Enacting data context: Fixing meaning in transparency data initiatives

This article documents the “context cultures” underpinning efforts to develop regulations for collecting and reporting data in a United States public database known as Open Payments. Open Payments is a dataset published annually by the US Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services that documents the transfers of value from pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to physicians, prescribing non-physicians, and teaching hospitals. In the article, I show context became a manifold concern as differentially-situated actors engaged in modes of public advocacy and social action around not only what data meant, but also what it meant to make data meaningful. I show how “context” took on multiple meanings as it was brought into relationship with certain concepts (such as “light,” “transparency,” and “interpretation”) and as stakeholders developed arguments for where they believed meaning should originate. In presenting this case, I call for further ethnographic attention to the ways in which meaning-making is enacted in relation to datasets—particularly those datasets intended to hold institutions accountable. I conclude the article meditating on the political significance of attending to various “context cultures” when putting data signification in context, along with the implications for how critical data studies scholars historicize big data epistemologies and rhetoric.