The relationship between digital media and digital citizenship has been at the heart of my research work. Whilst in the past I focused mostly on activism, in the last two years, I came to the conclusion that we cannot analyse digital citizenship without investigating the increased production and exploitation of citizen’s personal data.

Hence, last year I carried out a digital ethnography of pregnancy apps, aimed at shedding light on the fact that in our everyday cultures, the surveillance and exploitation of citizen’s data starts from the moment of conception. The project, was titled BabyVeillance: Digital Parents, Online Surveillance and the Construction of Babies Digital Profiles.

The BABYVEILLANCE research project led me to appreciate the political complexity of the data cultures we live in. Yet it has also strengthened my belief that – at present – we have very little understanding of children’s data flows and of their social and political implications.

It was for this reason that I designed the CHILD | DATA | CITIZEN project. The project focuses on multiple and interconnected areas of investigation. This research diary will keep you updated with the research findings in the different areas, as I go along.