Datafication

By Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry |||

The concept of “Datafication,” as explored in the article sheds light on the process of quantifying human life into digital data, predominantly for economic gain. While exploring its profound social implications across various fields, and recognizing its potential benefits, the authors however raise several concerns and a call for critical scrutiny of data ownership, regulation, and social justice in the digital era, drawing parallels between datafication and historical colonialism. Download the paper here.

Abstract

Datafication is not just the making of information, which, in one sense, human beings have been doing since the creation of symbols and writing. Rather, datafication is a contemporary phenomenon which refers to the quantification of human life through digital information, very often for economic value. This process has major social consequences. Disciplines such as political economy, critical data studies, software studies, legal theory, and—more recently— decolonial theory, have considered different aspects of those consequences to be important. Fundamental to all such approaches is the analysis of the intersection of power and knowledge.