Responding to Emergencies:

An Experiment in Facilitating Professional Development by Means of Big Qualitative Data

Abstract

This article reports an experiment in turning more than 300 recorded calls to an emergency response centre into a visual data format for the purpose of facilitating a process of collective exploration and learning among a group of emergency responders.  The article begins by introducing an emerging experimental and interventionist practice in digital STS that inspired the experiment. In the next section, it explores the unique nature and organization of work in an emergency response centre. The article proceeds with a description of how we prepared data and a workshop, followed by an account of how the emergency responders engaged with the data and data visualizations during the workshop. In the final section, the article discusses the opportunities and challenges of pursuing an interventionist STS approach using organizational data and participatory engagement of actors in a high-stake professional environment. We argue that a meaningful integration of new forms of data requires careful consideration of both technical affordances and organizational contexts. We also point to the inherently unpredictable ways of professional groups’ engagement with and use of data, specifically the emergency responders’ persistent efforts to reconfigure both data and methodology.