9th Biennial ACSPRI Social Science Methodology Conference

The idea of data sovereignty has gained traction over the last decade. Data as a new resource are increasingly vital for decision-making in businesses, governments, and societies. Proponents of data sovereignty resist exploitation of personal data especially by state and corporate power. This study aims to map and explore issues around ‘data sovereignty’ raised by non-state and non-for-profit organisations on the internet.

This study uses quantitative analysis of text content produced by organisations on the web to explore the relationship between status of organisations and issues they have raised. Combining field theory and social network analysis as co-analytical tools, social positions of organisations are identified based on their differential possession of capital manifested both offline and online. Offline data on the number of staff, the presence of international office and consultative status in the UN are used to estimate economic capital of organisations, while the reach of issues is used to estimate the level of cosmopolitan capital. Economic and cosmopolitan capital are jointly used to estimate the ‘offline status’ of organisation. Online data such as organisations’ popularity and activity in online networks are used to determine the ‘online status’ of organisations in the field.

This study uses correspondence analysis to investigate association between the status of organisations and the issues they are focused on. The preliminary finding suggests that some of the prominent concerns of actors with high offline status, such as the issue of ‘rights’, are also focused on by more peripheral actors in the online field. Thus, mapping data sovereignty issues using a combination of field theory and network analysis can help reveal shared issues among different organisations across different contexts, allowing insight into the emergence of contested data sovereignty issues in the field.