Data discourse
 | This template is not to be used in article space. This is the sandbox page where you will draft your initial Wikipedia contribution. If you're starting a new article, you can develop it here until it's ready to go live. If you're working on improvements to an existing article, copy only one section at a time of the article to this sandbox to work on, and be sure to use an edit summary linking to the article you copied from. Do not copy over the entire article. You can find additional instructions here. Remember to save your work regularly using the "Publish page" button. (It just means 'save'; it will still be in the sandbox.) You can add bold formatting to your additions to differentiate them from existing content. |
Data Discourse
Data Discourse
Definition of discourse
Discourse is applied to analyze literary and non-literary texts. Discourse is found in array of disciplines: critical theory, sociology, and other fields. Michel Foucalt's work has made important contributions to produce variety of theories for the term 'discourse'. It is helpful to think of discourse not as a group of signs or a stretch of text but as practices that systemically form the objects of which they speak (Foucault, 1972:49). Discourse is a notion which produces something else, rather than something which exists in and of itself and which can be examined in vacuum.
Data as discourse
Data discourse refers to discourses that work within the context of data. The discourses of sharing, reuse, open access, open government, transparency, accountability, social entrepreneurship, and economies of scale have been mobilized to form a discursive regime that promotes investment in open data and associated repositories.
In relation to big data, the discourses of insight, wisdom, productivity, competitiveness, efficiency, effectiveness, utility, value have been mobilized to promote their adoption and usage.
Examples of discourses in Big Data
Meta journalistic discourse in relation to big data
Big data discourse in online marketing summit
Data narratives and elements of data narratives
The discourses and imaginaries are put together to form data narratives to make stories about data and their interconnected assemblages persuasive. Data do not represent themselves. For data to be narrated, it must be set in specific settings in order to create shape and meaning making.
The elements of data narratives are data trajectories, data temporalities, the cultural grounding of data narratives.
Data discourse theory and its overlap with other theories
Data imaginary and discourses are drawn together to constitute what Focault (1977) termed a discursive regime: a set of interlocking arguments that justifies and sustains new developments and naturalizes, legitimates and reproduces their use. The discourses utilized within a regime seek to promote and make their message seem like common sense, to persuade people and institution to their logic, and to believe and act in relation to this logic.