A bestiary of digital monsters

Abstract

This article puts forward a bestiary of digital monsters. By bringing into dialogue scholarship in monster theory with that in science and technology studies, we develop the idea of the bestiary as a way of exploring sites where digital monsters are made. We discuss the role of bestiaries in narrating anxieties about the present. We proceed to populate our bestiary with various sociotechnical ‘beasts’ arising in collaborative research project on new data relations in Denmark. The paper argues for the place of the ever-incomplete bestiary in understanding digital monsters, for the bestiary’s role as gathering point within our project, and for its capacities to speak beyond a single research setting. Through the bestiary, we look toward the ways we already live with monsters and to the forms of analysis available for describing the beasts in our midst.