Solving the world's problems with data? Data professionals' work on technical solutions in professional competitions

The sociological study of digital society associates the growing relevance of data-based technologies with new forms of surveillance (Lyon 2014; Diaz-Bone 2019), economic conduct (Srnicek 2017), and power (Beer 2009), enacted via impactful classifications (Fourcade and Kluttz 2020) done by algorithms and AI. Though social scientists have studied the work that maintains data-based technologies (Sachs 2020), and data science as an emergent profession (Grommé et al. 2018), a systematic inquiry into how data scientists apply their methods to produce technological solutions for social problems is still missing (Housley, 2021). This project will directly address this requirement.

Key research questions include:

Q1) How do data scientists frame and operationalise social problems as data problems?
Q2) What kinds of knowledge and classifications are drawn on and how are they brought into the process of the production of data-based solutions to social problems?
Q3) How do data scientists legitimize their interpretations and approaches to social problems?