DPHU1008 Chap.2 Raw Data, Cooked Data and the God Trick
Raw Data, Cooked Data and the God Trick
The second lecture takes its title from a deliberately awkward phrase: raw data is an oxymoron. Data appear raw, as if simply found, yet by the time anyone uses them they have been selected, categorised, cleaned and stored. Calling them cooked is a way of seeing those choices honestly rather than an accusation of fraud.
Framing adds another layer.
The required storytelling workbook shows that identical export figures can support a story of environmental harm or a story of regional business success. The week's required reading is Donna Haraway's essay on situated knowledges, whose phrase the God trick names the claim to see everything from nowhere.
In data design this appears as zoomed-out graphics that turn people into dots and present one view as complete.
These ideas are tools for the critical journal and for the lens evaluation in Assessment 2. A course sample applies the God trick to a press photograph of a fashion label's single-size policy, showing that a non-chart rendering can carry the concept.
The skill to practise is naming the position a rendering hides and the people who disappear from it, in one or two precise sentences.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Raw data as an oxymoron: no data arrive untouched
- 02
Cooked data: collection, categories and cleaning leave fingerprints
- 03
Framing: the same numbers can tell opposite stories
- 04
The God trick: a view from nowhere that hides its position
- 05
Pluralism: several situated views instead of one total view
- 06
Fingerprints left by cleaning, merging and rounding data before publication
- 07
Applying the God trick to photographs and advertisements
Worked example · free
Spotting the God trick in a climate graphic
- +1Identify the claim to totality: one averaged scale speaks for the whole planet as if from nowhere.
- +1Name what the position hides: who lives with the heat, which regions lack weather stations and whose experience the average absorbs.
- +1Propose pluralism: add located panels, such as a coastal village and a city heat island, each labelled with its data source.
Key terms
- Cooked data
- Data understood as the product of choices about collection, categories and cleaning.
- Framing
- The choice of story that gives the same data a particular meaning for an audience.
- God trick
- Haraway's name for a claim to see everything from nowhere while hiding one's own position.
- View from nowhere
- An apparently neutral perspective that conceals who is looking and from where.
- Pluralism
- A design approach that offers several situated views instead of one total account.
Raw Data, Cooked Data and the God Trick FAQ
Why is raw data called an oxymoron?
Data become usable only after people decide what to record, which categories to use and how to clean the results. The phrase points out that the idea of untouched data contradicts itself, since every data set has already been shaped.
Is framing the same as lying with data?
No. Framing is unavoidable, because every presentation selects a story. The critical question is whether the frame is acknowledged and whose interests it serves, not whether a frame exists at all.
Where can I read about the God trick if Haraway's essay is difficult?
The required storytelling workbook explains it in a design context, linking it to zoomed-out big data graphics that strip away personhood. Read that section first, then return to Haraway's essay with an example in mind.
How should I use cooked data in an answer without sounding cynical?
Treat the cooking as normal work rather than deception. Name the specific choices, such as who was included, which category was used and how values were cleaned, then explain what those choices allow the rendering to claim.
Can the God trick apply to a photograph rather than a chart?
Yes. Any rendering that presents one standard or viewpoint as complete and impartial can perform it. A course sample applies the idea to a press photograph about a clothing brand's one-size range, treating the size standard as a view from nowhere.
Assessment move
Collect two renderings of the same statistic from different outlets and write down how each frames it. Practise one sentence that names a hidden position for each. Read the workbook passage on the God trick before tackling Haraway, and keep a short glossary entry in your own words for cooked data, framing and pluralism, because these terms recur in every later assessment.
Compare two outlets' versions of one government statistic and mark where their captions push the reader in opposite directions. Rewrite one paragraph that calls data biased so that it names the exact choice that made it so.
DPHU1007 Media, Society and Politics · DPHU1001 Journalistic Voices and Values · DPHU1003 News Fundamentals
