Data Excess in Digital Media Research

Data excess ― particularly in digital media research ― is inevitable. It emerges as the ‘debris’ and ‘leftovers’ from planning, fieldwork and writing; the words cut from drafts and copied to untouched and forgotten files; digital metadata automatically recorded to databases; the data archived but never analysed or published. What do or can we do with this excess from our research?

Thinking beyond academic constraints and the constant push towards the next new fundable thing, Data Excess in Digital Media Research explicitly engages with data that has been left behind, ignored, obscured or even ‘written out’ of research publications. Positioning ‘excess’ as a conceptual, methodological, ethical and pragmatic challenge and opportunity, the authors in this edited collection examine what can happen when media researchers return to their surplus archives and develop new knowledge from what would otherwise be under-explored excess.

Provoking an ethical reconsideration of what we do, or do not do, with excess data, this is a call to action for researchers and scholars to rethink how they conduct their research as the consequences of datafication grow ever more central to both our academic endeavours and our lives.

Natalie Ann Hendry is Senior Lecturer in youth wellbeing in the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. Natalie’s research investigates the relationships between education, health and media in young adults’ lives.

Ingrid Richardson is Professor of Digital Media at RMIT University, Australia. She has published on a wide range of topics, including technoscience, virtual and augmented reality, games and mobile media, social media and participatory network cultures and the phenomenology of media practices.