Data as narrative: contesting the right to the word

This guest contribution to the Contentious Data special issue asks: What are the fundamental processes underlying the possibility of data activism? It argues that, if like everything else, social movements are being datafied, this operates on at least four levels: a change in the general conditions under which all social movements operate; data becoming either the specific or general object of activism; and finally, data becoming crucial to practices of movement resistance. Underlying this is a further pattern, that data as a narrative are increasingly an important aspect of contestation in contemporary politics. I interpret this general phenomenon through the lens of the social theory of Alberto Melucci and the leader of the Zapatistas movement, Subcomandante Marcos.