Minna Ruckenstein

University of Helsinki | HY · Consumer Society Research Centre

This paper reflects on collaborative explorations within the MyData initiative, delineating a non-linear, recursive research approach to emerging technologies in society. Three distinct yet interconnected modes of engagement are discussed: creating trouble, which involves questioning those who shape the technological agenda; composing futures, a te...

This article examines heterogeneous forms of human relationalities with algorithms envisioned in the development of a public algorithmic system and their anticipated effects. To do that, we focus on the distinct shapes given to both technologies and people by discourses and practices, together with their underlying logics and associated values. Ana...

In this interview, we wanted to explore the notion of repair beyond the usual materialities and temporalities of the present. Therefore, we proposed a conversation between Minna Ruckenstein and Sarah Pink, in order to rethink repair in the digital realm of algorithms, AI, and robotics; as well as to speculate on future breakages, and thus anticipat...

What constitutes a data practice and how do contemporary digital media technologies reconfigure our understanding of practices in general? Autonomously acting media, distributed digital infrastructures, and sensor-based media environments challenge the conditions of accounting for data practices both theoretically and empirically. Which forms of co...

This article reorients research on agentic engagements with algorithms from the perspective of autonomy. We separate two horizons of algorithmic relations – the instrumental and the intimate – and analyse how they shape different dimensions of autonomous agency. Against the instrumental horizon, algorithmic systems are technical procedures ordering...

In this article, we study how people define, negotiate, and perform autonomy in relation to digital technologies, specifically in connection with behavioral insurance policies that involve forms of data tracking and health services. The article builds on focus group discussions, which we treat as a dynamic site of ethico‐political deliberation to t...

Everyday life is increasingly automated with the use of new and emerging digital technologies and systems. Discussion of these automated technologies is often shrouded with narratives which highlight extreme and spectacular examples, rather than the ordinary mundane realities that characterise the overwhelming majority of people's actual encounters...

Korostamme puheenvuorossamme ihmisen ja teknologian yhteistoiminnan mahdollisuuksia ja eri toimijoiden keskinäisen ymmärryksen tärkeyttä. Mielestämme tekoälykeskusteluissa tulisi pohtia laaja-alaisemmin, miten teknologiat voivat tukea ihmisten ja organisaatioiden pyrkimyksiä ja käytäntöjä. Olisi mietittävä huolellisesti, mihin tarkoituksiin data-an...

In the insurance industry, digital technologies have been harnessed in pursuit of three goals: personalising services for customers, obtaining information about them and nudging them towards behaviour that diminishes their risks. This article examines two Finnish companies that use self-tracking practices and sensor-generated data in life insurance...

What does digital piecework have in common with laboring in the warehouse of a large online shopping platform? How is data cleaning related to digitization work and AI training in prisons? This panel suggests bringing these diverse ways of laboring in the digital economies together by considering these practices as infrastructural labor that takes...

With the goal of re-humanizing discussion platform operations, this study explores the knowledge and aims of commercial content moderators by reframing their work-related ideals through the notion of the “logic of care.” In seeking to expand their professional realm by realigning users, moderators, and technical tools, moderators of discussion foru...

Beyond the Quantified Self This article investigates the metaphor of the Quantified Self (QS) as it is presented in the journal Wired (2008-2012). Four interrelated themes – transparency, optimization, feedback loop, and biohacking – are identified as underpinning the definition of a new digital self and the diffusion of a dataist paradigm. By sugg...

This article is inspired by the social life of methods approach, joining a movement among social scientists engaging with ‘big data’ to contribute to methodological innovation and conceptual development in research and knowledge translation. It explores human-drug associations using a computational tool, Medicine Radar, meanwhile raising questions...

This article develops the notion of the intimacy of surveillance, a characteristic of contemporary corporate marketing and dataveillance fueled by the accumulation of consumers’ economically valuable digital traces. By focusing on emotional reactions to targeted advertisements, we demonstrate how consumers want contradictory things: they oppose int...

Data activism, promoting new forms of civic and political engagement, has emerged as a response to problematic aspects of datafication that include tensions between data openness and data ownership, and asymmetries in terms of data usage and distribution. In this article, we discuss MyData, a data activism initiative originating in Finland, which a...

In this article, we introduce and demonstrate the concept-metaphor of broken data. In doing so, we advance critical discussions of digital data by accounting for how data might be in processes of decay, making, repair, re-making and growth, which are inextricable from the ongoing forms of creativity that stem from everyday contingencies and improvi...

Research focusing on online health discussions provides valuable insights into the use of medicines, as well as health-related experiences and difficulties currently not well understood. We introduce Medicine Radar, a tool for exploring health-related online discussions obtained from the Finnish Suomi24 chat forum. The health subset of the entire S...

Research focusing on online health discussions provides valuable insights into the use of medicines, as well as health-related experiences and difficulties currently not well understood. We introduce Medicine Radar, a tool for exploring health-related online discussions obtained from the Finnish Suomi24 chat forum. The health subset of the entire S...

