Data with its boots on the ground: Datawalking as research method

Abstract

This article explores datawalking as a novel method in media and communication research for studying datafication. Drawing from existing literature, datawalking is characterized as an embodied, situated and generative practice. These affordances of walking help to tackle existing research challenges and connect lived experiences to data infrastructural concerns. More specifically, contemporary research on the deep mediatized city faces challenges that pertain to the invisibility, loss of context and access to data and its infrastructures. It is argued that datawalks, as an empirical method in media and communication research, offers a much-needed anchoring of data as material and situated, and constitutive of everyday life.