We can’t count our way out

Rethinking quantification amidst digital authoritarianism

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Spangler Ian, Emory Shaw, Scott Markley, and Dillon Mahmoudi. 2025. “We can’t count our way out: Rethinking quantification amidst digital authoritarianism.” Dialogues on Digital Society. 29768640251375903.
doi.org/10.1177/29768640251375903.

Summary

This article critically examines the interplay between digital infrastructures, authoritarian politics, and quantification in contemporary governance, arguing that quantification is being reimagined as a tool for exclusion, austerity, and violence under the guise of objectivity. It challenges the notion that more data alone can counter oppressive structures, emphasizing the need to rethink the goals and audiences of critical quantitative work while moving away from evidence-oriented counting and toward collective, emancipatory practices rooted in solidarity and accountability. The authors contend that authoritarian counting reduces quantification to narratives that inhibit collective responsibility, advocating instead for data practices that empower movements and hold power to account.

Authoritarian counting reduces quantification to narratives that evacuate context and inhibit collective responsibility. The task ahead is to rebuild counting as a social relation—not a tool of oppression, but as a means to hold each other accountable.

Through various case studies, including tenant organizers combatting rent gouging and feminist activists building registries to address state failures, the article highlights grassroots forms of “counting with each other” and “counting for each other” as vital responses to digital authoritarianism. It calls for a fundamental recalibration toward applied solidarity and relational legibility, urging critical quantitative scholars to build quantification from the ground up and in partnership with those affected by oppression.

Their numbers are chains; ours must be bricks.