Abstract
ABSTRACTWe develop the concept of methods as ‘forces of subjectivation’ in relation to experiments we have encountered in a study of government methods for generating official population statistics. These experiments problematise the subjects of traditional methods based on paper questionnaires and offer new digital technologies and data sources as possible solutions. We reflect on these experiments in relation to recent work on sociological and digital research methods as inventive and live. What this work identifies in relation to questions of research methods we take up to think about government methods in two ways. One concerns how government method experiments offered as solutions to problematic subjects, once put into action, change initial problem formulations and are inventive of new ones. Secondly, they are also inventive of their subjects who do not pre-exist but come into being through the agential capacities that methods configure. Both aspects of methods, we argue, are the result of the interactions and dynamics between human and technological actors, the outcomes of which cannot be settled in advance.
Highlights
There is much attention to the valuation and uptake of new digital technologies and new sources of data such as that generated by social media and search engines or government administrative databases
Experiments engage other actors including different technologies and digital platforms and, as we explore in this article, are inventive of new problematic subjects when methods come into play
We have conceived of government methods as configured by and inventive of problematisations and how experiments with digital technologies introduce ‘live’ relations to subjects
Summary
There is much attention to the valuation and uptake of new digital technologies and new sources of data such as that generated by social media and search engines or government administrative databases. In the two sections, we exemplify two experiments with digital solutions targeted to reduce respondent burden, capture hard-to-count populations and direct the acts of subjects: social media platforms and digital or online censuses We show how they reconfigure methods in ways that anticipate but, as we argue, recalibrate agencements and forces of subjectivation. There are many examples of experiments both within NSIs and academic research that engage with social media platforms such as Facebook profiles and Twitter posts to infer statistics on geography, language, and sometimes even gender and ethnicity (Mislove et al 2011, Liu and Ruths 2013, Mocanu et al 2013, Nguyen et al 2013, Sloan et al 2015) These method experiments, which involve digital technologies, big data and new analytics, diverge most significantly from paper questionnaires in that subjects do not self-identify. Loss of public trust and confidence were widely noted as a major consequence but for us the incident points to the vulnerabilities of digital technologies to operational failures but to other forms of subversion and how the introduction of new technological and human actors reconfigure those possibilities
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
