De-Agentializing Data Practices: The Shifting Power of Metaphor in 1990s Discourses on Data Mining

Abstract

How do metaphor-driven representations of data mining in corporate media discourse affect understandings of data and data practices? This is, in short, the focal question of this article. Current media discourses of "Big Data" are characterized by a high degree of metaphorization and these metaphors play a key role in how we (mis)understand this ill-defined phenomenon. For example, media scholars Cornelius Puschman and Jean Burgess argue that associated metaphors of big data as a force of nature to be controlled and a form of nourishment/fuel to be consumed lead to a deceptive understanding of big data in terms of natural phenomena. These metaphors are misleading, they argue, as by evoking the image of big data as a force of nature their value is presented as a naturally given, while the fact that value and meaning are actually inscribed by analysis is obscured. This article aims to further deconstruct the representational politics of big data metaphors, directing specific attention to changes in the discursive—specifically metaphorical—framing of data practices in the 1990s, comparing academic discourses with corporate media discourses.