Tactics of invisibility: How people in vulnerable positions make datafied everyday life livable

Abstract

Various data platforms force the individual into constant presence and visibility. However, the ways in which datafied environments relate to experienced vulnerabilities in our everyday lives remain unclear. Through diaries produced by and interviews with participants from three groups who occupy presumably vulnerable positions and who currently live in Finland, we explore the ways in which people challenge expectations and prior assumptions related to forced visibility. Using the concept of tactics developed by de Certeau, we aim to understand how individuals make everyday surveillance culture livable through what we call tactics of invisibility. Based on our analysis, we identify three kinds of tactics in this context: keeping worlds apart, cropping oneself out of the frame, and sidestepping. We interpret tactics of invisibility as ways of shaping a space for oneself illustrate fractures in what previous research has framed as digital resignation.