The Alternative Epistemologies 
of Data Activism
Stefania Milan, Lonneke van der Velden
Abstract
As datafication progressively invades all spheres of contemporary 
society, citizens grow increasingly aware of the critical role of infor-
mation as the new fabric of social life. This awareness triggers new 
forms of civic engagement and political action that we term “data 
activism”. Data activism indicates the range of sociotechnical prac-
tices that interrogate the fundamental paradigm shift brought about 
by datafication. Combining Science and Technology Studies with 
Social Movement Studies, this theoretical article offers a foretaste of a 
research agenda on data activism. It foregrounds democratic agency 
vis-à-vis datafication, and unites under the same label ways of affir-
mative engagement with data (“proactive data activism”, e. g. data-
based advocacy) and tactics of resistance to massive data collection 
(“reactive data activism”, e. g. encryption practices), understood as a 
continuum along which activists position and reposition themselves 
and their tactics. The article argues that data activism supports the 
emergence of novel epistemic cultures within the realm of civil society, 
making sense of data as a way of knowing the world and turning it 
into a point of intervention and generation of data countercultures. 
It offers the notion of data activism as a heuristic tool for the study of 
new forms of political participation and civil engagement in the age 
of datafication, and explores data activism as an evolving theoretical 
construct susceptible to contestation and revision.
Keywords: datafication; data activism; democratic agency; Big Data 
epistemologies; Social Movement Studies; Science and Technology 
Studies.
Acknowledgements
This article was researched with the support of a Starting Grant of the European 
Research Council, awarded to Stefania Milan as Principal Investigator (ERC_
StG-2014_639379; https://data-activism.net). The authors wish to thank the 
editors of this special issue; the anonymous reviewers; Prof. Sandra Braman 
DOI 10.14361/dcs-2016-0205
DCS | Digital Culture and Society | Vol. 2, Issue 2 | © transcript 2016
58 Stefania Milan, Lonneke van der Velden
(Texas A&M); the attendees to the Contentious Data workshop (Amsterdam, 15–16 
September 2016); the participants to the data activism sessions at the 2016 confer-
ences of the International Communication Association (Fukuoka, 10 June) and 
of the Association of Internet Researchers (Berlin, 7 October) for the invaluable 
critical questions and insights. Our gratitude extends also to the DATACTIVE 
team at the University of Amsterdam for the inspiring conversations.
Introduction
It was the summer of 2012 when the Italian hacker and artist Salvatore Iaconesi 
was diagnosed with brain cancer. Still hospitalised, he “hacked” his medical data 
to make them accessible to non-experts, published them online, and launched La 
Cura, a “participatory performance aimed at redefining the word ‘cure’, bringing 
it out of hospitals […] back into society” (Iaconesi 2016). He invited anyone in 
the world to send him a cure. Over half a million people contributed advice and 
emotional support.
In 2012, British unemployed finance worker Eliot Higgins, also known as 
Brown Moses, turned into a weapon analyst by systematically monitoring videos 
of the Syrian conflict on YouTube, experimenting with a new form of “social 
media weapon tracking”. In 2014, he founded Bellingcat.com, a platform for self-
taught open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysts and investigative journalists, 
which gained the praise of Amnesty International, among others (O’Brien 2013).
In order to support citizen witnessing and improving grassroots documenta-
tion efforts, the Guardian Project has developed the mobile application CameraV. 
It captures and archives image metadata as an extra layer of contextual verifica-
tion, making possible the potential use of the footage as evidential proof in court. 
The footage is password-protected, encrypted and stored on the user’s device (The 
Guardian Project: n. d.).
With the progressive datafication of an ever-expanding range of human activi-
ties – from personal health to interpersonal connections, from public administra-
tion to security – people become increasingly aware of the critical role of informa-
tion in contemporary societies. The anecdotes opening this article belong to the 
realm of the transformative experiments that see citizens putting data to new 
uses, developing “new rationalities and alternative social imaginaries around 
datafication” (Baack 2015: 8). These “moments where meaningful change can 
occur, even if those changes are […] tinged with technocracy” (Schrock 2016: 583), 
speak to the unprecedented possibility for larger publics to foster social change 
by engaging in data politics. But today’s massive data collection is also employed 
for monitoring people, as we know from the classified information leaked by 
whistleblower Edward Snowden (Lyon 2015). Users’ online activities are regularly 
“sucked up as data, quantified and classified, making possible real-time tracking 
and monitoring” (Lyon 2014: 4), which generates an unparalleled power asym-
The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism 59
metry between the state and its citizens (Brunton/Nissenbaum 2015). What for 
some observers is the hopeful “industrial revolution of data” (Hellerstein 2008), 
represents a new form of “surveillance capitalism” for others (Zuboff 2015).
While the industry as well as the state apparatus have long acknowledged the 
value of massive data collection for their activities, the so-called civil society – the 
realm of human activity outside the state and the market – is now slowly but steadily 
catching up and turning “big data” to its own ends. Civic hackers “requesting, 
digesting, contributing, modelling and contesting data” (Schrock 2016: 584) and 
civic tech activists (Russon Gilman 2016) seek to improve institutional output and 
democratic governance by means of software and data. Tech-savvy people experi-
ment with arguably “radical” (Birchall 2014) transparency devices for the analysis 
of previously closed or hidden data (Heemsbergen 2014). In the footsteps of 
WikiLeaks, a range of whistle-blower platforms such as GlobalLeaks and PubLeaks 
has emerged, allowing for the tech-mediated protected transfer of data to journal-
ists and/or the citizenry at large. Activists engage in “information activism” by 
monitoring powerful actors and curating datasets (Ganesh/Hankey 2015). Data 
visualisation is entering the activists’ skillset; capacity building projects and knowl-
edge sharing manuals increasingly target low-skill users (Tactical Tech Collective 
2013; 2016). Activists become progressively aware of how the use of digital tools 
plays out technically, politically, and economically, rethinking what the “politics 
of data” means for their own practice, especially in the context of surveillance 
(Ganesh/Hankey 2015). They increasingly seek to counter massive data collection 
by means of resistance and obfuscation. Although the circumvention of surveil-
lance is a long-standing practice amongst social movements and certainly pre-
dates datafication (see, e. g., della Porta 1995), dedicated events, trainings, and 
off-the-shelves tools to secure digital communications have mushroomed over 
the last few years (Aouragh et al. 2015), and encryption features prominently 
in counter-surveillance initiatives (Gürses/Kundnani/van Hoboken 2016). We 
subsume these diverse manifestations of an emerging “critical” attitude towards 
datatification under the rubric of “data activism”.
