A presentation held at the Data Justice Conference 2021 by Daniela van Geenen and Danny Lämmerhirt. It describes different approaches to studying data and data practices ethnographically and offers a literature review of the term data ethnography.

1. (Re-)configuring data ethnography
How to engage with and make sense
of data practices?
Daniela van Geenen, PhD Candidate, University of Siegen
Danny Lämmerhirt, PhD Candidate, University of Siegen

2. Data practices
& ethnographies
How might ethnography engage with and attend to different
data, the practices, settings, and infrastructures involved in
their production and distribution?
What methodological repertoires but also conducts could
help us “do” data ethnography?
How should data ethnography draw from, build upon, or
expand existing methods in order to interrogate situated
knowledges, situations, and practices that digital data are
constituted by and are constitutive of?

3. Literature
review
[“data ethnography”]
[“data” AND
“ethnography”]
Query design
(Early 2020)
Database Results considered
Web of Science (WOS) 16 results
Google Scholar (GS) First 400 results
Communication & Mass
Media (CMM) 396 results
Repository search
Filter articles
Analyse IF 1) title or abstract mention “data” AND
“ethnography”, OR 2) ethnographic work with data,
digital research/technologies/media
Years searched: All
Categorisation
Encode article according to
1) the notion of ethnography; 2) Methodology;
3) Type of article; 4) Central theme
Query triangulation
(May 2021)
SAGE Article Key Word
[“data ethnography”]
Database
Results
considered
SAGE Journals 72 results
WOS 7 results (2013-2020)
GS 57 results (2006-2020)
CMM 61 results (1998-2019)
SAGE
71 results
(2001-2020)
≠ Danish publication
(1990, patient ethnography)
Comparison of articles from both
queries that were based on
1) our analytical categories &
2) “actor categories”
2020: Review informed moderated conversation on
“doing data ethnography”

4. Literature
review

5. Literature
review

6. Topic Related debates
Ethnographies, big
data & data science
● Positivistic arguments for anthropologists “lagging behind” (Pretnar and Podjed 2019) to adopt computational methods,
and develop “big-data augmented ethnography” (Laaksonen et al. 2017).
● Critiques of key ethnographic and data science concepts: context (Seaver 2015), populations (Beuving 2019), or the
partiality and contingency of data (e.g. Bayesian inferences discussed by Knox and Nafus 2018).
● Calls for a “symphonic” social science (Beuving 2019), “big-thick data blending” (Bornakke and Due 2018), theory/data
iterations (Lindgren 2020). Acknowledges need for data-based explorations and reflexive inquiry.
Methodical
innovations to study
data practices
● Studying movements, affects, emotions and experiences with data, e.g. through “sensory ethnography” (Sumartojo et al
2016; Pink, Fors and Berg 2019; or the work of Garnett 2017).
Theorising digital
& data practices
● Creating new analytical vocabularies of data practices, including “data valences” (Neff and Fiore-Gartland 2015), “baseless
data” (Knox 2018), and “broken data” (Pink et al. 2018).
● Developing conceptual work on the material-semiotic and socio-technical aspects characteristic for data practices.
Sites and objects of
study
● Asking what the site of a data practice is (online-offline) requiring multimedia ethnographies (Beneito-Montagut 2019) or
focusing on specific sites like “database ethnographies” (Schuurman 2008) or digital workflows (Antonijevic 2019).
Social studies of
quantification (e.g.
metrics, numbers)
● Platform numbers as capitalization devices (MacKenzie 2017), the Clout score as “self-evaluating assemblage” (Lury and
Gerlitz 2014), the Fico score as infrastructural device (Poon 2007), the work of computational retention metrics in
recommender systems (Seaver 2018).
● Interest in material-semiotic dimensions of numbers, scores, metrics and how they operate in specific settings. Reframes
debates from privacy or freedom of choice to wider functioning of personal data in scores.

7. Data ethnography as research
practice and sensibility
“We add to these discussions a more thorough understanding of
the practice of doing data ethnography. By doing so, we put an
emphasis on the relevance of reflection on the very notion of
expertise in relation to (digital) data and their “making.”
“Doing data ethnography - a moderated conversation and reflection”
Emma Garnett, Minna Ruckenstein, Tommaso Venturini & Malte Ziewitz
in conversation with Daniela van Geenen & Danny Lämmerhirt (alphabetically ordered)

8. Generating
new insights

9. Source: Digital Methods Initiative (University of Amsterdam)
Sites of study
Datasets and their
creation process
Following
engagements
with data
Embedding
engagements with
data in society
Source:
http://yellowdust.intheair.es/
(see also Calvillo 2018 on
“Particular Sensibilities”)
Source: Mika Pantzar,
Minna Ruckenstein &
Veera Mustonen (2016):
Social rhythms
of the heart, Health
Sociology Review, DOI:
10.1080/14461242.201
6.1184580.

10. Source: “Algorithmic Walk” by Broken City Lab
(January 2009)
Source: Data Feminism (D’Ignazio & Klein 2020, Ch. 3 on “Elevate
Emotion and Embodiment”)
Doing data
ethnography
Source: “An Algorithmic Walk” on STS at Oxford
(Øllgaard, June 2012)
& writing
ethnographically

11. Source: Grant Writing Humor Pinterest
Defining data
ethnography?
Data Ethnography
“Sales language”
in grant applications
vs. value of ambiguity in
academic exchange
Fruitful methodological
negotiations & (inter)disciplinary
exchange
or the epitome of
“quali-quantitative
methods”

12. Thank you
Daniela van Geenen
Twitter: @DanielaVGeenen
Email: Daniela.vGeenen@uni-siegen.de
Danny Lämmerhirt
Twitter: @danlammerhirt
Email: danny.laemmerhirt@uni-siegen.de
Forthcoming in Interrogating Datafication: Towards a Praxeology of Data:
“Doing data ethnography - a moderated conversation and reflection”
Emma Garnett, Minna Ruckenstein, Tommaso Venturini & Malte Ziewitz
in conversation with Daniela van Geenen & Danny Lämmerhirt (alphabetically ordered)
@Emmagarnett @minruc @venturini_tom @ziewitz