Data by design: Shaping data-producing subjectivities through self-tracking

Abstract Recent research into self-tracking devices challenges dominant understandings that such technologies provide wearers with “mechanical objectivity” over their monitoring of their bodies, instead highlighting how the so-called “objectivity” is situated within broader social contexts. In this article we explore the social phenomena arising from the introduction of multiple sensor technologies (activity trackers, productivity monitoring software, and video cameras) in Hong Kong secondary school classrooms within the context of an interdisciplinary research project on digital citizenship. Using participant observation of social interactions between the school students and the research team amidst the implementation of self-tracking technologies in the classroom, our study documents the negotiations surrounding the generation of self-tracking data. It shows how shortcomings in self-tracking data produced call into question persistent expectations of objectivity attached to self-tracking devices, alongside hopes that their use would engender specific forms of engagement with data amongst students. In response, we propose the concept of “data producing subjectivities” as a complement to the existing concept of “situated objectivity.” Taken together, these concepts could contribute to scholarship beyond the realm of self-tracking, providing ways to more fully account for the co-constitutive nature of the production of data and personhood in the contemporary information era.