Data practice, data science

Big Data has been attracting growing professional interest, and this has sparked intellectual curiosity and a sense of hope for exciting research within STS. In this piece I am surveying the discussions about data science and data practices at the recent EASST conference in Barcelona from the perspective of the opportunity for building a research practice at the confluence of STS and digital data. Some propose to bring the STS practices of research and analysis to data scienceby means of bringing either leadership or critique to the field. Others have taken the alternative path of embracing digital practices and taking up digital tools and programming for pursuing an STS agenda by other means.