When digital capitalism takes (on) the neighbourhood: data activism meets place-based collective action

ABSTRACT

Recent social movement scholarship has highlighted the instrumental and material roles played by digital technologies in supporting collective action and new cultures of organizing. This research seldom considers the symbolic role of digital technologies and data. However, the extraction and exploitation of data, described as data colonialism, facilitate novel opportunities for capitalist expansion in the everyday. Extensive data appropriation and commodification have led to a growing interest in data activism which challenges dominant data politics. Focusing on the intersection of data activism and local organising of collective action, this article examines two cases of how Big Tech disrupts everyday life and becomes a grievance used for mobilisation. With these cases, we illustrate how protest campaigns react to Google’s aim to colonise both digital and physical spheres of life. The first case concerns the creation of a Google Campus in Berlin, while the second focuses on the Sidewalk Toronto urban development project led by the Google subsidiary, SideWalk Labs. Both projects were met with resistance comprising elements of data activism, mobilised as the Fuck Off Google and #blocksidewalk campaigns. Beyond rallying local discontent around impending gentrification and increased housing prices, the campaigns raised awareness about digital giants’ unethical data practices and underscored alternative human-centric technologies and data politics. Employing frame analysis, we elaborate on the intersecting dynamics of traditional, community-based grassroots mobilisation and data activism against Googlization and explore the potentialities and limitations toward contextualising collective action for (rather than in) the digital age.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective action
• data activism
• data politics
• digital capitalism
• data colonialism
• frame analysis

Acknowledgement

Early versions of the paper were presented at the ‘Alternatives to Capitalism’ research network meeting at the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics 2019 conference, the European Communication Research and Education Association ‘Infrastructures and Inequalities: Media Industries, Digital Cultures and Politics’ 2019 conference and the Royal Holloway Digital Organisation and Society Research Centre ‘Digital Activism’ workshop in 2020.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Vaidhyanathan (2011) coined the phrase ‘Googlization of everything’ to illustrate Google’s aim to expand into diverse areas of social life. Following Sharon (2016, 2021), we use the term googlization to refer not only to Google’s colonial ambitions but also to those of Big Tech in general.

2. At the time of the data collection, all campaign webpages were live. At the time of publication, the blocksidewalk.ca pages can no longer be accessed while the campaign sites on Facebook (@BlockSidewalkTO) and Twitter (@blocksidewalk) can still be reached. In the data analysis, links to the campaign webpages are mentioned in full details.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Royal Holloway University of London Digital Organisation and Society Research Centre ECR research grant.

Notes on contributors

Vassilis Charitsis

Vassilis Charitsis is a lecturer at Brunel Business School. His research interests lie in the intersection of digital capitalism and the datafication of everyday life. His work has been published in Television & New Media, Surveillance & Society, Triple C: Communication, Capitalism and Critique, Marketing Theory, and ephemera: theory and politics in organisation.

Mikko Laamanen

Mikko Laamanen is Associate Professor at the Lifestyle Research Center of emlyon business school. His research focusses on the everyday politics of inclusion and social change, with empirical work on consumer lifestyle movements, organizing alternative economies, and outreach in arts. His research has been published in, amongst others, Current Sociology, International Journal of Consumer Studies, Journal of Cleaner Production, Marketing Theory, and the Springer Handbook of Social Movements Across Disciplines.