This theoretical article explores the notion of data activism as a heuristic, 
polysemic tool to think politically about big data from the perspective of users 
and citizens, analysing in particular the contemporary evolution of activism vis-
à-vis datafication. In what follows, we offer a conceptual map to approach grass-
roots engagement with data by combining insights from Social Movement Studies 
(SMS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS). First, we situate the notion 
of data activism in the domain of digital activism. Second, we show that data 
activism practices point to the emergence of novel epistemic cultures arising from 
within the civil society realm. Third, we explore the potential of data activism 
as a heuristic tool for empirical analysis and theoretical development. Finally, 
we sketch a future research agenda on data activism. In so doing, we intend to 
contribute to the study of “the variable ways in which power and participation are 
constructed and enacted” (Couldry/Powell 2014: 1) in bottom up data practices.
60 Stefania Milan, Lonneke van der Velden
Defining data activism
Big data evokes a broad set of socio-technical phenomena enveloped in quasi-myth-
ological narratives that univocally emphasise possibility and magnitude. Kitchin, 
however, showed that big data goes well beyond a matter of data volume, and “is 
characterised by being generated continuously, seeking to be exhaustive and fine-
grained in scope, and flexible and scalable in its production” (2014: 2). For the 
purposes of our analysis, which underscores human agency in relation to data and 
technology, we understand big data as information-related tasks whose complexity 
requires individuals to take action with the support of software (cf. Cukier/Mayer-
Schoenberger 2013). We take big data to refer also to “human subjects data, since 
it mainly (though not universally) consists of data about, and produced by, people” 
(Dalton/Taylor/Thatcher 2016: 2). While deliberately glossing over the nature 
of the data in question, these definitions stress the transformative and empow-
ering potential of (any) data, focusing on the complexity of the tasks that can be 
performed rather than data magnitude, and on the socio-cultural meaning of said 
tasks. We consider data as a technology in itself, looking back to the semantic roots 
of the latter: the ancient Greek noun techne, “making”, referred to what both art 
and engineering have in common (Braman 2004: 4). Seeing data as a technology 
allows us to call attention to what people do and can do with it.
The notion of data activism is not entirely new. Earlier characterisations have 
focused on particular instances of data-driven contestation, emphasizing aspects 
as different as the affective potential of the engagement with data, the contribu-
tion to institutional reform, and the relation with governance. For instance, Renzi 
and Langlois explored how data partake in generating individual and collective 
action, which they describe as “new modes of being and acting together through a 
direct engagement with data and the means of its mobilisation” (2015: 203). Their 
notion of data activism highlights how alternative media are re-appropriations but 
also sites for experimentation that allow for the generation of new affective bonds. 
Focusing instead on the relation between the state and its citizens, Schrock coined 
the heading of “data activism and advocacy” to identify contemporary civic hackers 
who “operate through a range of data-driven political modes […] to bring about 
systemic change […] [and] participate in civic data politics” (2016: 591), with the 
aim to ameliorate the governance process and output.
To be sure, data activism comes close to other variations of the wide-ranging 
category of cyber- or digital activism (McCaughey/Ayers 2003), such as hacktivism 
(Jordan/Taylor 2004), statactivism (Bruno/Didier/Prévieux 2014), and informa-
tion politics (Jordan 2015). Hacktivism indicates “collective action in cyberspace 
that addresses network infrastructure or exploits the infrastructure’ s technical 
and ontological features for political or social change” (Milan 2015a: 550). Simi-
larly, data activists might engage with the infrastructure of platforms and code. 
They, too, “engage in politically motivated use of technical expertise in view of 
fixing society through software and online action” (ibid.). Yet, our notion of data 
The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism 61
activism outgrows the engagement with infrastructure to embrace information 
and knowledge as a broader category of intervention.
Looking at the prescriptive potential of numbers, Bruno and colleagues coined 
the notion of statactivism, a portmanteau of statistics and activism identifying 
the bottom-up experiments aimed at the re-appropriation of statistics’ power of 
denunciation and emancipation (Bruno/Didier/Prévieux 2014). The role of statis-
tics in statactivism is two-fold: to criticise reality and to represent it, mobilizing 
“numbers, measurements and indicators as means of denunciation and criticism” 
(Bruno/Didier/Vitale 2014: 199). Similar to data activists, statactivists operate 
simultaneously inside and outside institutions, and numbers are a means of both 
disclosure and affirmation (ibid.). However, data activism as a theoretical category 
embraces a broader range of encounters with datafication: on the one hand, it 
comprises but also exceeds numbers as source of truth claims, and on the other, it 
understands datafication as conveying risks as well. Consequently, data activism 
bears the promise to incorporate a wider set of tactical responses.
Finally, Jordan’s expansive notion of information politics (2015) engages with 
the contentious reactions to mass digital cultures along with network and control 
protocols, pointing to antagonistic formations in which information politics 
becomes part of conflicts over exploitation and liberation. While our notion of data 
activism presupposes the possibility for contention and rebellion, we understand 
data activism as a series of nuanced phenomena that position themselves in a 
continuum between contestation and recognition. In this vein, we offer the notion 
of data activism as yet another possible manifestation of activism in the infor-
mation society – one that, however, explicitly engages with the new forms infor-
mation and knowledge and their production take today, challenging dominant 
understandings of datafication. As such, thinking in terms of data activism has 
something to offer to the reflection on the ubiquity of digital communication and 
mediation dynamics in the platform society (e. g., Castells 2009; van Dijck 2013), 
as well as on the nature of contemporary activism and its evolving protest/media 
configurations (e. g., Bennett 2012; Bennett/Segerberg 2013; Milan 2015b).
