When data is capital: Datafication, accumulation, and extraction
By Jathan Sadowski. Big Data & Society, 2019
823 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The collection and circulation of data is now a central element of increasingly more sectors of contemporary capitalism. This article analyses data as a form of capital that is distinct from, but has its roots in, economic capital. Data collection is driven by the perpetual cycle of capital accumulation, which in turn drives capital to construct and rely upon a universe in which everything is made of data. The imperative to capture all data, from all sources, by any means possible influences many key decisions about business models, political governance, and technological development. This article argues that many common practices of data accumulation should actually be understood in terms of data extraction, wherein data is taken with little regard for consent and compensation. By understanding data as a form capital, we can better analyse the meaning, practices, and implications of datafication as a political economic regime.
Subfields: Finance, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4498d2006aa09503ecde7cac2b8e24631711dca5
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Citations in the corpus
- The Internet of Landlords: Digital Platforms and New Mechanisms of Rentier Capitalism (2020, background): “When data are valorised, it is done in so many different ways other than just by exchanging them into money (see Sadowski 2019).”
- On the genealogy of machine learning datasets: A critical history of ImageNet (2021, background): “In this rendition, data operates as a new form of capital “which is distinct from, but has its roots in, economic capital” (Sadowski, 2019), and in which data workers—and to some extent, data Figure 2.”