Expanding Data Imaginaries in Urban Planning:Foregrounding lived experience and community voices in studies of cities with participatory and digital visual methods

“Expanding Data Imaginaries in Urban Planning” synthesizes more than three years of industrial research conducted within Gehl and the Techno–Anthropology Lab at Aalborg University. Through practical experiments with social media images, digital photovoice, and participatory mapmaking, the project explores how visual materials created by citizens can be used within a digital and participatory methodology to reconfigure the empirical ground of data-driven urbanism. Drawing on a data feminist framework, the project uses visual research to elevate community voices and situate urban issues in lived experiences. As a Science and Technology Studies project, the PhD also utilizes its industrial position as an opportunity to study Gehl’s practices up close, unpacking collectively held narratives and visions that form a particular “data imaginary” and contribute to the production and perpetuation of the role of data in urban planning. The dissertation identifies seven epistemological commitments that shape the data imaginary at Gehl and act as discursive closures within their practice. To illustrate how planners might expand on these, the dissertation uses its own data experiments as speculative demonstrations of how to make alternative modes of knowing cities possible through participatory and digital visual methods

Andmepioneeride suurandmetega seotud kujutluspildid: muutunud andmesuhted ja agentsust puudutavad väljakutsed

Väitekirja elektrooniline versioon ei sisalda publikatsiooneSuurandmeid kujutatakse sageli kui midagi müstilist, mis toob kaasa efektiivsema, õiglasema, ning parema hüvede jaotamise ning võimaldab meil paremini mõista ja uurida erinevad ühiskondlikke protsesse. Suurandmetel põhinevate analüüside taga on alati aga (andme) eksperdid, kellel on suur roll nii tänase digiühiskonna kujundamisel kui ka uurimisel. See, kuidas nemad suurandmeid mõistavad ning mil moel uusi andmete kogumist ning analüüsimist puudutavaid võimalusi kasutavad mõjutab aga ka seda, mida nii üksikisikud kui ka teised institutsioonide andmetega seoses teha saavad. Doktoritöö „Andmepioneeride suurandmeid puudutavad kujutluspildid: muutunud andmesuhted ja agentsust puudutavad väljakutsed“ eesmärk on analüüsida suurandmetega seotud kujutelmi – selgitada välja, milliseid võimalusi ning väljakutseid andmeeksperdid kui andmepioneerid näevad seoses suurandmete analüüsimise ja andmetehnoloogiate kasutamisega ning kuivõrd on need seotud ühiskonnas ja meedias domineerivate kujutelmadega. Selle eesmärgi täitmiseks tugineb käesolev töö intervjuudele Eesti andmeekspertidega, süstemaatilisele sotsiaalmeedia andmeuuringuid puudutaval ülevaatel kui ka representatiivsetel populatsiooni küsitluse andmetele. Doktoritöö tulemustest nähtub, et suurandmeid kujutatakse andmeekspertide poolt enamjaolt kui väärtuslikku ressurssi, mis pakub võimalusi muuta otsustusprotsesse kiiremaks, aga ka paremini mõista sotsiaalseid protsesse ja uurida inimeste käitumist. Ekspertide kujutelmades on andmed ka üha enam vaadeldavad kui kaup või kapital, mis on oluliseks konkurentsieeliseks nii era- kui ka avaliku sektori organisatsioonide jaoks. Ka toob töö välja mitmeid takistusi nii suurandmete kasutamisel kui ka uurimisel nagu andmetele juurdepääsu probleemid, ebapiisavad oskused ja teadmised suurandmete analüüside osas, andmete jagamiseks vajalike standardite puudumine, andmesubjekti õiguste kaitseks seotud seaduslikud piirangud, aga ka muutunud andmesuhted.The use of big data is often portrayed both in the media and by practitioners as an opportunity, an increase in efficiency or an opportunity to better control certain processes in society. Data, especially big data, is often referred to as something mystical in these contexts. At the same time, there are always (data) experts behind the analysis based on big data, who play a major role in shaping and researching today's digital society. The aim of the dissertation "Big data imaginaries of data pioneers: changed data relations and challenges to agency" The aim of my thesis was to analyze how are the dominant big data imaginaries actualized and elaborated amongst data pioneers, how has this affected the scholarly practices and challenged the individual and collective agency. To achieve this goal, I interviewed the Estonian data experts, collected data by using a systematic review method as well as representative population survey data. The results of the dissertation show that big data is mostly seen by data experts as a valuable resource that provides tools to improve governance through better and more efficient decision-making. Moreover, it is seen to provide an opportunity to better understand social processes and study human behavior. Data in the imagination of experts is also increasingly seen as commodity or capital, which is a significant competitive advantage for both private and public sector organizations. This thesis also brings out several barriers in relation to using and researching big data like the access to data, insufficient skills and knowledge to gather or analyze (big) data, lack of unified standards needed for sharing data between different parties, legal restrictions usually posed to protect the data subjects’ rights, technological affordances as well as changed data relation