The data activism rubric embraces the composite series of sociotechnical prac-
tices that, emerging at the fringes of the contemporary activism ecology, interro-
gate datafication and its socio-political consequences. We deliberately unite under 
the same label two variations of grassroots data politics – affirmative engagement 
with data and resistance to massive data collection – which are often considered 
contrasting with each other. Yet, they both address and interrogate the funda-
mental paradigm shift brought about by datafication.
Our notion of data activism foregrounds democratic agency vis-à-vis datafica-
tion. Two elements rest at its core: its sociotechnical nature and the mobilisation 
factor. First, following the path traced by STS, we emphasise the fundamental 
interaction between people, information, and technology that constitutes emerging 
formations of data activism. Data activism is deeply rooted in, and thus enabled 
and constrained by data and software, both its availability and its pursuit – and this 
62 Stefania Milan, Lonneke van der Velden
special relation shapes tactics, identities, and modes of organizing. Second, from a 
SMS perspective data activism can be seen as an form of socio-political mobilisa-
tion, as it brings people (and information and technology) together for some kind 
of action variably contentious in nature, and explicitly addressing, confronting, 
or engaging with datafication. Mobilisation here embraces both discrete events – 
individual and collective acts of appropriation of data, but also of dissent, subver-
sion, and resistance to data collection – and the overall process that subtends to 
the emergence of data activism – namely, the raising popular concern signaling a 
fundamental change in perspective and attitude towards datafication that is slowly 
emerging within civil society.
The social forces supporting these incipient activism practices are not new. 
Users have long appropriated and repurposed media technology for self-expres-
sion and social change, experimenting with up-and-coming media technology – 
be it phone, print, radio, fax, or the internet (see Marvin 1990; Downing 2011). 
The most tech-aware amongst radical openness activists have experimented with 
technical ways of circumventing state control since the 1980s – advocating, for 
example, for a crypto anarchy in communications which would be made possible 
by cryptography (May 1992). Emerging from the smoking ashes of their prede-
cessors and variably intersecting other contemporary trends like citizen science 
(Irwin 1995) and sensing (Gabrys 2016), biohacking (Delfanti 2013), citizen data 
journalism (Gray/Chambers/Bounegru 2012), the quantified self (Lupton 2016) 
and the transparency movements (Sifry 2011), current data activism practices 
are largely modelled after hacker cultures and rituals (Levy 1984) and the do-it-
yourself approach of makerspaces, hacklabs, and hackerspaces (Maxigas 2012). 
Similar to grassroots radio producers (Dunbar-Hester 2012), the radical techies 
of the 1990s (Milan 2013), and the open-source movement (Coleman 2013), data 
activists often preach technical engagement as a way of confronting elite expertise 
and taking control over the technology of daily use. From their forerunners, data 
activists have borrowed the hands-on attitude, and the notions of access to infor-
mation, code tinkering, collaboration, and world improvement through technical 
fixes. And because datafication is such a prominent feature in public life, data 
activism, as a mode of dealing with it, might progressively appeal to more diverse 
communities of concerned citizens, beyond the expert niche of previous incarna-
tions of tech activist engagement.
Data activism shapes novel epistemic cultures
Datafication alters “the conditions under which we can make sense of our world 
and our own actions”, affecting “our capacity to act with agency” (Baack 2015: 1). 
Big data has far-reaching epistemological consequences, affecting “how knowl-
edge is produced, business conducted, and governance enacted” (Kitchin 2014: 2). 
It “reframes key questions about the constitution of knowledge” (boyd/Crawford 
The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism 63
2012: 665). Algorithms, too, have the “ability to shape perceived realities […] not only 
by enabling certain representations of the world around us, but also by enticing 
us to internalise these realities and make them our own” (Renzi/Langlois 2015: 
202). Further, big data and their representations tend to reify the future, crystal-
lizing a reality – usually quantified, and presented as neutral and infallible – as 
the only possible one and narrowing down the options for alternatives (cf. Chun 
2011). In other words, what is known as big data constitutes a novel, powerful 
system of knowledge with its own epistemology that is to say a specific way of 
framing, packaging, presenting and activating information and knowledge.
Framing, packaging and presenting data are productive exercises, which have 
the potential to alter not only our vision of the world, but also our own theory 
of knowledge, so to speak. The current emphasis on computational analysis and 
machine learning as core (and qualitatively superior) ways of understanding the 
social world, moulds the way people relate to information and knowledge. Further-
more, “big” data are often seductively staged, accompanied as they typically are 
by attractive visualisations and graphs that simplify reality and communicate it 
in immediate and efficient ways (see Cairo 2012). What is then the role of data 
activism in these dynamics? If data is not a given nor is it ever raw (Gitelman 2013), 
data activism can be seen as an exercise in creating alternative ways of seeing 
the world, while opening up questions about the positivism ethos of the so-called 
“data revolution”.
Fraser (2005) criticised the state-centric “politics of representation”, identi-
fying in the control by the elites over the framing of political representation a 
form of injustice. “Making discourses”, on the contrary, entails “producing new 
languages or modifying old ones so as to find words for novel phenomena” 
(Jasanoff 2004: 39–41). We argue that data activism practices signal that new epis-
temic cultures are emerging within the civil society realm: a way (or, better, ways) 
of making counter-discourses and data countercultures that challenge the main-
stream readings of reality.
