TY - JOUR
T1 - Urban Data Analytics as Research Topic, Method and Ethical Concern
AU - Trottier, Daniel
AU - Lee, Jay
AU - Boy, John D.
N1 - This research was funded by a grant from the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for BOLD Cities
PY - 2022/8/4
Y1 - 2022/8/4
N2 - Local and global business interests assemble images of neighbourhoods from localised knowledge, including disparate forms of public data such as reviews, blog posts, and open data from municipalities and other organisations. (In)visible forms of working with and worrying about neighbourhood data can be understood as an engagement with the neighbourhood’s reputation, or rather its symbolic trajectory: a set of tangible and intangible indicators through which an urban space is known and treated accordingly over time. This paper addresses ethical concerns that emerge from contemporary datafied urban ethnography. We consider a combination of large-scale and bespoke, quantitative, and qualitative analyses of available sources with sustained ethnographic engagement with a Dutch neighbourhood coping with a troubled reputation. While the latter activities can mitigate ethical issues stemming from the former, ethnography in turn raises further concerns of exploitation and risk exposure and should not be treated as a kind of ‘ethical panacea’ for big, open, or public data projects. A multifaceted and interrogative approach to data collection may offer a more rounded account of contemporary urban data practices by drawing upon distinct and possibly conflicting accounts of social life. The challenge is to prioritise under-represented and otherwise marginalised voices in both the design and the dissemination of research on urban data analytics.
AB - Local and global business interests assemble images of neighbourhoods from localised knowledge, including disparate forms of public data such as reviews, blog posts, and open data from municipalities and other organisations. (In)visible forms of working with and worrying about neighbourhood data can be understood as an engagement with the neighbourhood’s reputation, or rather its symbolic trajectory: a set of tangible and intangible indicators through which an urban space is known and treated accordingly over time. This paper addresses ethical concerns that emerge from contemporary datafied urban ethnography. We consider a combination of large-scale and bespoke, quantitative, and qualitative analyses of available sources with sustained ethnographic engagement with a Dutch neighbourhood coping with a troubled reputation. While the latter activities can mitigate ethical issues stemming from the former, ethnography in turn raises further concerns of exploitation and risk exposure and should not be treated as a kind of ‘ethical panacea’ for big, open, or public data projects. A multifaceted and interrogative approach to data collection may offer a more rounded account of contemporary urban data practices by drawing upon distinct and possibly conflicting accounts of social life. The challenge is to prioritise under-represented and otherwise marginalised voices in both the design and the dissemination of research on urban data analytics.
UR - https://www.transcript-publishing.com/chunk_detail_seite.php?doi=10.14361%2Fdcs-2021-070215
U2 - 10.14361/dcs-2021-070215
DO - 10.14361/dcs-2021-070215
M3 - Article
SN - 2364-2114
VL - 7
SP - 311
EP - 328
JO - Digital Culture & Society
JF - Digital Culture & Society
IS - 2
ER -