Recounting feminicide: the relational accountability of citizen data practices

Abstract

Feminicide is broadly defined as the gender-related killing of women and girls. Despite the increased efforts to document and measure feminicide, official data remain incomplete, inaccurate, or inexplicable. Angered at such paucity, citizens worldwide are using digital tools and platforms to account for missing data or to counter existing feminicide tallies. This paper presents a creative methodology for investigating digitally mediated citizen data practices against feminicide in Mexico. Based on a relational accountability approach, which builds on ethnomethodology, feminist autoethnography, and critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA), I examine the discursive potency of five digital interfaces that document feminicide in Mexico: the digital maps Yo Te Nombro and Ellas Tienen Nombre, the digital memorial Ecos del Desierto, the Instagram account No Estamos Todas, and the multi-media project La Muerte Sale por el Oriente. The main empirical findings demonstrate that, rather than counting or objectively enumerating feminicide, these interfaces recount the killing of women and girls. As a result, in the shift from data sets to data stories, digitally mediated citizen data practices recounting feminicide are relational and situated in affective memories and embodied landscapes.