Contentious Data in Movement

This book explores the profound transformations brought about by the datafication of society, and reflects on the implications this has for activism, social movements, and contentious politics.

The result is a collection of chapters that advance the field of social movement studies theoretically and empirically, enabling us to better understand these transformations and offering a vocabulary and conceptual apparatus that facilitates a truly interdisciplinary dialogue. Through rich case studies, empirical examples, novel insights, and provocative reflections, the book serves as an invitation for scholars and activists to reflect on the theoretical, empirical, methodological and ethical implications of the datafied society, and its consequences for social movement activism.

The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of social movements, political science, social anthropology, and ethnography. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Social Movement Studies.

Cristina Flesher Fominaya is Professor of Global Studies, Aarhus University. She is Editor in Chief of Social Movement Studies and founding editor of Interface Journal. Her latest books are Democracy Reloaded (2020) and Social Movements in a Globalized World (2020).

Stefania Milan (stefaniamilan.net) works at the intersection of political participation, technology, and governance, with emphasis on infrastructure and agency. She is Professor of Critical Data Studies at the University of Amsterdam, affiliated with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (Harvard University) and the School of Transnational Governance (European University Institute).

Davide Beraldo is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation and at the Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. His research lies at the intersection of new media studies, computational social science, and the epistemology of complexity.