The 16th Conference of the European Sociological Association – Tension, Trust and Transformation, was held in Porto, Portugal, August 27-30, 2024. At RN05 (session on: Digital consumption 3 – Data entanglements, Aug. 29), Dag Slettemeås, in his presentation “Consumed by Data: Reconnecting Consumers with their Personal Data through Data Domestication” (co-authored with Henry Mainsah and Helene Marie Fiane Teigen) addressed the escalating tracking, monitoring and commodification of consumer data in digital life. This leave consumers vulnerable to privacy erosion, manipulation and discrimination, and challenge their agency, autonomy and life quality. The paper combined insights from three projects; one financed by Forskningsrådet (Relink: https://uni.oslomet.no/relink/) and two recently published projects financed by Barne- og familiedepartementet (Norwegian Ministry of Children and Families). The paper focused on consumer perceptions of digital market surveillance (dataveillance) and on sensitive data used for targeting consumers with ‘intimate’ SoMe-ads. Analysis suggests that the ‘weak’ relation between consumers and their data is a major obstacle for constructing and maintaining privacy-protective strategies, as personal data are considered abstract, immaterial and intangible by consumers. The paper concludes that a central challenge will be to reconnect consumers with their own data, suggesting the concept of ‘data domestication’ and efforts to render data visible and tangible through visualization techniques and real-life experiences.
