency in managing their digital identities. [Extracted from the article]

Increasing attention to BD4D has raised scholarly concern, reflecting on its assumptions and practices. However, little is known about the extent to which it is reflected at the institutional level. Examining recent publications from major development institutions, this article deconstructs contemporary BD4D discourses. Despite years of criticisms against the enthusiasm of datafication, the analysis illustrates the persistence of materialistic and modernistic discourses within which big data becomes analogous to the new form of natural resource, knowledge, and an engine necessary for addressing socio-economic problems and sustainable development. It demonstrates how treating big data as such depoliticizes data extractivism while endorsing exogenous epistemologies and technocentric development models at the expense of critically questioning the enduring structures underlying global development and data infrastructures. Constructive deconstruction of BD4D enables us to think beyond asking what big data can 'do better for' development toward asking how development should also 'do better with' big data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine vision is one the most consequential applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in contemporary society. This article analyzes how companies that produce machine vision technology articulate what it means for machines to "see." Through a thematic analysis of more than 200 corporately produced documents, we examine the companies' product offerings and identify three discursive techniques that entwine basic explanations of emerging technology with the ideologies of AI producers: dismantling sight into technical action, expanding the parameters of sight, and seeing through data. These recurring corporate narratives organize perceptions of automation, educating outsiders how to value computational outcomes and support them through rearranging the real-world conditions of labor. We argue that the social power of machine vision is not only in how it detects objects, but also in how it arbitrates what work is visible in visions of the industry's future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Derecho Privado (0123-4366) is the property of Universidad Externado de Colombia, Departmento de Derecho Civil and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article seeks to theorize and explore the emergence of the datademic phenomenon based on the intertwining between the concepts of datafication and big data with regard to journalistic coverage of Covid-19. To this end, an exploratory-descriptive and theoreticalconceptual bibliographical research was carried out analyzing data visualizations from digital media. As results, it discusses: a) the processes of datafication and big data as triggers of the concept of datademic; b) the dimension of data in the pandemic context based on data visualizations and c) the typology of data arising as prominent in the dissemination of coronavirus information. It is considered that the big data-datafication-datademic triad can constitute viable practices in the face of the deluge of data, at the same time that data management and management issues in this process can make understanding pandemic data unfeasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The objective of this article is to conceptualize the data collected from the work of communication professionals, connected to the internet and platform companies, especially big techs. The question that guides the argument developed here is: how, what and why is data collected from workers connected to the internet, users of digital platform services? This question structures the ongoing research at the Communication and Work Research Center of the University of São Paulo. [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]

The emergence of digital technology has significantly transformed the lending landscape. One example of the rising influence of digital lending practice targeting university students in Indonesia is Cicil. This digital-based lending platform provides a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending service that aims to cater to higher education students who have been frequently excluded from various lending programs. This study explores the deep mediatization of loans within the ecosystem of digital platforms and how it transforms lending practices, as provided by Cicil. Utilizing the concept of deep mediatization by Andreas Hepp (2020) and a case study method, this study reveals that the logic of digital media has been adapted to and transformed lending practices. The practices of lending are becoming driven by datafication and connectivity between loan providers, users, and the digital platform ecosystem, leading to a spatially disembedded financial transaction and generating a sense of participatory and inclusivity in lending practices.

The datafication of workplaces permits employers an increased information advantage over workers during bargaining. Instrumenting tools (and workers themselves), aggregating data and applying sophisticated analytic techniques can give employers greater insight into what is happening in workplaces. Data privacy laws like GDPR provide protections for individual workers but can make it more difficult for worker representatives to access workplace data for collective bargaining because employers can reasonably argue that releasing such data would put them in breach of their legal responsibilities in relation to data privacy. Aggregate summaries of datasets provided by employers would comply with data privacy laws, but are susceptible to manipulation. I argue that using differential privacy, a technique for processing data that makes it harder to determine who contributed data to a dataset, would remove an obstacle to employers sharing workplace data with worker representatives.

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]

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]

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]

Copyright of Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal (LL) is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

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]

