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Short abstract

This proposal forwards a novel understanding of 'data waste' through the lens of political ecology. This is achieved through a literature review of the convergent definitions of 'data waste', while leveraging Ireland as a 'waste frontier', and proposing a new field of 'Critical Data Waste Studies'.

Long abstract

In academic literature, the concept of data/digital waste has a wide-ranging understanding dependent on the fields in which it is leveraged. Convergent terms such as 'digital pollution', 'data emissions', 'data exhaust', 'data spills', 'AI Fumes', 'digital smog', etc. (Hasselbalch, 2022, Hogan, 2024), represent the emergence of a necessary evolution of the field of 'Critical Data Studies' (Edwards et al., 2024), to capture the environmental dimension of data materiality, that has yet to coherently or formally coalesce into a field in of itself. While efforts have been made to unify and coherently marry these convergent conceptualisations (Lucivero et al., 2020; Hasselbalch, 2022), these are often wedded to the limiting frames of 'sustainability' and policy solutionism, which often neglect a comprehensive interrogation of the unequal systems and exchanges, such as Ecological Imperialism (Pedregal and Lukić, 2024), that underpin the environmental harms of the production, storage and management of data waste writ large. Therefore, this proposal offers three novel contributions: One, a literature review of the convergent definitions of 'data waste' through the theoretical lens of political ecology. Two, the exploration of Ireland as a 'waste frontier' (Liboiron and Lepawsky, 2022; Bresnihan and Brodie, 2023) to understand this unified configuration of 'digital waste', namely through the proliferation of data centres and associated infrastructures. And three, the proposal of a new field of 'Critical Data Waste Studies' to properly account for and interrogate the environmental harms of digital infrastructures and the political economy that deems this waste necessary for capital accumulation.