Empirical approaches to infrastructures for datafication: Introduction to the special issue

Abstract

This article introduces a special issue exploring emerging empirical approaches to studying infrastructures for datafication and their social, political, and economic implications. The merits of empirical research on infrastructures for datafication are drawn out across seven articles offering diverse methodological entry points to develop our understanding of how datafication processes operate across everyday life settings, sectors, and institutions. The contributions span multiple levels of infrastructural analysis, from tracking ecologies to digital platforms and chatbots. They also cover a range of core questions regarding the relationship and power dynamics between private and public institutions, and between big technology companies and everyday citizenhood. In illuminating how infrastructures for datafication operate, for whom and with what ends, the special issue extends a fruitful dialogue between infrastructure studies and people-centric approaches to datafication and opens avenues for infrastructure research across disciplines to create more coherent understandings of how specific technological operations shape social life.