# Notes on ‘just good enough data’

###### tags: `data`

Gabrys, J., Pritchard, H. & Barratt, B. (2016). Just good enough data: Figuring data citizenships through air pollution sensing and data stories. *Big Data and Society* 3(2). 1-14. doi:10.1177/2053951716679677

### Concepts

**Just good enough data** refers to the ways in which data generated through low-tech and low-cost instruments, as well as data that might be observational or experiential (including ‘eyes on the ground’ data), can be mobilised to create different accounts and different forms of evidence for engaging with environmental problems.

### Research questions

#### Main RQ

環境感測數據的生成與分析促成了哪些民眾參與環境議題的模式？這些模式又是如何憑藉環境數據收集與分析，從而組織與發聲？
How particular modes of democratic engagement with environmental problems are facilitated, organised and expressed through the generation and analysis of environmental sensor data?

#### sub-q1

哪些不同的做法與能力隨公民所收集的數據 (citizen-generated data) 而生，形成各種不同的路徑，從而使環境議題獲得重視、並協助提供證據？
What different practices and capacities emerge through citizen-generated data that create different ways for making accounts of environmental problems and generating evidence?

#### sub-q2

在公民所收集的環境數據的情境下，對於大數據 (Big Data) 的理解與使用方式如何轉變，尤其考慮到社群媒體和安全研究中對大數據最主要的顧慮之一即是針對使用者本身的數據剝削？
How do understandings of and approaches to Big Data transform in relation to *environmental* citizen data, particularly when one of the primary concerns about Big Data within social media and security studies is that it exploits data *about* users?

#### sub-q3

公民所收集的數據如何能產生詮釋性的洞見，突破一般於管制、合規、建模等的使用，從而訴說出不同的「數據故事」，進而擴大「數據公民身分」？
How could citizen datasets generate interpretive insights that tell different data stories that go beyond the usual uses of environmental data for regulation, compliance and modelling to generate expanded data citizenships?

- We consider how the data stories [...] provide different ways of parsing and operationalizing citizen data. We also discuss processes for drawing out patterns about possible air pollution sources from the citizen data.
- We approach these patterns as storying processes that contribute to collective modes of making sense of and developing responses to environmental data, and for inventing alternative ways of generating, valuing and interpreting datasets.
- These data stories drew on multiple forms of data and were written through the input of multiple actors and entities, including researchers and residents, policymakers and regulators, as well as sensors and algorithms.
- ……==「數據類型」和「使用類型」是相互關聯的==。換句話說，在各種各樣的數據解析、處理與被使用的模式中，存在一種共構的動態。 (As the US EPA (2013) suggests, ==‘types of data’ and ‘types of uses’ are interlinked== (cf. Gabrys and Pritchard, 2015). In other words, there is a co-constitutive dynamic that develops across the range of ways in which data are parsed, processed and put to use (Gabrys, 2016b: 157–181).)

### 從++測量民主化++到++數據民主化++ (From democratization of sensing to democratization of data)

#### Research gap

- 我們雖然知道民眾使用Air Quality Egg、Smart Citizen Kit等量測裝置進行環境監測、描繪出環境的面貌，但仍不清楚他們如何解釋、分析和動用這些收集到的數據。(As users of the Air Quality Egg, Smart Citizen kit, or any number of other devices monitor and map their environments, it is not always clear how they are meant to interpret, analyse and mobilise their data.)
- 我們僅知道民眾著手進行監測，是為了把所收集到的數據轉化成為各種新形式的政治行動，但具體如何賦予這些環境數據意義、如何實現的過程，仍十分模糊。 (While data gathered through citizen sensing practices is meant to translate into new forms of political action, the specific ways in which citizens could activate new stories of environmental data often remains ambiguous.)
- 這樣的現況也帶來各種提問，即公民數據可以在多大程度上輕易地影響政治變化，以及在因為環境監測而關注、解決環境議題的過程中，將會出現哪些新型態的「數據公民身分」。 (Such a situation raises questions about the extent to which citizen data can readily effect political change, and about what new forms of data citizenship could emerge through these attempts to account for and address environmental problems.)
- In this way, when undertaking monitoring, citizens can capture different registers of experience that might ordinarily not be documented. From exposures experienced at specific times, patterns of industry activity in an unmonitored area, or shared pollution events across a community, there are a range of environmental events that do not typically register in an air pollution dataset used for regulatory compliance.
- 經由「創造」數據、而不僅僅是讀取數據，民眾產生了與數據類型和使用的獨特關係，從而表現出新的「數據公民身分」。 (By making, rather than merely accessing data, citizens generate distinct relations to types and uses of data (cf. Vis, 2013), which can in turn be expressive of new data citizenships.)

### 從++數據實踐++到++數據故事++ (From data practices to data stories)

#### Developing a data stories method
- Stories, [...] are a way of generating and accounting for responsibilities that might emerge in relation to data.

#### Data stories: Forming evidence through citizen data

#### Data stories: Finding patterns, attributing sources

#### Data stories: Activating data as relevant