Datafication and data fiction: Narrating data and narrating with data

• Published in: Big data & society Vol. 5; no. 2
• Main Authors: Dourish, Paul, Gómez Cruz, Edgar
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01-07-2018; SAGE Publishing
• Subjects: Ethnography; datafication; temporality; trajectory; narrative
• ISSN: 2053-9517; 2053-9517
• DOI: 10.1177/2053951718784083

Data do not speak for themselves. Data must be narrated—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.