What is actually data, and is not data?

This is one of the perplexed questions for me to think about it in research. There are many definitions which are basically based on the nature of the data rather than the nurture of the researchers. Actually, we know how data could be labelled before, after and during the research processes. In this sense, we just orient our initial position as a researcher both question and datum. What I mean that when we intend to conduct a research, we mostly think about datum, or research question. In this small notes, I am going to look down, at and around the perception, conception of definition of data.
Most of dictionary simply defines the data as “an information collected for use” (Cambridge online dictionary), “facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis” and in philosophy “things known or assumed as facts, making the basis of reasoning or calculation” (Oxford online dictionary). We can make a huge list of definitions that have some similarities and differences. Based on these conceptualization, the data (plural)/ the datum (singular) needs to be revised again with the rise of new technologies. Rapley classified data into a two categories which are “document-based sources” and “audio-visual based resources”.  I think that this old types of categorization has many problems resulted from the positivist perception of data and researcher.

When we defined data in this way, we already accept that there are objective consensus about what data is and what it should look like as a first categorization. Data should be explained with the researcher and her own social artifact. In other words, we need to think about the aesthetic and ethic rationalization of resources driven by researchers. The distinctions between researchers’ praxis and the existence of data should need to be overcome since as the process of meaning construction, the process of selection of resources is intersubjective and co-oriented. Rather than their nature, we might need to think about the functionality of resources during the research process. How the resources are transferred into the debate is more important than what type of references and resources are used.

At this point, I can claim that Foucault had this insight by making a distinction between archeology and genealogy. For example, we can classify everything to explain them with their quantities (archeology), but we need to think about more about the nurture of data and researcher to understand the unity of experience in their quality (genealogy). This difference seems to me as matter of aesthetic value and it needs to be debated more and more in the epistemological and ontological sense by methodologists.