Accounting for the social: Investigating commensuration and Big Data practices at Facebook

This study explores Big Data practices at Facebook through an investigation of the role of commensuration or ‘the transformation of different qualities into a common metric’ in the structuration of analysis and interaction with a major online social media platform. It proposes a conceptual framework and demonstrates the empirical potential of a pragmatic approach based on reading published materials and available documentation. Facebook's Data Warehousing and Analytics Infrastructure serves as an illustrative example to begin tracing out and describe data assemblages in more detail. In being attentive to the motivations, drivers and challenges engineers face when dealing with Big Data, it is argued that their solutions can enable and support but also constrain specific analytical and transactional capabilities or data flows between various devices and actors. The analysis thus moves beyond methodological critiques of the utility of Big Data that lack empirical support and specificity. It is further argued that analytics not just describe but actively participate in the enactment of social worlds, thereby opening possibilities for new markets or market segments to arise. Online sociality accounts for a model of the social that makes it visible and measurable qua markets inviting data recontextualisation and the creation of value along multiple axes. Contra Facebook’s claim to make the web more ‘social’, an investigation of commensuration brings to the fore the question how the social is accounted for in the first place

Counter-Mapping Surveillance : A Critical Cartography of Mass Surveillance Technology After Snowden

This article critically examines mass surveillance technology revealed by Snowden’s disclosures. It addresses that we do not only live in a society where surveillance is deeply inscribed but more urgently, that it is increasingly difficult to study surveillance when its technologies and practices are difficult to distinguish from everyday routines. Considerably, many of the technologies and systems utilised for surveillance purposes were not originally designed as proper surveillance technologies. Instead, they have effectively become surveillance technologies by being enrolled into a particular surveillant assemblage. Three contributions are made towards critical scholarship on surveillance, intelligence, and security. First, a novel empirical cartographic methodology is developed that employs the vocabularies of assemblages and actor–networks. Second, this methodology is applied to critically examine global mass surveillance according to Snowden. Multiple leaked data sources have been utilised to trace actors, their associations amongst each other, and to create several graphical maps and diagrams. These maps provide insights into actor types and dependence relations described in the original disclosed documents. Third, the analytical value of three ordering concepts as well as the logistics of surveillance are explored via notable actors and actor groups. In short, this contribution provides empirical cartographic methods, concepts, and analytical targets for critically examining surveillance technology and its particular compositions. It addresses challenges of resisting mass surveillance and some forms of data activism, and calls for the continuing proliferation of counter-maps to facilitate grounded critique, to raise awareness, and to gain a foothold for meaningful resistance against mass surveillance

Counter-Mapping Surveillance : A Critical Cartography of Mass Surveillance Technology After Snowden

This article critically examines mass surveillance technology revealed by Snowden’s disclosures. It addresses that we do not only live in a society where surveillance is deeply inscribed but more urgently, that it is increasingly difficult to study surveillance when its technologies and practices are difficult to distinguish from everyday routines. Considerably, many of the technologies and systems utilised for surveillance purposes were not originally designed as proper surveillance technologies. Instead, they have effectively become surveillance technologies by being enrolled into a particular surveillant assemblage. Three contributions are made towards critical scholarship on surveillance, intelligence, and security. First, a novel empirical cartographic methodology is developed that employs the vocabularies of assemblages and actor–networks. Second, this methodology is applied to critically examine global mass surveillance according to Snowden. Multiple leaked data sources have been utilised to trace actors, their associations amongst each other, and to create several graphical maps and diagrams. These maps provide insights into actor types and dependence relations described in the original disclosed documents. Third, the analytical value of three ordering concepts as well as the logistics of surveillance are explored via notable actors and actor groups. In short, this contribution provides empirical cartographic methods, concepts, and analytical targets for critically examining surveillance technology and its particular compositions. It addresses challenges of resisting mass surveillance and some forms of data activism, and calls for the continuing proliferation of counter-maps to facilitate grounded critique, to raise awareness, and to gain a foothold for meaningful resistance against mass surveillance

Counter-Mapping Surveillance: A Critical Cartography of Mass Surveillance Technology After Snowden

This article critically examines mass surveillance technology revealed by Snowden’s disclosures. It addresses that we do not only live in a society where surveillance is deeply inscribed but more urgently, that it is increasingly difficult to study surveillance when its technologies and practices are difficult to distinguish from everyday routines. Considerably, many of the technologies and systems utilised for surveillance purposes were not originally designed as proper surveillance technologies. Instead, they have effectively become surveillance technologies by being enrolled into a particular surveillant assemblage. Three contributions are made towards critical scholarship on surveillance, intelligence, and security. First, a novel empirical cartographic methodology is developed that employs the vocabularies of assemblages and actor–networks. Second, this methodology is applied to critically examine global mass surveillance according to Snowden. Multiple leaked data sources have been utilised to trace actors, their associations amongst each other, and to create several graphical maps and diagrams. These maps provide insights into actor types and dependence relations described in the original disclosed documents. Third, the analytical value of three ordering concepts as well as the logistics of surveillance are explored via notable actors and actor groups. In short, this contribution provides empirical cartographic methods, concepts, and analytical targets for critically examining surveillance technology and its particular compositions. It addresses challenges of resisting mass surveillance and some forms of data activism, and calls for the continuing proliferation of counter-maps to facilitate grounded critique, to raise awareness, and to gain a foothold for meaningful resistance against mass surveillance