Back to Practices and Narratives: Auto-Ethnography as a Practice of Access to Data and Algorithms

The role of digital platforms in everyday life is a concern within different research fields; therefore, several authors have supported the need to investigate them and their underlying meshing of human and computational logic. In this chapter, the authors present a methodological proposal according to which auto-ethnographic diaries can be fruitfully employed to examine the relationship between individuals and algorithmic platforms. By drawing on a critical pedagogy approach, they consider auto-ethnography both as a practice of access to algorithmic logics through rich first-hand data regarding everyday usage practices as a response to datafication. The core idea behind this narrative method is to use inductive self-reflexive methodological tools to help individuals critically reflect on their daily activities, thereby making their consumption of algorithmic contents more aware and allowing researchers to collect in-depth reports about their use of digital platforms and the following processes of subjectification.