The politics of data infrastructures contestation: Perspectives for future research

Abstract

In our times of increasing screen dependency, the data infrastructures making possible ‘online’ or ‘virtual’ modalities of work and leisure have been increasingly contested. From the Netherlands to Ireland and Chile, activists have challenged the environmental consequences of energy- and water-intensive data centres, as well as the often undemocratic ways of deciding on their construction. In this piece, I draw on insights from the field of social movement studies to outline four key problems that can help us understand better the bottom-up infrastructural politics of screen media: (1) How can we explain the differential politicization of data infrastructures in various national contexts? (2) How do movements frame their resistance to data infrastructures? (3) How do we define success in the contestation of data infrastructures? (4) To what extent have we observed the transnationalization of data infrastructures contestation? These problems open up potential new directions for research that draws on comparisons and is attentive to diffusion processes across contexts.

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