Epistemic cultures shape the way we relate to knowledge and its validation, 
how we understand and filter the world around us as well as our experiences. They 
represent “cultures of creating and warranting knowledge” (Knorr Cetina/Reich-
mann 2015: 873). When the notion was introduced in laboratory studies in the 
late 1990s, it disrupted the idea of “epistemic unity” of the sciences, by stressing 
diversity in modes of knowledge making (ibid.). This concept invites us to look at 
the “specific strategies that generate, validate, and communicate scientific accom-
plishments”, and to take into account the complex “relationships between experts, 
organisational formats, and epistemic objects” (873–4). The emerging epistemic 
cultures propelled by data activism point to innovative and potentially transforma-
tive ways of relating to big data and its consequences.
Postulating a critical/active engagement with data, its forms, dynamics, 
and infrastructure, data activists function as producers of counter-expertise and 
alternative epistemologies, making sense of data as a way of knowing the world 
64 Stefania Milan, Lonneke van der Velden
and turning it into a point of intervention. They challenge and change the main-
stream politics of knowledge, and operate as mediators between the dominant 
“algorithmic culture” (Striphas 2015) and the citizenry at large. They operate as a 
“critical community” composed of “critical thinkers who have developed a sensi-
bility to some problem, an analysis of the sources of the problem, and a prescrip-
tion for what should be done”. These critical thinkers “seek acceptance of a new 
conceptualisation of a problem […] [and] attempt to influence the conceptual 
framework used to think about a cluster of issues” (Rochon 1998: 22–23).
For its rich history of uncovering the politics and partiality of technology and 
scientific knowledge (Winner 1980; Haraway 1988), STS can help to understand 
fully grasp the potential of the alternative epistemic cultures of data activism. STS 
shows that science and technology are neither purely technical nor social, but are 
co-produced through very specific settings that bring along particular (material) 
affordances, situated practices, and tacit knowledge. This means that values and 
modes of working stemming from these settings become inscribed in the way 
science and technology develop. STS scholars have always been interested in what 
happens when the range of actors participating in this process of co-production 
is stretched up. They have paid attention to these arguably democratic moments 
in which various actors have influenced technological development, for example 
through the study of activist appropriations of science and technology by patient 
movements (Epstein 1995) or technology activists (Hess 2005). We propose two 
possible focus areas for an STS analysis of the alternative epistemic cultures of 
data activism.
STS has explained how particular objects and methods that traditionally 
belong to the epistemic community and culture of scientists and experts have 
been opened up to a different population, sometimes in democratically designed 
settings, and how along this trajectory these objects and methods have been 
malleable to change. For example, Epstein’s study (1995) on clinical trials on HIV 
patients showed how the mainstream scientific epistemology can be altered by 
the emergence of a grassroots, alternative one. The protocol for clinical trials 
wanted these to be conducted on a clean population with no prior medicine use. 
But clinical trials were among the few ways HIV patients could get access to treat-
ment. Patients contested this practice on the ground that it did not mirror the “real 
world”, given only few individuals had a clean history of medicine use. A group 
of patients resorted to scientific literature to educate themselves, constructing 
novel discourses about clinical trials. An alternative epistemic culture emerged 
in which up-and-coming knowledge and arguments collided with the official 
values and discourses concerning access to medicine. Eventually, the patients 
managed to have their alternative epistemology taken serious. Epstein’s analysis 
provides a valuable lesson for observers of citizens’ responses to datafication: in a 
context in which “big data” becomes an important reference point for “new” ways 
of knowing, one can track alternative data narratives and emerging forms and 
dynamics of counter-expertise.
The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism 65
STS are also known for mobilizing a particular vocabulary and method by 
carefully tracing how science and technology develop through sociotechnical 
assemblages. Especially scholars of Actor Network Theory (ANT) – which treats 
objects like machines as part of heterogeneous networks with humans  – have 
argued that the material agency of artifacts should not be neglected (Callon 1986; 
Akrich 1992; Latour 2005). In later works, ANT scholars have also tackled the 
issue of the democratic agency of things and have probed the exploratory question 
of what could be the potential of their democratic agency (Latour 2005; Latour 
and Weibel 2005; Marres 2011). In his Politics of Nature (2004), Latour designed a 
“parliament of things” in which he outlined how proper representation of “things” 
would look like, repurposing rather classic notions of representation and voice. 
Focusing instead on “issue politics” (Marres 2005), Marres (2011) looked at how 
material devices participate in the “articulation of issues”. In her view, everyday 
material devices facilitate the articulation of concerns because they provide partic-
ular logics for action and for dealing with problems. Material devices therefore 
contribute to what we understand as matters for the public, and shape our social 
behavior, too. An era in which we see “data inscriptions” everywhere around us, be 
it through narratives based on numbers or data visualisations and infrastructure, 
there is a real need for a critical look at the agency gained (or lost) by and through 
these inscriptions.
STS thus helps us, on the one hand, to zoom in on the participation of new 
critical actors in knowledge generation and, on the other, to appreciate the political 
and potential democratic impact of the material agency enshrined in data, algo-
rithms and infrastructure. Both appear very relevant for our exercise of under-
standing how new epistemic data cultures shape up. If we consider data not as 
something given but as a techne, i. e. a form of “making” as argued above, we ought 
to take these critical forms of data making seriously.
Data activism as a heuristic tool
We argue that data activism constitutes a valuable heuristic tool for the study of 
political participation and civil engagement in the age of datafication, a sort of 
“lens” through which one can investigate how activism evolves in relation to big 
data. Data activism is a composite, polyfunctional, holistic and polysemic notion. 
First, it is a composite concept because, as its interdisciplinary origin suggests, it is 
made of parts: at the minimum people, (variably sustained forms of) contention, 
information, and technology. Second, it is polyfunctional, as it can be read through 
diverse disciplinary lenses, and can be domesticated to investigate different 
dynamics and relations, between and within people, information, technology, and 
the state/industry complex. Third, data activism encourages us to adopt a holistic 
perspective, as it allows us to bring under the same umbrella the two facets of 
the “data revolution”: the productive and the harmful qualities of the “big data” 
66 Stefania Milan, Lonneke van der Velden
phenomenon, the opportunities and the threats brought forward by datafication, 
as well as the varied response of the grassroots, be it recognition or resistance. By 
taking data activism as a whole, we are able to bypass these dichotomies, acknowl-
edging that they ultimately adhere to the same phenomenon of data countercul-
tures/practices, whose components cannot be fully understood if taken in isola-
tion. Finally, as a consequence of its holistic nature, the notion of data activism 
is polysemic, since “activism” embraces practices of resistance and instances of 
appropriation as discrete but complementary means to achieving political goals, 
allowing very distinct attitudes towards institutions and social norms to coexist.
