Folk theorization and the counterpublic of data in Hong Kong

Abstract

While AI algorithms and big data have constituted the latest agenda in urban governance, they can also be a prime source of public contention. However, despite increased attention paid to public participation and its lack in data-driven governance, limited work has examined how public perceptions of social datafication alter and bring about (counter)public engagement, particularly amid changes in state–public relations. In this paper, we analyze how contemporary networked processes of folk theorization have (re)produced a contentious publicness of data in Hong Kong across four relevant projects that unfolded under democratic backsliding. Through the analysis, we explicate how ostensibly banal incidents of data-driven urban governance have become a locus of public contention and resulted in various modalities of data disobedience in a low trust society. We further contend that a renewed conception of folk theorization offers significant insights into the emerging yet underexplored disjuncture between digital citizenship and automated state power, alongside its developmental repercussions.