"I have been trying, for about the last twenty years, to link the following three dimensions: lived experience, technologies [...], and silences." - Susan Leigh Star
"'Missing data sets' are the blank spots that exist in spaces that are otherwise data-saturated. Wherever large amounts of data are collected, there are often empty spaces where no data live." – Mimi Ọnụọha
data not found is a dataset of datasets that were sought but not found on data portals around the world.
Archiving unmet data desires and lingering concerns, it invites reflection on which datasets are not collected or made public, and which kinds of questions remain unanswerable as a result.
Rather than assuming a "data universalism", these queries reveal some of the different ways in which data comes to matter.
What is considered "missing data", a "data gap" or a "data void" is contingent, relational and situational.
These as-yet-unsuccessful requests have been selected from data portals around the world to illustrate a range of concerns, curiosities and queries for data that is not collected or made public. They are not intended to be representative of all requests on all portals.
Not all data portals make requests and responses to these requests available. Not all unsuccessful data requests have been included (e.g. those containing personal details, duplicate requests, requests which are redirected).
The source list can be found at data/datanotfound.csv.
The project draws on previous and ongoing work on missing data and making data, including Public Data Cultures, "What do data portals do?" and the work of many researchers, activists and artists. More about these can be found at:
- Bounegru, L. & Gray, J. (Eds.) (2021) The Data Journalism Handbook: Towards A Critical Data Practice. Amsterdam, NL: Amsterdam University Press.
- Bruno, I., Didier, E., Vitale, T. (2014) "Statactivism: forms of action between disclosure and affirmation". Partecipazione e conflitto - PArticipation and COnflict, 7(2): 198-220.
- Centre for Public Data (2019) Missing numbers.
- Cobham, A. (2020) The Uncounted. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
- D'Ignazio, C. & Klein, L. (2020) Data Feminism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- D'Ignazio, C. (2024) Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Gray, J. (2016) "Datafication and democracy: Recalibrating digital information systems to address societal interests", Juncture.
- Gray, J., Lammerhirt D., & Bounegru L. (2016) "Changing What Counts: How Can Citizen-Generated and Civil Society Data Be Used as an Advocacy Tool to Change Official Data Collection?", CIVICUS DataShift.
- Gray, J. (2018) "Three Aspects of Data Worlds", Krisis.
- Gray, J. (2018) "Data infrastructure literacy", Big Data & Society, 5(2).
- Gray, J. & Bounegru, L. (2018) "What a difference a dataset makes? Data journalism and/as data activism" in Data in Society: Challenging Statistics in an Age of Globalisation, J. Evans, S. Ruane and H. Southall (eds). Bristol: The Policy Press.
- Milan, S., & van der Velden, L. (2016). "The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism". Digital Culture & Society, 2, 57–74.
- Ọnụọha, M. (2016) "The Library of Missing Datasets" + MimiOnuoha/missing-datasets.
- Ọnụọha, M. (2016) "The Point of Collection", Data & Society: Points.
- Ọnụọha, M. "What is Missing is Still There" in H. Armstrong (Ed.) Big Data, Big Design: Why Designers Should Care About Artificial Intelligence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press.