The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has, from the outset, been characterized by a strong focus on real-time data intelligence and the use of data-driven technologies. Against this backdrop, this article investigates the impacts of the pandemic on Scottish local government’s data practices and, in turn, whether the crisis acted as a driver for digital transformation. Mobilizing the literatures on digital government transformation, and on the impacts of crises on public administrations, the article provides insights into the dynamics of digital transformation during a heightened period of acute demands on the public sector. The research evidences an intensification of public sector data use and sharing in Scottish local authorities, with focus on health-related data and the integration of existing datasets to gather local intelligence. The research reveals significant changes related to the technical and social systems of local government organizations. These include the repurposing and adoption of information systems, the acceleration of inter and intraorganizational data sharing processes, as well as changes in ways of working and in attitudes toward data sharing and collaborations. Drawing on these findings, the article highlights the importance of identifying and articulating specific data needs in relation to concrete policy questions in order to render digital transformation relevant and effective. The article also points to the need of addressing the persistent systemic challenges underlying public sector data engagement through, on one hand, sustained investment in data capabilities and infrastructures and, on the other, support for cross-organizational collaborative spaces and networks.

Drawing on empirical data, this article examines the ways in which young people negotiated messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp in their everyday lives, focusing in particular on the read-receipt feature embedded in the applications. While it is important to continue exposing and critically examining the power structures and socio-technological relations in which young people’s everyday engagement with social media platforms and messaging applications are entangled, the article argues that it is also crucial not to overlook the possibilities and forms of agency that can exist in this complex environment. Combining insights from Foucault and de Certeau, the article seeks to shed new light on the ways in which tactical agency can be enacted and cultivated by young people. This article contributes to current debates about agency, resistance and power in contemporary digital society as well as makes recommendations to foster more responsive digital literacies.

Drawing on empirical data from qualitative interviews, this article explores young adults’ everyday experiences of ‘logging in’ and their accounts of their engagement with social media platforms, in particular Facebook. By doing so, it shows how ‘logging in’ can turn into feelings of being ‘locked in’ – both in relation to personal data-mining and expectations of participation. The paper highlights the complex ways in which young adults responded to these feelings and negotiated connection and disconnection on social media platforms by deploying tactics of limitation and suspension. For example, in order to regain control of their time and negotiate their relationships, young adults tactically used Facebook Messenger’s previews to bypass read receipts and temporarily suspend connection. Using de Certeau’s distinction between ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’, the article argues that although young adults managed social media platforms on an individual level (by deploying ‘tactics’), their understandings and negotiations of the platforms were significantly shaped by the platforms’ designs and features, by the strategies of the corporations owning and operating them as well as embedded within the asymmetrical relations of power of platform capitalism.

Following calls to rethink the repertoires of social research and take advantage of the new possibilities opened by digital data and devices, this article discusses the opportunities and challenges of using Facebook Activity Logs (FAL) and Search History (FSH) as digital probes during interviews. Drawing on empirical data, the article outlines the value of using social media features in qualitative research with regard to generating thick data and encouraging people to reflect upon the range of everyday practices captured by the platforms. This article argues, however, that to use social media features and data in interview settings researchers need to carefully identify and examine the different forms of liveliness generated by their use and the ways in which liveliness mediates and affects the research data and the situation of the interview itself. The article contends that critically engaging with the liveliness generated by these types of probes in interview settings will allow researchers to better discern how digital platforms and data can inform social enquiry while simultaneously forming a part of how we know social lives and practices.

This article provides new evidence of the ways that smart cities materialize within specific sites and contexts through smart street furniture (SSF). Drawing on empirical data generated through mixed-method field research, the article examines the situated data relations that emerge in the context of the adoption of InLinkUK smart kiosks in Glasgow and Strawberry Energy smart benches in London. The concept of “silences” is proposed to analyze insufficiently articulated data relations resulting from gaps or absences in the use, design, and governance of this new type of urban furniture. The argument made is that data silences lead to failures to account for decisions and the deferral of responsibilities regarding the data aspects of these objects. It is suggested that an approach that focuses on “listening” to and “speaking” about data relations can enable dialogical forms of accountability, and realize the potential of SSF for citizens in local contexts.

Daily life has been pervaded by surveillance, not only in the ways in which information is gathered about us but also in how we perceive and experience monitoring in our everyday lives. Contemporary surveillance and its normalisation hinge on us actively engaging with, negotiating and sometimes initiating an array of monitoring practices [Lyon ( 2018 Lyon, D. (2018). The culture of surveillance: Watching as a way of life. Cambridge : Polity Press. [Google Scholar] ). The culture of surveillance: Watching as a way of life. Cambridge: Polity Press.]. In this context, this article examines young people’s understandings and deployment of social media profile checking – that is the practices of covertly looking at someone’s profiles on social media platforms to gather and/or corroborate information about this person. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with young people, the article explores how social media profile checking has become taken for granted, not only encouraging surveillance practices as part of social media interactivity but also producing specific understandings of social screening. Combining insights from Foucault and Bourdieu’s works, the article argues that the normalisation of profile checking needs to be understood as a specific type of practical knowledge of the social world which is embedded in broader neoliberal governmentalities and legitimises a greater social sorting of interpersonal sociality.