Taking up the challenges of the datafication of culture, as well as of the scholarship of cultural inquiry itself, this collection contributes to the critical debate about data and algorithms. How can we understand the quality and significance of current socio-technical transformations that result from datafication and algorithmization? How can we explore the changing conditions and contours for living within such new and changing frameworks? How can, or should we, think and act within, but also in response to these conditions?

This collection brings together various perspectives on the datafication and algorithmization of culture from debates and disciplines within the field of cultural inquiry, specifically (new) media studies, game studies, urban studies, screen studies, and gender and postcolonial studies. It proposes conceptual and methodological directions for exploring where, when, and how data and algorithms (re)shape cultural practices, create (in)justice, and (co)produce knowledge.

Karin van Es is Associate Professor of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University and is Project Lead Humanities at Utrecht Data School. Her main research concerns the datafication and platformization of culture and society.

Nanna Verhoeff is Professor of Screen Cultures and Society in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. She initiated the research group [urban interfaces] and is co-lead of the Open Cities platform at Utrecht University. Her research on urban media combines perspectives from (digital) media and performance studies contributes to the interdisciplinary methodological development of the creative humanties.

Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Situating Data as Cultural Inquiry (Nanna Verhoeff and Karin van Es)
Practices
Coffee Roasters’ Data Vernacular: On the Entanglement of Digital Data and Craft (Markus Stauff, Pauline van Romondt Vis, and Karin van Es)
The Agricultural Data Imaginary: Precision Farming’s Reinforcement of the Productivist Approach to Agriculture (Eggo Müller)
Controversing Datafication through Media Architecture (Corelia Baibarac Duignan, Julieta Matos Castaño, Anouk Geenen, and Michiel de Lange)
Streaming Against the Environment: Digital Infrastructures, Video Compression, and the Environmental Footprint of Video Streaming (Marek Jancovic and Judith Keilbach)
Out of the Bin, into the Open: Looking at the Mediating and Performing Material Afterlives of Data (Tamalone van den Eijnden)
Justice
Data as Boundary Objects, Datafication as Boundary Work (Koen Leurs)
The Datafication of Racialization and the Pursuit of Equality: The Case of the “Barometer Culturele Diversiteit” (Gerwin van Schie)
Caged by Data: Exposing the Politics of Facial Recognition Through Zach Blas’ Face Cages (Rosa Wevers)
Dirty Computers versus the New Jim Code: Janelle Monáe’s Datafied Performance (Dan Hassler-Forest)
Knowledges
How Eva Louise Young (1861-1939) Found Me: On the Performance of Metadata in Knowledge Production (Iris van der Tuin)
Interstitial Data: Tracing Metadata in Archival Search Systems (Jasmijn Van Gorp)
Data and Algorithms in Transition: A Diachronic Affordance Analysis Perspective (Stefan Werning)
Schooled by Dashboards? Learning Platforms’ Performance-Centered Pedagogy and its Impact on Teaching (Niels Kerssens)
Agendas
Creative Urban Methods for the Datafied City (Nanna Verhoeff, Michiel de Lange, and Sigrid Merx)
Investigating the Datafied Society: Entrepreneurial Research as Approach (Mirko Tobias Schäfer, Karin van Es, and Iris Muis)
Big Data and the Global South: A Case for Dialogue (Bruce Mutsvairo)
Situating the Marketization of Data (Anne Helmond and Fernando van der Vlist)
Index
List of Contributors