As a heuristic device of sociological nature, data activism is simultaneously 
flexible and specific enough as to guide and support the analysis of a multifaceted 
empirical phenomenon where the “social” dimension of taking action (i. e., mobil-
ising and organising) is mediated by the “technical” of information and technology. 
However, the notion has yet to enter in conversation with the empirical field, and 
thus can be considered in its guise of theoretical construct, or “the consequence[s] 
of theories or conventions” that “exist[s] primarily to serve the interest of investiga-
tors” (Ragin 1992: 8). This does not deny the existence of empirical units out there. 
On the contrary, it affirms that these (and especially the borders defining them) 
are the consequence of the researchers’ choice on the basis of theoretical consider-
ations and empirical intuitions. In this respect, we expect the theoretical category 
of data activism to “coalesce in the course of the research. Neither empirical or 
given, [it is] gradually imposed on empirical evidence” (Ragin 1992: 10). In sum, 
the notion can be seen both as a product of the attempt to define the object of 
investigation by connecting two approaches, respectively resistance and engage-
ment, that might not be necessarily or explicitly connected by activists themselves; 
and a working hypothesis susceptible to contestation, revision and refinement in 
the course of the research.
The collective action dimension of data activism at the hearth of this notion 
can be best analysed using the conceptual toolkit of social movement studies. In 
what follows, we provide suggestions for the operationalisation of data activism as 
a heuristic tool, engaging in an exercise of preliminary mapping based on desk 
research as well as Milan’s earlier studies on radical tech activism (Milan 2013; 
2015a), which bears some resemblance to data activism.
Zooming in on the many ways in which individuals and groups engage with 
data politics, we identify two main approaches: datafication is interpreted as a 
challenge to individual rights or as a novel set of opportunities for advocacy and 
social change. This translates into a varied action repertoire, i. e. the range of 
tactics activists may adopt to pursue their goals (Taylor/Van Dyke 2004), that is 
positioned along a continuum between two kinds of responses that are not neces-
sarily in contradiction with each other: contentious attitudes such as obfuscating 
and resisting vs. embracing and making the most of datafication. Under the data 
activism umbrella we therefore identify and assemble at least two forms of action 
repertoires that are often considered as antithetical. Those activists who perceive 
The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism 67
massive data collection as a threat to their values, freedoms and activities, often 
use technical means like encryption or anonymity networks to resist monitoring 
by state and corporations. We understand this approach as “re-active data activism”, 
underscoring the fact that activists react to exogenous threats trying to defend their 
values, beliefs and practices and/or undermine those dynamics and mechanisms 
they reject. On the opposite end of the spectrum we position those activists who 
consider the increasing availability of data as an unprecedented, powerful opportu-
nity to provoke social change. They create, mobilise, solicit, appropriate, or crunch 
data in view of supporting alternative narratives of the social reality, questioning 
the truthfulness of other representations, denouncing injustice and advocating for 
change. We label this form of data activism “pro-active”, in order to highlight how 
activists take charge and engage in hands-on practices of appropriation and re-use. 
“Reactive” and “proactive” represents two facets of the same phenomenon: both 
take information as a constitutive force in society capable to shape social reality 
(Braman 2009). Analytically, these labels constitute ideal-types: while they are 
guilty of approximation and generalisation, they serve the purpose of drawing 
attention to what various approaches to data activism might have in common.
When we look at action repertoires, we can detect some similarities with 
other technology-oriented movements (Hess 2005) and subcultures. Like the 
open-source movement, data activism might concern the promotion of alterna-
tive technologies and shaping the surrounding policies; sometimes this might 
entail some form of collaboration with the industry (ibid.). This is particularly 
true amongst proactive data activists, when they engage in software development 
or collaborate with state institutions. Reactive data activists, on the contrary, tend 
to uphold an adversarial attitude towards the state/industry complex; their action 
repertoire, which includes self-defence, civil disobedience and disruption, is 
inspired to the radical tech activists of the early days (Milan 2013). Both share the 
hands-on approach that postulates first-person engagement with information and 
technology seen as objects of intervention.
The selection of tactics, however, is known to reflect the activists’ cultural 
and ideological preferences (Milan 2013). Some data activists share the “engi-
neering philosophy to ‘make things work’” of open source developers, coupled 
with a certain “insistence on adopting a technocratic approach to solving societal 
problems and to bypassing (‘hacking’) legislative approaches” (Berry 2008: 
102). Ideologically, though, data activists appear to cover a broad ground, from 
the self-organisation and -determination of anarchism to anti-state anarcho-
capitalism tendencies, to an emphasis on transparency and openness to one on 
human rights, social justice and the fight against inequality. The notion of collec-
tive identity can help us mapping ideological and cultural inclinations, the way 
they are built, reproduced and maintained over time. Collective identity refers to 
the process through which “a collective becomes a collective” (Melucci 1996: 84): 
a sort of “esprit de corps” (Blumer 1939) that holds people together. Some data 
activists are characterised by a “technical identity”, which is suggestive of a closer 
68 Stefania Milan, Lonneke van der Velden
relationship with technology than that of lay users (Dunbar-Hester 2012). Unitary 
and adversarial ideas of democracy often coexist, bearing distinct ideological pref-
erences that have consequences, for instance preventing collaboration with state 
institutions. Certainly, data activism as a whole still lacks a collective identity of its 
own, visible for example in the fact that only seldom do activists define themselves 
primarily as “data activists”.
