The Aging in Data (AiD) project brings together a collaborative, socially engaged, and interdisciplinary network of scholars and community-based activists and organizations to research the intersections of age studies, communications/media studies, and critical data studies. Our primary goal is to understand what it means to age and, more specifically, to be old in an era of unprecedented digital data-gathering. The rapid expansion of mobile services, online communications, social media platforms and the digitization of information over the last decade is changing the nature of our engagements with communication and media: media generate valuable digital data that is shared across networks (Zuboff, 2019).

The primary goal of this new project to examine what it means to age in a world of digital data: what we might term the ‘datafication of ageing’. What role does age play within these processes of the datafication of information through our entanglements with media platforms and systems, such as Facebook, Google or Amazon? What might we learn about this world of datafication, if it is examined through the lens of aging? This is the SSHRC Insight goal of Aging in Data. The SSHRC Connection goal is to create an interdisciplinary, intersectoral international research team that enables this new research collaboration. AiD will bring together partner institutions and researchers, with complementary methodological and theoretical skills, to monitor this next set of profound technological changes and their relationships to age. Concordia University’s engAGE, the Trent Centre on Aging and Society (TCAS) and the Graz Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care (CIRAC) are the three primary academic centres that will provide direction to the project, along with the Université de Montréal, Queen’s and Ryerson in Canada.

Through engAGE, we anticipate building a connection to members of our Faculty of Engineering, to draw upon their expertise in computation and cybersecurity as we develop this project. CoAgeCare in Finland, Brunel University’s BORG (Brunel Older Research Group) and Ben Gurion University will play important roles as institutions with longstanding work with older adults in a variety of sectors including, housing, health, immigration, and robotics. The University of Graz as well as Trent University have a strong cultural studies of aging focus and harbour projects on care in rural communities. CoAgeCare shares with CIRAC Graz and Trent’s TCAS a concern with the politics of care, specifically in the context of Finland. The Open University of Catalonia’s IN3 brings to the project researchers with expertise in statistics and in the politics of big data. The researchers on this grant have built these connections through prior collaborations, many of them instigated through the ACT project. The community partners RECAA, Groupe Harmonie, CREGÉS, and ALCC have worked with our researchers on the previous project and have benefitted from digital workshops and training. They will play a key role in furnishing the experience of their members and providing mentorship to students.

The Governing Board is comprised of 9 members: PI (Sawchuk); 3 Strategy Leads (Governance - Crow; Training and Mentoring - Katz, Knowledge Mobilization - Grenier); 3 Research Leads (Quantitative - Fernandez-Ardèvol, Qualitative - Kriebernegg, Community-based methods, Chivers); 1 Community Representative (when possible, an older adult), 1 Student or Postdoctoral Fellow Representative.