Public sector data is increasingly seen as a key resource for value creation in the private sector across a wide range of countries. Situated within studies on technology policies, this paper investigates how the idea of data as a resource has become embedded in public policy through a case study on the Norwegian context. Which policy problem exist for which technological developments seem to provide the best solutions? As documents are an important site of governance, we trace the imaginary of value creation through public data by studying the main datafication policy documents in Norway. By making visible the self-referencing practiced in policy reports, we illustrate how datafication policies are based on fictional calculation-based anticipations. We show how the Norwegian government positions itself as a facilitator, rather than regulator of data markets. Our analysis captures the technological determinism driving public policy. In addition, we show how supranational actors and consultancy agencies play an important role in constructing the Nordic data imaginary. We argue that the act of producing policy papers is in itself an important action keeping the imaginary alive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The integration of automated decision-making systems has transformed police work and our understanding of security and surveillance. Despite a growing theoretical literature on shifts in policing due to widespread analytical platform adoption, the public's understanding and perception of these changes are largely unexplored. This study aims to bridge this gap by empirically examining citizens' perspectives on the new dynamics of police work in two societies with varying levels of experience with automation in the public sector: Estonia and Sweden. By combining data from a representative, scenario-based quantitative survey conducted among the general population (n = 2500) and qualitative storytelling techniques implemented in classroom settings with students (n = 23) who take classes with a focus on critical data studies, this research seeks to investigate people's imaginaries, concerns, and expectations regarding predictive policing. The findings shed light on the observation that, in the era of data, the police are not solely perceived as an institution ensuring security or as a source of citizen apprehension related to surveillance. Rather, the transformations in police work are understood as 'distant technologies', wherein individuals, be they, citizens, or police officers, are increasingly removed from the direct application of these technologies. This article uncovers that when citizens possess low levels of trust in the police, the implementation of automation can further exacerbate the disconnect between citizens and the state. Furthermore, this research proposes an innovative approach to studying automated systems by combining scenario-based and storytelling methods, thereby making a valuable contribution to methodologies employed in the study of data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading the significance of place as mediated through digital knowledge systems, this article expands recent debates around digital Bildung to include the semanticization of culture. The latter term refers to how data infrastructures correlate entities in their factuality in lived contexts, making them retrievable by digital devices and amenable to predictive inference by machines. Building on the analysis of others who characterize digital Bildung as the production of a semantic self-consciousness in learners, the article seeks to address the role of information systems technique in this production. It locates certain core intellectual justifications for the semantic mediation of culture in the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce. Ultimately diagnosing digital Bildung as enculturation to Peircean metaphysics, the article goes on to thematize certain conceptual limitations of our epistemic emplacement via digital systems. Relying on other philosophers to surface these limitations—Jürgen Habermas, James Williams, and Jean-Hugues Barthélémy—the article concludes more polemically by suggesting that defining digital Bildung on the basis of semantic self-consciousness as it is currently understood may exacerbate a crisis of sense in datafied societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Datafication is embedded in cultural, economic, and political power structures which reinforce social inequities. Instead of simply providing news professionals with insights on user behavior, datafication may facilitate maldistribution, misrecognition and misrepresentation. Applying justice theory on audience data practices based on n = 31 interviews with news professionals working for global and national news organizations (including BBC World, The Guardian, Al-Jazeera English, and The New York Times), this study examines their experiences and perceptions of how audience data practices mitigate and/or reinforce inequity in journalism. Findings show that maldistribution, misrecognition, and misrepresentation are manifest in journalistic audience data practices, as inequities are reinforced when data is transformed into economic capital. At the same time, news professionals who possess cultural and economic resources can both mitigate inequity and use data for greater recognition and representation. The article thus contributes to the literature by (1) conceptualizing audience data as a cultural, economic and political good, (2) connecting data practices to both the reproduction and mitigation of social inequity, and finally, (3) examining these processes on a global scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The voice biometrics industry is promised today as a new center of digital innovation. Tech companies and state agencies are massively investing in speech recognition and analysis systems, pushed by the belief that the acoustics of voice contain unique individual characteristics to convert into information and value through artificial intelligence. This article responds to this current development by exploring the under-researched datafication of the auditory realm to reveal how the sound of voice is emerging as a site for identity construction by both states and corporations. To do so, we look at two different case studies. First, we examine a patent granted to the streaming service Spotify, which aims to improve the platform's music recommendation system by analyzing users' speech. Second, we discuss the use of voice biometrics in German asylum procedures, where the country of origin of undocumented asylum seekers is determined through accent analysis. Through these seemingly distinct case studies, we identify not only the common assumptions behind the rationale for adopting voice biometrics, but also important differences in the way the private sector and the State determine identity through the analysis of the sounding voice. These two entities are rarely examined together and are often conflated when addressing practices of auditory surveillance. Thus, our comparative and contrastive approach contributes to existing scholarship that questions the claimed efficiency and ethics of voice biometrics' extractive practices, further defining the operations and assumptions of the private sector and the State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper is a case study of the making of data-driven healthcare and anticipation work done by developer-experts in a project for implementation of an integrated patient data management platform in Finland. We focus on 'personalised treatment plan', a trope that experts regularly use when talking about the objectives of data management reform and their wishes for datafication of healthcare. We conceive of the personalised plan not primarily as a future vision or an outcome, but rather a tool of anticipation of work. Our analysis demonstrates two purposes for which the developer-experts used this tool. First, the plan enabled them to reconfigure the general expectations of datafication actionable and adoptable in the actual world of healthcare and to articulate datafication technology-to-come as concrete hopes and wishes, plans and assessments in the contexts of clinical practices and administration. Second, experts used the idea of a personalised plan for reasoning over and management of their own work. Among the fuzziness and commotion of the complex project, the plan helped them to create and maintain a workable order between the expectations, tasks and functions that the datafication technology should accomplish in healthcare in the future. Furthermore, we discuss the limitations of anticipation to take the specific political and economic contexts into account, which made the developers unprepared for the political interruption of the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that Latin American scholarship and movement practice are key to understanding the dynamics of the datafied society and countering its inequities. Examining the sources of inspiration of a frontrunner seeking to decolonize the datafied society – the Big Data from the South Initiative (BigDataSur) – we review Martín-Barbero's ontological shift from media to mediations, Freire's methodology centring individual agency and empowerment as a structural task of society, Mignolo's invite to take decoloniality as a praxis rather than merely an idea, Rodríguez's first-hand engagement with technology at the margins, Escobar's autonomous design for the pluriverse, and the critical ecology of eco-social movements. We engage with a new generation of Latin American thinkers who turn their gaze to core problems of today's systems of knowledge production, be they media or academia. Learning from these scholars, we warn against decolonial reductionism, namely the trend to evoke decolonial ideas and theories without fully committing to putting them into practice. We maintain that to decolonize datafication, we ought to also change how we generate knowledge about the datafied society. We outline three practical strategies that foster an open-ended dialogue on alternative approaches to datafication and scientific practice: multilingualism, public scholarship, and mentorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children and young people's online privacy is increasingly challenged by the datafication of the digital world, and this is an increasingly important area of policy concern. Understanding what young people understand online privacy to be, and what they want done to protect it, is key to creating effective and rights-realizing policy responses. This article explores young people's perceptions across four countries and finds they have nuanced understandings about online privacy and clear, robust ideas about how to improve it. Context mattered, and their online privacy concerns and ideal protections were often informed by their socio-political context and awareness of and trust in datafication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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