A Stasis Network Methodology to Reckon with the Rhetorical Process of Data: How a Data Team Qualified Meaning and Practices

Abstract

ABSTRACT Prior scholarship argues that facts derived from data are not separate from their contexts and values. In this study of a data journalism team, I define and apply a sociotechnical network approach to stasis that maps their rhetorical actions with their quantitative work. The stasis network methodology identified how their process confronted competing definitions of metrics, which impacted their sense of what was significant and ethically possible, when developing the goals for their report.