ALT Datafication and data fiction: Narrating data and narrating with data Paul Dourish, Edgar Gómez CruzFirst Published July 4, 2018 Research Article https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951718784083 Article information Article has an altmetric score of 54 Open AccessCreative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial 4.0 License Abstract Data do not speak for themselves. Data must be narrated—put to work in particular contexts, sunk into narratives that give them shape and meaning, and mobilized as part of broader processes of interpretation and meaning-making. We examine these processes through the lens of ethnographic practice and, in particular, ethnography’s attention to narrative processes. We draw on a particular case in which digital data must be animated and narrated by different groups in order to examine broader questions of how we might come to understand data ethnographically.