Making sense of “big data”: Ten years of discourse around datafication

This article reconstructs the sociotechnical imaginaries of “Big Data” in Germany, South Africa, and the United States over 10 years. Our inquiry into the meaning-making undertaken on expansive datafication processes began from the observation that since its inception circa 2010, the buzz phrase “Big Data” has not only denoted a technology but has also gestured toward a vast array of ambitions and concerns that are reflective of values, economic perspectives, and cultural preoccupations. We use a frame analysis to investigate the unfolding journalistic discourse and discuss the sociotechnical imaginaries of Big Data in cross-national comparison. We found three dominant views that centered chiefly on rebuilding a datafied society, reviving datafied business, and retooling datafied surveillance. Despite substantial data scandals and whistleblower revelations, affirmative views prevailed. The trope of reviving datafied business was most often evoked from 2011 to 2013, but rebuilding a datafied society became the central perspective from 2014 onward. This order of prominence existed in the United States and Germany, whereas a business-oriented view predominated in South African media. Some publications in all three countries ran counter to the general trend but only exerted limited influence on the overall picture.