Finally, data activism concerns both individuals and groups, as taking action 
does not necessarily call for a collectivity to mobilise as well. Many contentious 
actions in data activism are performed at the individual level: think, for example, 
of engaging in programming or inserting data into a spreadsheet. While it is 
mainly the group that takes action, and it takes peer-to-peer recognition and inter-
action to give meaning to action, individual acts of data activism like encrypting 
private communication do matter, because “there is protest even when it is not 
part of an organised movement” (Jasper 1997: 5).
Towards a research agenda on data activism
Cycling back to where we started, we can revisit the introductory examples in 
light of our reflections on data activism. The first two cases represent instances 
of proactive data activism, while the third represents both. La Cura engages in a 
sort of big-data update of the patient activism described by Epstein. Faced with the 
enclosure of medical knowledge, Iaconesi managed to lay the ground for an inno-
vative epistemic culture in which the values of openness and collaboration were 
inscribed into the discourses and practices of health data. His hack enriched the 
action repertoire by bringing technology and alternative data cultures to bear on 
“official” knowledge discourses. By repurposing OSINT, otherwise usually associ-
ated with intelligence services, and offering trainings and tools to perform inves-
tigative data journalism, Bellingcat activists engage in a public learning experi-
ment inspired to open source principles (cf. Glassman and Kang 2012). Apps like 
CameraV, built to facilitate the uptake of image material in evidential arenas, 
perform data activism by carefully curating metadata. Here the (encrypted) 
storage and formatting of data becomes a socio-technical configuration accom-
modating particular causes (cf. van der Velden 2015). These cases constitute data 
activism because they question data agency, inviting other people to produce their 
own data inscriptions and to actively “shape issues” in the datafied society, mean-
while contributing to the creation of alternative epistemologies of what data means 
and represents. But they raise questions, too: how do activists make “data count”? 
In other words, how do they determine what constitutes relevant and “true” data? 
To what extent are these “critical” approaches to datafication? How do we draw the 
line between critique and positivism?
In this article, we suggested that data activism supports the emergence of 
novel epistemic cultures within civil society, contributing alternative narratives of 
The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism 69
our datafied social reality. We offered the notion of data activism as a heuristic tool 
to study citizens’ engagement with datafication, emphasizing data activism as an 
evolving theoretical construct – a working hypothesis susceptible to contestation 
and revision throughout the empirical research. But how might a research agenda 
on data activism look like?
Potential questions address both the emerging ontologies and epistemolo-
gies of data activism as an empirical phenomenon. Thinking about ontologies of 
data activism implies investigating the nature of collective action in grassroots 
data politics, by means of naming and defining of types, properties and inter-
relations. To this end, we proposed a first typology of data activism that situates 
two seemingly contradictory approaches – proactive engagements with data (e. g., 
data-based advocacy) and reactive attitudes (e. g., using and developing encryption 
tools) – in a continuum that encapsulates the nuanced grassroots responses to the 
fundamental paradigm shift imposed by datafication. We might then ask who is 
involved in particular practices of data making (or, in STS vocabulary, who are 
the main actors and what are the implications of this composition?) How do tech-
nical practices, social values and ideologies play out in these emergent alternative 
epistemic cultures? What kinds of practices are performed to make these alterna-
tive data and narratives count? (In other words, how are questions of relevance, 
truth or political goals determined, and do these decisions connect to technical 
affordances of, e. g., analytics tools?) Do the activists differ from the state or the 
industry in the way they treat and mobilise data? How do data activists influence 
the agenda of other movements? How do they incorporate reflections on gender, 
privilege, digital labour? What does “critical engagement” mean in the context of 
data activism?
We should also ask higher-order questions concerning the interplay between 
data activism and datafication, and between data activism and the evolution 
of democracy more in general. How is data constructed or enacted, and what 
values and modes of understandings are inscribed in this process? (How is data 
“co-produced”?). What are the political and democratic possibilities of data? How 
do data and data activism partake in shaping larger societal issues, and how do 
they affect our behaviour in relation to those? What lessons might data activism 
hold for contemporary social movements and the citizenry at large? How does data 
activism contribute to (re-)define the ways we think citizenship, engagement, and 
democratic deliberation and participation?
But the assumption that activist data interventions express articulations of 
unfolding alternative epistemic cultures interrogates our modes of knowing about 
data activism in itself, calling for a reflection on research epistemology and trig-
gering a set of meta-questions that query and situate the key role of researchers 
in labelling and interpreting social reality. We consider reflecting on our own 
epistemologies as a moral imperative, if we are to respect grassroots data politics 
and the activists’ effort to question dominant narratives and ways of knowing 
the world. For example, what constitutes “critical” data practices, and who and 
70 Stefania Milan, Lonneke van der Velden
how sets the parameters for assessing such critique and its validity? This contem-
plation of research epistemologies must go hand in hand with methodological 
questions concerning our engagement with the field. What are the key moments 
for investigating data activism? (In an STS fashion, what is the “controversial” 
moment when data epistemic cultures get interrupted and reorganised?) What 
methods are the most conducive to the investigation of data activism practices? 
What new, participatory methods can we envision, which can best incorporate 
the criticism to dominant epistemologies of knowing advanced by data activism? 
Are there ways to do data-activist research and what is specific to them? We define 
data-activist research as a type of co-generative inquiry and a way of conducting 
“engaged research” (Milan 2014) that turns (research) data into points of interven-
tion, supporting grassroots efforts. To envisage how data-activist research might 
look like, how it might be practiced, and whether it is desired at all, is a chal-
lenging task for both the research and the activist community.
References
Akrich, Madeleine (1992): “The De-Scription of Technical Objects.” In: Wiebe 
E. Bijker/John Law (eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society. Studies in 
Sociotechnical Change, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 205–24.
