Trusting data: the everyday geographies of gay men and digital data

Abstract

Public trust in digital data and algorithms is under scrutiny. We are constantly being alerted to the mishandling of data or the creation of algorithms that are embedded in, and reproduce, racists, misogynist, transphobic, homophobic and ableist conditions. In this chapter, I call for digital geographers to closely examine how digital data are remaking everyday social and spatial processes by exploring how people are ‘living with’ digital data. I do so by exploring how white gay middle-class men negotiate the uncertainties of living with digital data that is collected on their smart devices. I show these men felt protected by their identities along the axis of gender, race and class, yet it was their sexual identities that called into question their ability to trust how the collection of digital data might impact their lives. I argue that relationships with data emerge in relation to embodied identities and everyday places.