In this book, Helen Kennedy argues that as social media data mining becomes more and more ordinary, as we post, mine and repeat, new data relations emerge. These new data relations are characterised by a widespread desire for numbers and the troubling consequences of this desire, and also by the possibility of doing good with data and resisting data power, by new and old concerns, and by instability and contradiction. Drawing on action research with public sector organisations, interviews with commercial social insights companies and their clients, focus groups with social media users and other research, Kennedy provides a fascinating and detailed account of living with social media data mining inside the organisations that make up the fabric of everyday life.

Helen Kennedy is Professor of Digital Society at the University of Sheffield, UK. She has researched and published widely across the field of digital media, from web homepages to data visualisations, from race, class, gender inequality to learning disability and web accessibility, from web design to social media data mining.