Seen in a longitudinal perspective, Quantified Self-inspired self-tracking sets up “a laboratory of the self,” where people co-evolve with technologies. By exploring ways in which self-tracking technologies energize everyday aims or are experienced as limiting, we demonstrate how some aspects of the self are amplified while others become reduced an...

This paper evaluates self-tracking practices in connection with ideas of objectivity via exploration of confrontations with personal data, particularly with reference to physiological stress and recovery measurements. The discussion departs from the notion of ‘mechanical objectivity’, seeking to obtain evidence that is ‘uncontaminated by interpreta...

Over the past decade, data-intensive logics and practices have come to affect domains of contemporary life ranging from marketing and policy making to entertainment and education; at every turn, there is evidence of “datafication” or the conversion of qualitative aspects of life into quantified data. The datafication of health unfolds on a number o...

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing has been discussed and critiqued from perspectives that include biomedical, commercial, ethical, legal, regulatory, and participatory stances. This study adds a perspective that emphasizes the ‘liveliness of data’ and treats 23andMe genetic tests as part of an expanding self-tracking market that shapes commu...

A long-term research focus on the temporality of everyday life has become revitalised with new tracking technologies that allow methodological experimentation and innovation. This article approaches rhythms of daily lives with heart-rate variability measurements that use algorithms to discover physiological stress and recovery. In the spirit of the...

This article investigates the metaphor of the Quantified Self (QS) as it is presented in the magazine Wired (2008–2012). Four interrelated themes—transparency, optimization, feedback loop, and biohacking—are identified as formative in defining a new numerical self and promoting a dataist paradigm. Wired captures certain interests and desires with t...

Techno-Anthropology recognizes the intertwining of technology with aims, needs, practices, and skills; ‘the techno’ and ‘the anthro’ are not only interconnected, but historically co-constituted. In this paper developments in ‘personal analytics’ are examined with the aim of proposing epistemological and methodological directions for techno-anthropo...

This chapter demonstrates how ethnographically-oriented research on emergent technologies, in this case self-tracking technologies, adds to Techno-Anthropology's aims of understanding techno-engagements and solving problems that deal with human-technology relations within and beyond health informatics. Everyday techno-relations have been a long-sta...

As a result of digital and mobile technology, various kinds of monitoring practices are moving back and forth knowledge hierarchies. The analytics of bodily and mental functions is no longer the privileged domain of professionals. This essay focuses on the ways in which everyday analytics, heart-rate monitoring in particular, becomes embedded and n...

A field of personal analytics has emerged around self-monitoring practices, which includes the visualization and interpretation of the data produced. This paper explores personal analytics from the perspective of self-optimization, arguing that the ways in which people confront and engage with visualized personal data are as significant as the tech...

Lokakuisessa tieteen-ja teknologian tutkimuksen konferenssissa San Diegossa ei jäänyt epäselväksi, että big data on muotia. Kymmenien tutkijoiden puheenvuorot kertoivat siitä, että on tärkeää olla mukana etulinjassa hahmottamassa ja hallitsemas-sa nousevaa tieteenalaa, big data sciencea. Toistai-seksi big datalle ei ole suomenkielistä vastinetta, m...

Digital technologies offer children opportunities to expand their everyday worlds and manipulate their spatial surroundings in real time. This article draws from ethnographic research in Helsinki focusing on children's sociality and technology encounters. Particular attention is given to techno-toys and online networking communities. Connections be...

Addictions can be viewed as compulsory involvements with various con sump­ tion­related activities including gambling, drinking, eating, exercise, internet use and shopping. They are a deeply­seated feature of consumer culture and its discourses concerning individual choices, but also the lack of choice accom panying various kinds of 'addictive sta...

This article focuses on participatory forms of capitalism, children’s consumer desires and engagements with a game console. The Nintendo DS is needed in order to enter a gaming world where relationships are built between children and non-human objects with human-like capacities. The discussion proposes that playing a simulation game, Nintendogs, te...

The term ‘creationist capitalism’ attempts to capture a shift or a trend in capitalism that is currently being described as a move away from consumption to that of prosumption. At the heart of prosumption is the intertwining of economic profit-making with individual creativity. This study explores how creationist capitalism is produced and pushed f...

Miten yritykset löytävät innovatiivisia ratkaisuja ja uusia liiketoimintamahdollisuuksia? • Mitä on ihmislähtöinen innovaatiotoiminta? • Millaiset tuotteet tai palvelut tulevat osaksi ihmisten arkea? Tavaran tai palvelun todellisella asiantuntijalla eli käyttäjällä on tietoa, jota yritykset tarvitsevat kipeästi. Mutta osataanko tätä tietoa etsiä, s...

This article approaches childhood as an emergent condition in which children, their caregivers and toys all take an active part and argues that the focus on toys opens important insights for studying processes of social reproduction and change. This is demonstrated by describing children’s interactions with virtual pets that encourage children to b...

Recent research into children’s consumption argues for the centrality of children and childhood in rethinking and revising notions of consumer culture. This article introduces the model of time scales of consumption for exploring children’s talk about money. An analysis of short and long-term cycles of exchange opens for scrutiny the complex ways i...