Aouragh, Miriyam/Gürses, Seda/Rocha, Jara/Snelting, Femke (2015): “Let’s First 
Get Things Done! On Division of Labour and Techno-Political Practices of 
Delegation in Times of Crisis.” In: Fiberculture 26, pp. 208–35.
Baack, Stefan (2015): “Datafication and Empowerment: How the Open Data Move-
ment Re-Articulates Notions of Democracy, Participation, and Journalism.” 
In: Big Data & Society 2/2, pp. 1–11.
Bennett, Lance W. (2012): “The Personalisation of Politics: Identity, Social Media, 
and Changing Patterns of Participation.” In: The Annals of the American 
Academy 644, pp. 20–39.
Bennett, Lance W./Segerberg, Alexandra (2013): The Logic of Connective Action: 
Digital Media and the Personalisation of Contentious Politics, Cambridge, 
UK: Cambridge University Press.
Berry, David M. (2008): Copy, Rip, Burn: The Politics of Copyleft and Open 
Source, London: Pluto Press.
Birchall, Clare (2014): “Radical Transparency?” In: Cultural Studies ↔ Critical 
Methodologies 17/4, pp. 77–88.
Blumer, Herbet G. (1939): “Collective Behavior.” In Robert E. Park (ed.), An 
Outline of the Principles of Sociology, New York: Barnes & Noble, pp. 221–80.
boyd, dana/Crawford, Kate (2012): “Critical Questions for Big Data. Provocations 
for a Cultural, Technological, and Scholarly Phenomenon.” In: Information, 
Communication & Society 15/5, pp. 662–79.
The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism 71
Braman, Sandra (2004): “The Meta-Technologies of Information.” In: Sandra 
Braman (ed.), Biotechnology and Communication: The Meta-Technologies of 
Information, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 3–36.
Braman, Sandra (2009): Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power, Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bruno, Isabelle/Didier, Emmanuel/Prévieux, Julien (2014). Statactivisme. Com-
ment lutter avec des nombres, Paris: La Découverte.
Bruno, Isabelle/Didier, Emmanuel/Vitale, Tommaso (2014): “Statactivism: Forms 
of Action between Disclosure and Affirmation.” In: Partecipazione & Conflitto 
7/2, pp. 198–220.
Brunton, Finn/Nissenbaum, Helen (2015): Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for 
Privacy and Protest, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cairo, Alberto (2012): “Facing the Dataclysm.” In: The Functional Art: An Intro-
duction to Information Graphics and Visualisation, San Francisco: New Riders 
(http://www.thefunctionalart.com/2014/09/facing-dataclysm.html).
Callon, Michel (1986): “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestica-
tion of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay.” In: John Law (ed.), 
Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, London: Routledge, 
pp. 196–223.
Castells, Manuel (2009): Communication Power, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chun, Wendy (2011): Programmed Visions Software and Memory, Cambridge, 
MA: MIT Press.
Coleman, Gabriella (2013): Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking, 
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Couldry, Nick/Powell, Alison (2014): “Big Data from the Bottom up.” In: Big 
Data & Society 1/2, pp. 1–5.
Cukier, Kenneth/Mayer-Schoenberger, Viktor (2013): “The Rise of Big Data: How 
It’s Changing the Way We Think about the World.” In: Foreign Affairs 92/3, 
pp. 28–40.
Dalton, Craig M./Taylor, Linnet/Thatcher, Jim (2016): “Critical Data Studies: A 
Dialog on Data and Space.” Big Data & Society January-June, pp. 1–9.
Delfanti, Alessandro (2013): Biohackers: The Politics of Open Science, London: 
Pluto Press.
della Porta, Donatella (1995): Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State, 
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Downing, John D. H. (ed.) (2011): Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media, Thou-
sands Oaks, CA: Sage.
Dunbar-Hester, Christina (2012): “Soldering Toward Media Democracy: Technical 
Practice as Symbolic Value in Radio Activism.” In: Journal of Communication 
Inquiry 36/2, pp. 149–169.
Epstein, Steven (1995): “The Construction of Lay Expertise: AIDS Activism and 
the Forging of Credibility in the Reform of Clinical Trials.” In: Science, Tech-
nology & Human Values 20/4, pp. 408–437.
72 Stefania Milan, Lonneke van der Velden
Fraser, Nancy (2005): “Reframing Injustice in a Globalizing World.” In: New Left 
Review 36, pp. 69–88.
Gabrys, Jennifer (2016): Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and 
the Making of a Computational Planet, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 
Press.
Ganesh, Maya Indira/Hankey, Stephanie (2015): “From Information Activism to 
the Politics of Data.” In: Fiberculture 26, pp. 275–286.
Gitelman, Lisa (2013): “Raw Data” is an Oxymoron, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Glassman, Michael/Kang, Min Ju (2012): “Intelligence in the Internet Age: The 
Emergence and Evolution of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).” In: Comput-
ers in Human Behavior 28/2, pp. 673–82.
Gray, Jonathan/Chambers, Lucy/Bounegru, Liliana (eds.) (2012): The Data Jour-
nalism Handbook. Sebastopol: O’Reilly.
Gürses, Seda/Kundnani, Arun/Hoboken, Joris van (2016): “Crypto and Empire: 
The Contradictions of Counter-Surveillance Advocacy.” In: Media, Culture & 
Society 38/4, pp. 576–590.
Haraway, Donna (1988): “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Femi-
nism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” In: Feminist Studies 14/3, 
pp. 575–599.
Heemsbergen, Luke J. (2014): “Designing Hues of Transparency and Democracy 
after WikiLeaks: Vigilance to Vigilantes and Back Again.” In: New Media & 
Society 17/8, pp. 1340–1357.
Hellerstein, Joseph (2008): “The Commoditisation of Massive Data Analysis.” In: 
Radar, November 19 (http://strata.oreilly.com/2008/11/the-commoditisation-
of-massive.html).
Hess, David J. (2005): “Technology-and-Product-Oriented Movements: Approxi-
mating Social Movement Studies and Science and Technology Studies.” In: 
Science, Technology & Human Values 30/4, pp. 515–535.
