‘Digital Hoarding’ and Embracing Data Excess in Digital Cultures Research

Abstract

When I think about the relative abundance of data in digital media research, I often recall a remark I overheard – it’s just like digital hoarding? – while presenting digital ethnographic research at a youth mental health conference. I study youth mental health and social media and often interact with scholars who privilege more systematic, empiricist ways of understanding young people’s lives, in contrast to my own iterative approaches to collecting, archiving and creating with what feels like endless digital and non-digital data. In this chapter, I return to the remark and explore digital hoarding as a productive and generative concept for exploring excess digital data in digital ethnography research and fieldwork. I argue for interpreting excess data as inevitable in digital fieldwork and something that is potentially, but not necessarily always, generative for digital media researchers. By sharing research on how people talk about hoarding possessions and reviewing hoarding in digital contexts, I discuss how digital media research may mirror, or at least attempt to mirror, the complex yet everyday quotidian digital practices, including digital hoarding, of people and the digital cultures they create and participate in. This chapter considers the implications of digital hoarding in fieldwork and how embracing digital excess and hoarding may disrupt systematic approaches to digital organisation or attempts to predetermine hierarchical relationships between data. In doing so, I do not attempt to formalise my methods as a digital ethnographer but instead aim to focus on creativity, curiosity and fluidity as guiding principles in digital fieldwork.

Citation

Hendry, N.A. (2024), "‘Digital Hoarding’ and Embracing Data Excess in Digital Cultures Research", Hendry, N.A. and Richardson, I. (Ed.) Data Excess in Digital Media Research, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 55-68. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80455-944-420241005