Understanding haze data contestations in Singapore: between accuracy and affect

This article examines the complex relationship between the sensorial experience of the haze and the dynamics of public contestations over official haze data, drawing on the example of the citizen-developed haze data during the 2013–2019 haze period in Singapore. This article qualitatively analysed posts on Reddit to understand how users translated their sensorial and affective experiences into contestable, subjective, and legitimate haze data. This article argues that these experiences generated alternative data in the form of ‘counterdata’ through the collective validation of individual sensorial experiences online. Importantly, these sensorial and affective experiences did not just generate more data to understand the city’s air pollution levels. These experiences revealed the social constructedness of data and data infrastructures within the context of the institutional hegemony over data and functioned as a mechanism through which the political discourse in the city-state was broadened.