Iaconesi, Salvatore (2016): “[Air-L] La Cura: Possibilities?” Association of Internet 
Researchers Mailinglist, May 31 (http://listserv.aoir.org/pipermail/air-l-aoir.
org/2016-May/033196.html).
Irwin, Alan (1995): Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable 
Development, London-New York: Routledge.
Jasanoff, Sheila (ed.) (2004): States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science 
and the Social Order, London-New York: Routledge.
Jasper, James M. (1997): The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativ-
ity in Social Movements, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Jordan, Tim (2015): Information Politics. Liberation and Exploitation in the Digital 
Society, London: Pluto Press.
Jordan, Tim/Taylor, Paul (2004): Hackitivism and Cyberwars: Rebels with a 
Cause?, London-New York: Routledge.
Kitchin, Rob (2014): “Big Data, New Epistemologies and Paradigm Shifts.” In: Big 
Data & Society April – June, pp. 1–12.
The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism 73
Knorr Cetina, Karin/Reichmann, Werner (2015): “Epistemic Cultures.” In: Inter-
national Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd ed., New York: 
Elsevier, pp. 873–80.
Latour, Bruno (2004): Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democ-
racy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno (2005): Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-
Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Latour, Bruno/Weibel, Peter (2005): Making Things Public: Atmospheres of 
Democracy, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Levy, Steven (1984): Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, New York: Dell/
Doubleday.
Lupton, Deborah (2016): The Quantified Self, New York: Wiley.
Lyon, David (2014): “Surveillance, Snowden, and Big Data: Capacities, Conse-
quences, Critique.” In: Big Data & Society 1/2, pp. 1–13.
Lyon, David (2015): Surveillance After Snowden, Cambridge-Malden, MA: Polity 
Press.
Marres, Noortje (2005): “No Issue, No Public: Democratic Deficits after the Dis-
placement of Politics.” PhD Diss., University of Amsterdam (http://dare.uva.
nl/record/165542).
Marres, Noortje (2011): “The Costs of Public Involvement: Everyday Devices of 
Carbon Accounting and the Materialisation of Participation.” In: Economy and 
Society 40/4, pp. 510–33.
Marvin, Carolyn (1990): When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Elec-
tric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century, Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Maxigas (2012): “Hacklabs and Hackerspaces  – Tracing Two Genealogies.” In: 
Journal of Peer Production 2.
May, Timothy C. (1992): “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto” (http://www.activism.
net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html).
McCaughey, Martha/Ayers, Michael D. (eds.) (2003): Cyberactivism: Online Activ-
ism in Theory and Practice, London-New York: Routledge.
Melucci, Alberto (1996): Challenging Codes. Collective Action in the Information 
Age, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Milan, Stefania (2013): Social Movements and Their Technologies: Wiring Social 
Change, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Milan, Stefania (2014): “The Ethics of Social Movement Research.” In: Donatella 
della Porta (ed.), Methodological Practices in Social Movement Research, 
Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 446–464.
Milan, Stefania (2015a): “Hacktivism as a Radical Media Practice.” In: Chris Atton 
(ed.), Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media, New York: 
Routledge, pp. 550–60.
74 Stefania Milan, Lonneke van der Velden
Milan, Stefania (2015b): “When Algorithms Shape Collective Action: Social Media 
and the Dynamics of Cloud Protesting.” In: Social Media and Society 1/2, 
pp. 1–10.
O’Brien, Paraic (2013): “Brown Moses: The British Blogger Tracking Syrian Arms.” 
In: Channel 4 News, March 30 (http://www.channel4.com/news/brown-mo 
ses-blog-syria-arms-weapons-croatia).
Ragin, Charles C. (1992): “Introduction: Cases of ‘What Is a Case?’” In: Charles C. 
Ragin/Howard Saul Becker (eds.), What Is a Case? Exploring the Foundations 
of Social Inquiry, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–15.
Renzi, Alessandra/Langlois, Ganaele (2015): “Data Activism.” In: Greg Elmer/
Ganaele Langlois/Joanna Redden (eds.), Compromised Data: From Social 
Media to Big Data, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 202–25.
Rochon, Thomas R. (1998): Culture Moves. Ideas, Activism, and Changing Values, 
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Russon Gilman, Hollie (2016): Participatory Budgeting and Civic Tech: The Revival 
of Citizen Engagement, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Schrock, Andrew R. (2016): “Civic Hacking as Data Activism and Advocacy: A 
History from Publicity to Open Government Data.” In: New Media & Society 
18/4, pp. 581–99.
Sifry, Micah L. (2011): Wikileaks and the Age of Transparency, New York: OR Books.
Sismondo, Sergio (2003): An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies, 
Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Striphas, Ted (2015): “Algorithmic Culture.” In: European Journal of Cultural 
Studies 18/4-5, pp. 395–412.
Tactical Tech Collective (2013): Visualising Information for Advocacy, Bangalore: 
Tactical Tech Collective.
Tactical Tech Collective (2016): “Decoding Data.” In: Exposing The Invisible, 
October 18 (https://exposingtheinvisible.org/guides/decoding-data/).
Taylor, Verta/van Dyke, Nella (2004): “‘Get Up, Stand Up’: Tactical Repertoires 
of Social Movements.” In: David A. Snow/Sarah A. Soule/Hanspeter Kriesi 
(eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, Malden, MA and 
Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 262–93.
The Guardian Project (n. d.): “CameraV: Secure Verifiable Photo & Video Camera” 
(https://guardianproject.info/apps/camerav/).
Van der Velden, Lonneke (2015): “Forensic Devices for Activism: Metadata Track-
ing and Public Proof.” In: Big Data & Society 2/2.
Van Dijck, José (2013): The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social 
Media, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Winner, Langdon (1980): “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” In: Daedalus 109/1, 
pp. 121–36.
Zuboff, Shoshana (2015): “Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects 
of an Information Civilisation.” In: Journal of Information Technology 30/1, 
pp. 75–89.