The Construction of Social Realities: A Critical Data Studies Approach Towards the Representation of Open Data in Four Dutch Web Applications

Abstract

The Geluksmeter, Leefbaarometer, Uitkeringsmonitor and Benikgemiddeld web applications are examined through a Critical Data Studies framework to uncover their socio-technical apparatus and ask how they use and represent open data within graphic designs. The process of quantification of societal phenomena into data-driven infrastructures is depicted in which the four applications are understood as data assemblages (see Kitchin and Lauriault 2014). With an infrastructural inversion and discursive interface analyses the data assemblages are unpacked and examined. Through this methodological frame a critical analysis of the workings, affordances and implications of the four data-driven applications is shown. The argument is made to understand these applications, not as objective neutral accounting and representational tools of societal phenomena, but as interpretative non-neutral systems with a bias towards socio-cultural norms. Four key points are given how to improve data practices and the reading of graphic designs with the need for data visualization literacy when enacting such web applications which use open data to represent societal norms and values with graphic means.