Emerging from the shadows of datafication

Abstract

Everything is further datafied and digitised during the period of COVID-19 in mainland China;a process that directly and strongly confirms three overlapping attitudes towards data in young people’s everyday existence. One is the common sense that there is no way to protect private data from official supervisory control. The second one is cynical - it is difficult to understand the way social and political life is represented because the world is structured and confused by algorithms as well as bureaucracy. Based on these two judgements, the final attitude is that the most important fight is to save all data connected to useful information or critical comments before its being forbidden (by the State) or deleted completely by the technical system. These overlapping attitudes form the basis of today’s datafication education. This chapter focuses on two teaching examples from an undergraduate course in cultural studies, exploring how students understand the meaning of deletion and algorithm-writing apps. The chapter describes tensions and difficulties involved in the struggle between experiences of critical pedagogy and students’ lived realities. It argues a critical way to do this is to save and recode data to make cultural facts (from Émile Durkheim’s social facts) in order to avoid deletion. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Luci Pangrazio, Julian Sefton-Green;individual chapters, the contributors.