Digital Cultures Research node: Making Information Matter

Guest Speaker Mareile Kaufmann, Professor at the Department of Digital Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo

Making Information Matter

Information matters to us. Whether recorded, recoded or unregistered – information co-shapes our present and our becoming. When critically examining the digitization of public and private sectors it is relevant to reflect about the ways in which information takes form and forms digital practices in return. Mareile will present how specifically associative practices which dominate today’s digitalization discourses warrant complex decisions and activities all of which make information matter. The presentation first advances a methodology for studying the materiality and liveliness of information. Drawing on empirical material, the life cycle of information is deployed to illustrate how, for example, predictions come about and how associative practices make information matter in the field of biometric surveillance. Finally, it is considered what it means to make matter and how we can make differently.