Doubt to be certain: epistemological ambiguity of data in the case of grassroots mapping of traffic accidents in Russia

ABSTRACT

While the prevalent view positions data as an objective and unbiased resource of truth about the world, scholars have noted that this understanding cannot be all-encompassing and data activists may comprehend the relationship between knowledge, reality, and data differently. Data activists are civil society actors with a critical stance towards datafication; they either consider data as a political issue or employ it to advance desirable social change. This article investigates activists’ data epistemologies in a twofold manner. First, it poses the question of how activists can simultaneously use a certain dataset while questioning its credibility. Second, the article explores how activists’ data epistemology transforms other domains of socio-political grassroots interventions. To answer these questions, I turn to the case of the DTP Map – an interactive geoweb map of traffic accidents in Russia made by activists using the official governmental data. Turning to the concept of contentious data politics, I demonstrate how the project transforms by continuously dealing with the data’s epistemologically ambiguous nature. In their data practices aimed at gaining and maintaining the users’ trust, activists have tried to ensure their project will be employed by various collectives for the common goal of reducing traffic accidents in Russia. Their data practices can be considered both a repertoire of social change and a stake of activist intervention. Crucially, in the process of map-making, activists do not gain the epistemologically unambiguous view of data but rather they manage to retain this ambiguity and make it a constitutive part of their project.

KEYWORDS:

• Data activism
• Russia
• urban movements
• data epistemology
• data practices
• data agency

Acknowledgements

The author thanks three anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback and special issue organisers for making the issue possible. Additionally, the author is grateful to Polina Kolozaridi and Leonid Yuldashev who provided generous feedback during various stages of the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Ustinov and Radchenko have been interviewed for this research and wished for their names to be public in the article. After discussing it with them, I have tried to carefully consider the potential benefits and risks of such publicity and in the end, reasoned it to be the best possible decision for the informants.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dmitry Muravyov

Dmitry Muravyov is a social researcher who focuses on the intersections of the internet, data, knowledge, and politics. He is a PhD Candidate at the Delft University of Technology and a member of the grassroots research community Club for Internet and Society Enthusiasts (клуб любителей интернета и общества).