Datafication and data fiction: Narrating data and narrating with data

Datafication and data fiction: Narrating data and narrating with data
Paul Dourish, Edgar Gòmez Cruz
Big Data & Society Journal
Sage Publications, July 4, 2018
Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial 4.0 License
https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951718784083

Data do not speak for themselves. Data must be narrated 0 put to work in particular contexts, sunk into narratives that give them shape and meaning, and mobilized as part of broader processes of interpretation and meaning-making. We examine these processes through the lens of ethnographic practice and, in particular, ethnography’s attention to narrative processes. We draw on a particular case in which digital data must be animated and narrated by different groups in order to examine broader questions of how we might come to understand data ethnographically.