Data criticality

The data moment, we argue, is not a single event, but a multiplicity of encounters that reveal what we call ‘data criticality’. Data criticality draws our attention to those moments of deciding whether and how data will exist, thus rendering data critically relevant to a societal context and imbuing data with ‘liveliness’ and agency. These encounters, we argue, also require our critical engagement. First, we develop and theorize our argument about data criticality. Second, by using predictive policing as an example, we present six moments of data criticality. A description of how data is imagined, generated, stored, selected, processed, and reused invites our reflections about data criticality within a broader range of data practices

The Nordic Data Imaginary

The Nordic countries aim to have a unique place within the European and global health data economy. They have extensive nationally maintained and centralized health data records, as well as numerous biobanks where data from individuals can be connected based on personal identification numbers. Much of this phenomenon can be attributed to the emergence and development of the Nordic welfare state, where Nordic countries sought to systematically collect large amounts of population data to guide decision making and improve the health and living conditions of the population. Recently, however, the so-called Nordic gold mine of data is being re-imagined in a wholly other context, where data and its ever-increasing logic of accumulation is seen as a driver for economic growth and private business development. This article explores the development of policies and strategies for health data economy in Denmark and Finland. We ask how nation states try to adjust and benefit from new pressures and opportunities to utilize their data resources in data markets. This raises questions of social sustainability in terms of states being producers, providers, and consumers of data. The data imaginaries related to emerging health data markets also provide insight into how a broad range of different data sources, ranging from hospital records and pharmacy prescriptions to biobank sample data, are brought together to enable "full-scale utilization" of health and welfare data.Peer reviewe

Engaging the data moment: An introduction

All of the contributions to this special issue are occupied with how to engage data otherwise. This otherwise indexes the rich variety of approaches to data beyond what we are currently witnessing. Whether through the development of politically and ethically relevant forms of data experiments, or the construction of alternative visions of the much-critiqued data infrastructures of powerful platform providers, all the articles reflect upon how we - as scholars and citizens - can live and work with data in ways amenable to diverse, critical, and ethical forms of social existence. This introduction intervenes in this debate in its own particular way, principally by considering what it means to characterise the contemporary as a data moment. The term data moment, we argue, works as a conceptual device calling for more ethical-political engagement with data practices. At the same time, it also retains a temporal inflection. Moments, we claim, are not sequential steps in a linear process, but are themselves productive of, and products of, temporal orders. Moments are also saturated in affect, we argue, and it is such affects that contribute to how particular forms of meaning emerge with/as data. By embracing the compelling empirical, theoretical and ethical challenges of this data moment our ambition with this special issue is to make a modest contribution to how scholars can engage data in the present, while also shaping a future where data are treated critically, ethically, and reflexively

Engaging the data moment: an introduction

All of the contributions to this special issue are occupied with how to engage data otherwise. This otherwise indexes the rich variety of approaches to data beyond what we are currently witnessing. Whether through the development of politically and ethically relevant forms of data experiments, or the construction of alternative visions of the much-critiqued data infrastructures of powerful platform providers, all the articles reflect upon how we - as scholars and citizens - can live and work with data in ways amenable to diverse, critical, and ethical forms of social existence. This introduction intervenes in this debate in its own particular way, principally by considering what it means to characterise the contemporary as a data moment. The term data moment, we argue, works as a conceptual device calling for more ethical-political engagement with data practices. At the same time, it also retains a temporal inflection. Moments, we claim, are not sequential steps in a linear process, but are themselves productive of, and products of, temporal orders. Moments are also saturated in affect, we argue, and it is such affects that contribute to how particular forms of meaning emerge with/as data. By embracing the compelling empirical, theoretical and ethical challenges of this data moment our ambition with this special issue is to make a modest contribution to how scholars can engage data in the present, while also shaping a future where data are treated critically, ethically, and reflexively

Addressing the Black Box of AI – A Model and Research Agenda on the Co-Constitution of Aging and Artificial Intelligence

Algorithmic technologies and (large) data infrastructures, often referred to as Artificial Intelligence (AI), have received increasing attention from gerontological research in the last decade. While there is much literature that dissects and explores the development, application, and evaluation of AI relevant for gerontology, this article makes a novel contribution by critically engaging with the theorizing in this growing field of research. We observe that gerontology’s engagement with AI is shaped by an interventionist logic that situates AI as a black box for gerontological research. We demonstrate how this black box logic has neglected many aspects of AI as a research topic for gerontology and discuss three classical concepts in gerontology to show how they can be used to open various black boxes of aging and AI in the areas: a) the datafication of aging, b) the political economy of AI and aging, and c) everyday engagements and embodiments of AI in later life. In the final chapter, we propose a model of the co-constitution of aging and AI that makes theoretical propositions to study the relational terrain between aging and AI and hence aims to open the black box of AI in gerontology beyond an interventionist logic