Petter Falk, defends his doctoral thesis “Assemble Care // Align Data: An Ethnographic Study of Datafication in Swedish Public Care”, at Karlstad University.
You sit in a quiet room at your local healthcare clinic. Tests are run, assessments made, and your data is woven into the threads of an electronic health record. Or perhaps you find yourself in the social care office, where the social worker listens intently to your concerns, gently nodding as your words are documented as data, one keystroke at a time. Care is assembled as data is aligned. Today, digital data has become a prerequisite for public care. Increasingly, more aspects of who we are as care subjects and what public care does in its practices depend on data, which also normalizes its production, use and utilization. This process is called datafication. This study explores datafication within Swedish public care, focusing on how data emerges and how it affects the subjects of care, as well as the data that is produced, processed, and utilized in public care settings. The research employs an ethnographic approach, rooted in the theoretical framework of assemblage as articulated by Deleuze and Guattari. By examining the practical and socio-technical dimensions of datafication, the study uncovers how small, seemingly inconsequential practices aggregate to influence broader ramifications for care subjects of Swedish public care, and for public welfare in general.
Mikael Granberg, Professor of Political Science, Karlstad University
Johan Quist, Associate Professor in Business Administration, Karlstad University
Lina Dencik, opponent, Professor, Goldsmiths, University of London
