Contesting data power at the margins: Contentious data imaginaries and social movement mobilization

This article highlights the role of data imaginaries in shaping narratives about social movement mobilization. Weaving together critical data studies and social movement studies, it examines how activists imagine, negotiate, and resist the politics of datafication, which may further construct collective understandings of political opportunity structures and shape their repertoires of action. Empirically, we analyzed discussions about digital data and surveillance in Hong Kong's 2019–2020 Anti-Extradition Bill (Anti-ELAB) movement. These discussions took place on LIHKG, a Reddit-like online forum that served as a crucial site for framing and mobilizing the Anti-ELAB movement. The analysis identified three data imaginaries. The first envisioned CCTV, transaction, biometric, locational, and mobile phone data as everyday omnipresent surveillance infrastructures. Second, participants imagined how police could weaponize their personal data against them, reflecting deep institutional distrust. Third, participants envisioned how smart lamppost sensor and biometric data, and CCTV could be integrated into a trans-border regime of surveillance, rendering data surveillance an object of contention. Each imaginary articulated a distinctive framing of the threats of datafication and mobilized specific anticipatory tactical responses. Together, they conveyed unease about the present and possible futures of techno-authoritarian control. This study contributes to understanding how activists develop collective visions of data surveillance—data imaginaries—that enable them to identify threats, devise counter-strategies, and foster mobilization within datafied movements.