The paper “The Open Prison of the Big Data Revolution: False Consciousness, Faustian Bargains, and Digital Entrapment” written by Ojelanki Ngwenyama, Frantz Rowe, Stefan Klein (long-time member of our department and recent retiree), and Helle Zinner Henriksen, was awarded the ISR Best Paper Award 2025. The paper addresses the fact that, while some scholars warn of the social harms caused by Big Data practices, there is a little critical social theory (CST) Information Systems research has been conducted into the structures and dynamics that drive these practices.

In this research, the authors examine how tech firms strategically shape social practices and platform design to encourage individuals to accept datafication and data assetization. While these strategies create positive network effects for companies, they often produce negative outcomes for individuals – including privacy violations, economic loss, and reduced freedom.

Drawing on the work of Heidegger and Marcuse, the paper introduces concepts such as false consciousness, digital entrapment, and Faustian bargains to explain how people become socially conditioned into a digital habitus and identify as homo digitalis, seeing all their social and economic relations as digital. The study uses the case of Microsoft Viva to illustrate how even everyday digital tools can shape reality and tether users to platforms, creating what the authors call an open prison.

The paper offers both a critique of the Big Data paradigm and a research agenda aimed at understanding and addressing the social consequences of these practices. It encourages further research into solutions that can reduce digital entrapment and protect freedom, privacy, and individual agency in the digital age.

The full paper can be found here.