Project Details - Ciência_Iscte

Description

One of the biggest contemporary challenges for social sciences is the emergence of Big Data practices and infrastructures (Couldry, 2020). Critique of practices of datafication (Van Dijck, 2014) and their role in the corporate (re)construction of social life have already emerged across communications and media research. Scholars have questioned the phenomenon of big data (Borgman, 2016, Boyd and Crawford, 2012), emphasizing the spatial nature of data manufacturing and emerging data divides (Andrejevic, 2014, Dalton et al. 2016). Some recent studies have emphasized “data justice” (Sourbati and Behrendt, 2020) as a significant issue to be addressed in data-driven government and policy making and thus implying a critical need for studies that demystify the transnational process of data manufacturing as secretive, non-transparent and intimidating (to global or national security). Data is the newest and most coveted raw material and is often extracted by transnational companies (platforms), that are not transparent to the host or local authorities.

How can we make these companies more accountable and improve fairness in data governance?

In order to answer this vital question, this project will use the empirical example of data manufacturing along Digital Silk Road (part of Chinese Belt and Road Initiative) to understand the emerging relations in data governance between transnational corporate entities, local authorities and local customers (and citizens), and to suggest ways of mitigating the emerging frictions.

Specifically, following methodological suggestions of previous scholars (Lehtiniemi and Haapoja, 2020) it will look at data arrangements and policies that govern these arrangements in two specific domains: smart city infrastructure and smart port logistics.

The goal of the study is to investigate the processes of data manufacturing and data governance exemplified by the development of DSR’s digital infrastructure.

The specific objectives are:

1. To map the broad scope of BRI’s current initiatives of digital infrastructuralization related to data-manufacturingoperations by Chinese companies.

2. Using the cases (SafeCity and SmartPort) to examine the transnational nature of data manufacturing.

3. To analyze the frictions emerging in the local/urban governance of data.

The KEY research question of the study: How is the process of data manufacturing governed, and what are its key structuring elements?

Methodologically, the project will use the critical data studies (Kushner, 2013, Pasquale, 2015, Seaver, 2013) and media theory (Couldry and Mejias, 2019, Kitchin, 2018) to evaluate how new power asymmetries emerge in a new data extractive regimes. Specifically, it will develop and elaborate the concept of digital entrapment in order to examine process through which local governance becomes technologically locked-in and dependent on the supply of technological solutions by Chinese companies. Digital entrapments are defined as legal and technological loopholes and assemblages, practices that contribute to frictions between data capturing companies and hosts (often lower-income countries).

Internal Partners

Research Centre	Research Group	Role in Project	Begin Date	End Date
CIES-Iscte	--	Partner	2023-06-08	2029-06-07

External Partners

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Project Team

Name	Affiliation	Role in Project	Begin Date	End Date
Denis Nickolayevich Zuev	Integrated Researcher (CIES-Iscte);	Global Coordinator	2023-06-08	2029-06-07

Project Fundings

Reference/Code	Funding DOI	Funding Type	Funding Program	Funding Amount (Global)	Funding Amount (Local)	Begin Date	End Date
2022.06888.CEECIND	--	Contract	Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia - CEEC Individual - 5ª Ed. - Portugal	Nível 120 TRU	Nível 120 TRU	2023-06-08	2029-06-07

Publication Outputs

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Related References in the Media

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Other Outputs

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Project Files

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