Datafication infrastructures. Reference approaches and methodological discussions for studying digital records of serious human rights violations

New methodological approaches to the datafication of reality have emerged in recent years from fields such as Critical Data Studies and Digital Humanities. However, quantitative perspectives remain the default methodological approach for data analysis. At the same time, in countries like Mexico and Colombia, the datafication of reality includes records of serious human rights violations, which play a significant role in institutional legitimacy and in the construction of collective memory regarding violence. This article explores alternative symbolic infrastructures for developing digital methods to analyze these types of records. By identifying epistemological assumptions, methodological biases, and political implications of data processing, it establishes a dialogue with non-Western perspectives on the relationship between subject, environment, and technology, in order to advance a proposal for the critical datafication of violence that begins with the “cooling” of data for the development of digital methods.