The following work presents an ethnography of this idea – that data, particularly digital data, makes a difference. The approach was in Science and Technology Studies and theories of difference to examine dominant imaginaries of digital data and its contradictory impacts on groups of different social categorizations. To guide my activities, the inquiry is centered upon a question of difference, namely, through interactions with makers, practitioners, and users of self-tracking devices, I sought to identify how social differences were encountered, made sense of, and produced through digital tools. I interacted with self-tracking practices across three levels that captured institutional, community, and individual practices to engage with this question. The findings from this work speak to three processes in which self-tracking tools made a difference, specifically racial differences, productive enabling both the reproduction of normative whiteness and the decentering of it. This work seeks to contribute to eliciting the values and biases of digital practices that can have stratifying social impacts.
Read
