Data Perversion: a Psychoanalytic Perspective on Datafication
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33621/jdsr.v3i1.57Keywords:
Datafication, platforms, users, perversion, psychoanalysisAbstract
This article adopts a psychoanalytic perspective and argues that users are in a perverse relationship with contemporary platforms. Following a review of recent critical scholarship on datafication, which places too much emphasis on platforms and situates users as helpless, the psychoanalytic concept of perversion is introduced. Perversion describes a relationship that is characterised by dominance, exploitation and dehumanization as well as care, love, and idealization. While the pervert (the platform and its owners and developers) is the perpetrator, the other (the user) is also actively participating in the perverse relationship. Contemporary relations are thus marked by foregrounding connectivity, convenience and communication which mask the violence of datafication. Such relations are upheld, because users affirmatively reproduce them by using highly attractive platforms which are customized for each individual. Psychoanalysis can thus offer a complex conceptualisation of the interplay between affirmation, attraction and exploitation that is immanent to platforms and users today.
References
Bach, S. (1994). The Language of perversion and the language of love. Northvale, NJ: Aronson.
Baker, R. (1994). Psychoanalysis as a lifeline: A clinical study of a transference perversion. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 75(4), 743-753.
Balick, A. (2014). The psychodynamics of social networking: Connected-up instantaneous culture and the self. London: Karnac Books.
Brown, A. J. (2020). “Should I stay or should I leave?”: Exploring (dis) continued Facebook use after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Social Media + Society, 6(1), 1-8. 10.1177/2056305120913884.
Bruns, A. (2019). After the ‘APIcalypse’: social media platforms and their fight against critical scholarly research. Information, Communication & Society, 22(11), 1544-1566. /10.1080/1369118X.2019.1637447.
Celenza, A. (2014). Erotic revelations: Clinical applications and perverse scenarios. London: Routledge.
Cheney-Lippold, J. (2017). We are data: Algorithms and the making of our digital selves. New York: NYU Press.
Chun, W. H. K. (2016). Updating to remain the same. Habitual new media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Chun, Wendy H. K. (2018). ‘Queerying homophily’. In: Apprich, C./Chun, W. H. K./Cramer, F./Steyerl, H. (Eds.): Pattern discrimination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press and Meson Press, 59-98.
Clough, P. T. (2018). The user unconscious: On affect, media, and measure. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Couldry, N. & Mejias, U. (2019a). The costs of connection: How data is colonizing human life and appropriating it for capitalism. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Couldry, N., & Mejias, U. A. (2019b). Data colonialism: Rethinking big data’s relation to the contemporary subject. Television & New Media, 20(4), 336-349. 10.1177/1527476418796632.
Dencik, L., & Cable, J. (2017). The advent of surveillance realism: Public opinion and activist responses to the Snowden leaks. International Journal of Communication, 11, 763-781.
Freud S. (1981) Three essays on the theory of sexuality. The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume VII. A case of hysteria, three essays on sexuality, and other works. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
Fuchs, C. (2014). Digital labour and Karl Marx. London: Routledge.
Fuchs, C. (2019). Karl Marx in the age of big data capitalism. In: Chandler, D. & Fuchs, C. (eds.) Digital objects, digital subjects: Interdisciplinary perspectives on capitalism, labour and politics in the age of big data. London: University of Westminster Press, 53–71.
Fuchs, C. and S. Sevignani. (2013). What is digital labour? What is digital work? What’s their difference? And why do these questions matter for understanding social media? triple C—Journal For A Global Sustainable information Society, 11(2), 237–293. 10.31269/triplec.v11i2.461.
Fuchs, C., & Trottier, D. (2017). A critical empirical study of computer experts' attitudes on commercial and state surveillance of the Internet and social media post-Edward Snowden. Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society, 15(4), 412-444. 10.1108/JICES-01-2016-0004.
Gillespie, T. (2014). The relevance of algorithms. In: Gillespie, T., Boczkowski, P. and K. Foot (Eds.): Media technologies. Essays on communication, materiality, and society. Cambridge, MA: the MIT Press, 167–194.
Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the internet. Platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Jarett, K. (2016). Feminism, labour and digital media: The digital housewife. New York: Routledge.
Johanssen, J. (2019). Psychoanalysis and digital culture: Audiences, social media, and big data. London: Routledge.
Karppi, T. (2018). Disconnect. Facebook’s affective bonds. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
Kennedy, H. (2016). Post, mine, repeat: Social media data mining becomes ordinary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Khan, M. (1979). Alienation in perversions. New York: International Universities Press.
Knafo, D. and Lo Bosco, R. (2017). The age of perversion: Desire and technology in psychoanalysis and culture. London: Routledge.
Lupton, D. (2019). Data selves: More-than-human perspectives. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Mosco, V. (2014). To the cloud. Big data in a turbulent world. London: Routledge.
Munn, L. (2019). Cash burning machine: Uber’s logic of planetary expansion. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 17(2), 185-201. 10.31269/triplec.v17i2.1097.
Noble, S. (2018). Algorithms of oppression. How search engines reinforce racism. New York: New York University Press.
Perrin, A. (2018). Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook. Pew Research Center, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/05/americans-are-changing-their-relationship-with-facebok.
Pinchevski, A. (2019). Transferred wounds: Media and the mediation of trauma. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rouvroy, A. (2013). ‘The end(s) of critique: Data-behaviourism vs. due process’. In: Hildebrandt, M. & De Vries, K. (Eds.). Privacy, due process and the computational turn: The philosophy of law meets the philosophy of technology. London: Routledge, 143-168.
Sandvig, C., Hamilton, K., Karahalios, K., & Langbort, C. (2016). Automation, algorithms, and politics. When the algorithm itself is a racist: Diagnosing ethical harm in the basic components of software. International Journal of Communication, 10(2016), 4972–4990.
Simula, B. L. (2019). Pleasure, power, and pain: A review of the literature on the experiences of BDSM participants. Sociology Compass, 13(3), e12668. 10.1111/soc4.12668.
Singh G. (2018). The death of web 2.0. Ethics, connectivity and recognition in the twenty-first century. London: Routledge.
Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Stein, R. (2005). Why perversion? “False love” and the perverse pact. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 86(3), 775– 799. /10.1516/PFHH-8NW5-JM3Y-V70P
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York: Basic Books.
van Dijck, J. (2014). Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big data between scientific paradigm and ideology. Surveillance & Society, 12(2), 197–208. 10.24908/ss.v12i2.4776.
Weiss, M. (2011). Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the circuits of sexuality. Durham: Duke University Press.
West, S. M. (2017). Data capitalism: Redefining the logics of surveillance and privacy. Business & Society, 58(1), 20-41. 10.1177/0007650317718185.
Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: Surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75-89. 10.1057/jit.2015.5.
Zuboff, S. (2019). Surveillance capitalism and the challenge of collective action. New Labor Forum. https://newlaborforum.cuny.edu/2019/01/22/surveillance-capitalism/.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 The Author
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
