IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/socres/v24y2019i3p414-429.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Datafied Citizens in the Age of Coerced Digital Participation

Author

Listed:
  • Veronica Barassi

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between surveillance capitalism, big data, and the emergence of a new type of datafied citizenship by looking at two different, yet interconnected, dimensions. In the first place, it considers how under surveillance capitalism individuals are being profiled simultaneously as consumer and citizen subjects by a complex political economic infrastructure that brings private and public entities together. In the second place, it argues that surveillance capitalism depends on the systematic coercion of digital participation , which forces citizens to comply with data technologies and give up their personal data. If we want to understand the extent of these transformation, the article argues, we need to look at children. Children have traditionally been excluded from debates about citizenship because they have often been understood as not-yet citizens or future citizens. Yet, in the study of the relationship between data and citizenship, children today are the key. They are the very first generation of citizens who are datafied from before they are born and are coerced into digitally participating to society through the data traces produced, collected, and processed by others without their consent or control. Drawing on the findings of the Child | Data | Citizen project, an ethnographically informed research project on big data and family life in the UK and US, this article will highlight some of the democratic challenges that emerge when we think about data, surveillance capitalism, and citizenship in everyday life.

Suggested Citation

  • Veronica Barassi, 2019. "Datafied Citizens in the Age of Coerced Digital Participation," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 24(3), pages 414-429, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:24:y:2019:i:3:p:414-429
    DOI: 10.1177/1360780419857734
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1360780419857734
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1360780419857734?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nick Couldry & Alison Powell, 2014. "Big data from the bottom up," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 57941, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Christopher Kelty & Aaron Panofsky & Morgan Currie & Roderic Crooks & Seth Erickson & Patricia Garcia & Michael Wartenbe & Stacy Wood, 2015. "Seven dimensions of contemporary participation disentangled," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(3), pages 474-488, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yu Zhang & Hanyang Cao & Wang Zhang & Yating Wang, 2023. "How Digital Skills Influence on Digital Participation in China? The Mediating Roles of Online Interpersonal Communication and Online Immersion," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, December.
    2. Atabey, Ayça & Pothong, Kruakae & Livingstone, Sonia, 2023. "Glossary of terms relating to children’s digital lives," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119728, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Natalya KOSTKO & Mariya BATYREVA & Irina PECHERKINA & Oksana LAZAREVA, 2021. "Are Smart Technologies An Instrument Of Active City Dwellers?," Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, Research Centre in Public Administration and Public Services, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 16(3), pages 73-91, August.
    4. Bindiya Dutt, 2023. "Wellbeing Amid Digital Risks: Implications of Digital Risks, Threats, and Scams on Users’ Wellbeing," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(2), pages 355-366.
    5. Kaarina Nikunen & Sanna Valtonen, 2022. "Precariousness and Hope: Digital Everyday Life of the Undocumented Migrants Explored Through Collaborative Photography," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(2), pages 218-229.
    6. Mariya Stoilova & Sonia Livingstone & Rishita Nandagiri, 2020. "Digital by Default: Children’s Capacity to Understand and Manage Online Data and Privacy," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 197-207.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thiel, Thorsten, 2020. "Demokratie in der digitalen Konstellation," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 331-349.
    2. Nam, Jinyoung & Jung, Yoonhyuk, 2022. "Exploring fans’ participation in digital media: Transcreation of webtoons," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(10).
    3. Joanna Sleigh & Effy Vayena, 2021. "Public engagement with health data governance: the role of visuality," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-12, December.
    4. Johnson, Michael P. & Midgley, Gerald & Chichirau, George, 2018. "Emerging trends and new frontiers in community operational research," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 268(3), pages 1178-1191.
    5. Darren J Reed, 2020. "Dancing with Data: Introducing a Creative Interactional Metaphor," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 25(4), pages 533-548, December.
    6. Berg, Sebastian & Rakowski, Niklas & Thiel, Thorsten, 2020. "Die digitale Konstellation. Eine Positionsbestimmung," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 30(2), pages 171-191.
    7. Nina Cesare & Hedwig Lee & Tyler McCormick & Emma Spiro & Emilio Zagheni, 2018. "Promises and Pitfalls of Using Digital Traces for Demographic Research," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(5), pages 1979-1999, October.
    8. Julien Mercille, 2021. "Inclusive Smart Cities: Beyond Voluntary Corporate Data Sharing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(15), pages 1-13, July.
    9. Benjamin N Jacobsen, 2022. "‘You Can’t Delete a Memory’: Managing the Data Past on Social Media in Everyday Life," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 27(4), pages 1003-1019, December.
    10. Benedetta Brevini, 2017. "Metadata Laws, Journalism and Resistance in Australia," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(1), pages 76-83.
    11. Dorien Zandbergen & Justus Uitermark, 2020. "In search of the Smart Citizen: Republican and cybernetic citizenship in the smart city," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(8), pages 1733-1748, June.
    12. Talia Berniker & Lee Humphreys, 2024. "Surveillance Working Groups as Geomedia Governance," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 12.
    13. Andrés Luque-Ayala & Simon Marvin, 2015. "Developing a critical understanding of smart urbanism?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(12), pages 2105-2116, September.
    14. Beth Coulthard & John Mallett & Brian Taylor, 2020. "Better Decisions for Children with “Big Data”: Can Algorithms Promote Fairness, Transparency and Parental Engagement?," Societies, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-16, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:24:y:2019:i:3:p:414-429. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.