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Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien
Publications
February 25, 2022

Open access article by Harald Kümmerle studies data practices in Japan

A new, open access article by DIJ senior research fellow Harald Kümmerle studies how data practices in Japan are linked to global surveillance capitalism. “Japanese data strategies, global surveillance capitalism, and the ‘LINE problem'”, published in the special issue on prospects for a new materialist informatics of Matter. Journal of New Materialist Research (Vol. 3, No.1, pp. 134-160), focuses on data conceptualized in three ways: real data, data in information banks, and data of the super app LINE. While technology embodying these concepts of data is mainly used in Asia, this technology is entangled with discourses and legislation in Europe and practices of U.S. American surveillance capitalism. The article demonstrates how discourses around data sovereignty, geopolitical shifts, historical background, global political and economic trends, and international policies intermingle in contemporary accounts of data and digital sovereignty in Japan. It is an outcome of Harald’s research project The discourse on the digital transformation in Japan: an analysis based on the concept of data.