Abstract
This chapter is a handbook chapter more than anything else. It is intended to inform, argue, and provide “tools to enable you” in your research. To these ends, it presents a critique that is both contemporary and historical of the concept of “data,” providing you some paths to move forward with thinking about capta or perhaps other terms that are more appropriate than data. This chapter suggests that “data” is a strategically chosen term which intentionally or not allows some researchers to approach their information as if it did not refer to human subjects or other subjects in the world. Big data treats humans as objects and that is an ethical problem. Capta is one conceptualization that we can use to resist our objectification and could lead to more ethical information usage.
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Hunsinger, J. (2019). Big Capta?. In: Hunsinger, J., Klastrup, L., Allen, M. (eds) Second International Handbook of Internet Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1202-4_16-1
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