Do Data Have Politics?

What guides my answer is that data models the world in ways tied to its medium and its designed intent. A written description of an event is different from a video of that same event. A description or video that shows more of the event, or less of the event, may also say something different about it. And database fields like "First Name", "Last Name", "Age", "Gender", "Race", "Nationality", "Religion", "Sexuality", etc. are premised on subjective social norms - when systems are designed around those fields they necessarily encode beliefs about how people identify themselves.

When you capture different kinds of data, or when you are presented with a filtered subset of data, your subsequent interpretation of that data changes your view of reality, which subsequently informs your politics.

Art is frequently based around changing the model, which sometimes means changing the medium, but often as not is accomplished through changing more abstract rules about the piece - what techniques, themes, etc. are and are not allowed by design.

And yet, Betteridge's Law does not apply here. Everything is an argument of some sort. It is impossible to completely divorce personal beliefs and biases from anything. The best we can do is recognize this fact and try to come close.