Small Data Theorizing

Small data theorizing encompasses the ways communities of collaborators deliberate over the status of data through a set of three mediational logics that pose alternatives to datafication. Small data theorizing is a way of generalizing a framework for understanding the role of the collaborators in digital archiving and database design processes, which often involve both communication researchers and ordinary institutions, such as universities and museums. This framework for mediational logics extends the critiques of big data theory, and its monolithic claims about autonomous technologies and power in society, by elaborating the ways people actively maintain their connectedness to data in archival design. At the same time, it joins critical communication theory’s central concerns about power with a praxis. This can help all communication researchers in seeing how communities are theorizing practical alternatives to archives that are designed for big data and their ecosystems.