The social life of digital methods in psychology: Situating digital methods in the new data politics

Abstract

In this paper I present some preliminary analyses of what is at stake in the growing use of digital methods in psychology. Their exponential rise in the discipline has scientific consequences, because such methods embody unarticulated assumptions that derive from their cultural, technical, or commercial origins. Such methods also rearticulate researcher-participant relations in new ways, and reframe what it means to take part in psychological research. Additionally, strong calls for psychologists to exploit the potentials of Big Data to analyze and influence human action in real time signal the growing entanglement of psychology, computer science, and the accumulative tactics of the digital economy. As part of a larger project to trace the social life of digital methods in psychology, my aim here is to link disparate literature in psychology, science and technology studies, and critical data studies, to situate such methods in the broader context of technologically afforded shifts in modes of economic and knowledge production. I argue that digital methods are in urgent need of analysis, not only in terms of the interpretive frames, modes of participation, and courses of action they afford, but as research media that circulate in a larger digital and political economic ecosystem, and with associations that span multiple sociotechnical assemblages.