The DataPublics team presents article at ICA2021

Today the 71st Annual ICA Conference goes live as it like many other conferences this year takes place in a virtual format. Amongst the many video presentations, you can also find the presentation labelled ‘Datafied Publics? Theorizing ‘publics’ and a new research agenda for investigating the hybrid formation of data publics’, which is presented by the DataPublics team.

The main concern of the presented article is to propose a research agenda of how we can meaningfully investigate the ways in which processes of datafication are transforming the formation of publics, what we in this paper conceptualise as ‘data publics’. In order to do so it the first part of the article is a review of previous approaches to the study of publics, which are concerned to some extent with media infrastructures and user agency as the backdrop for the cultivation and sustentation of publics. The latter part discusses these approaches and how different elements from them can inform the study of ‘data publics’.

The presentation will be available for all participants at the virtual conference and can be found in the Philosophy, Theory and Critique Division.

The article is the first of many works that will be published as part of the four-year research project funded by the Velux Foundation.