Do not consent! Theorizing media as counter-practice

From practice to counter-practice

Couldry’s seminal work, “Theorizing Media as Practice” (2004), instigated a practice-oriented sociological approach to Media Studies, shifting the analytical focus from texts, technologies, and (infra)structures of content production to the everyday activities of media production, consumption, and interaction. Drawing on practice theory from Bourdieu (1977), Giddens (1984), Schatzki (1999), Reckwitz (2002), and others, Couldry argued that media should be understood as embedded within broader social practices. This framework effectively captures the integration of media into everyday life, refraining from analyzing media effects. It intentionally focuses on normative practices of media usage that reproduce existing sociotechnical orders and eventually power imbalances. What happens if, instead of focusing on stabilized and stabilizing media practices, we turn our attention to the irregular: to counter-practices—subversive, disruptive, political, and resistant actions that challenge dominant sensor logics of datafication?

Theorizing media, especially sensors, not merely as practice but counter-practice brings the logics and logistics of “sensor datafication” and subsequent algorithmic sense-making into sharp focus (Borbach and Kanderske, 2024). Counter-practices productively test the limits of technological operations of classification and identification. They expose and contest the power structures embedded within environments of sensor datafication vis-à-vis possibly biased, discriminatory, or racialized data operations such as automated facial and voice recognition, body identification, and sentiment analysis. In doing so, they are instrumental in regaining data sovereignty and, ultimately, bodily autonomy within sensor societies.

Counter-practices rely on the logics of technological codes, on the algorithmic language of sensors and their signal processing. Whereas the algorithms and operativities of sensor environments and networks are not observable, counter-practices as embodied actions are fundamentally visible (and therefore examinable) and allow statements to be made about the sensing and sense-making processes of digital machines. Counter-practices, in contrast to simple media usage practices, are of great methodological and heuristic interest for media and cultural research since they literally visualize the “blind spots” of algorithmic and environmental networks of datafication. The fact that the commentaries on our original contribution—by Miyazaki (2025), Lingel (2025), Kaerlein (2025), Poechhacker (2025), and Halpern (2025)—have recognized this potential can be seen as an appreciation of our attempted methodological innovation or even revision of the (too) broad Practice Turn, in favor of an approach that combines praxeology with epistemology, empirical research with media and data theory.

Counter-modeling, counter-surveillance, counter-culture, counter-measure, counter-dancing, … and now counter-practice. The list of terms that include a “counter-” in their title seems to be endless. How lasting can a concept be that sees itself as a “counter-,” that is, as a reaction to something that already exists? Does being “against” or “subversive” already create a category of its own (of practices, techniques, phenomena, etc.), or does it require more than the counterdesign to count as a unique or novel concept? Or is the opposite true: is countering essentially more meaningful than the original phenomenon being countered?

The term “practice” means little at first, despite all the relevance of the ongoing Practice Turn in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Instead of playing the guitar, one could speak of the practice of playing the guitar; instead of driving a car, it would be the practice of car-driving; instead of using a smartphone to play games or make phone calls, one could speak of the same as practices; instead of using a sensor as a pedometer, one could call this the sensor practice of pedometering. Practices can be pretty much anything, as long as they are regularly carried out by humans. An analysis of practices, one might argue, says a lot about the people who carry out these practices, but comparatively little about a guitar, a car, a smartphone, or a sensor. This has a historical rationale. Couldry’s work and the practice theories he employs are explicitly rooted in the tradition of Sociology. Consequently, they are primarily concerned with questions of human social life, communication, and cooperation. From this perspective, questions of media and technologies are also crucial but are more of a side aspect, a necessary detour for sociologists on the way to understanding sociality. Decentering technological artifacts in this way (and with this also digital technologies, big-data processing, and interconnected sensor infrastructures of datafication) has proven to be a fruitful approach toward studying media. But it always comes with the risk of losing sight of media technology altogether.

Practices can be observed, but digitality in its algorithmic operativity eludes our view. While its surfaces and interfaces—materialities such as server farms or smartwatches, the cases of smartphones, fiber optic cables, and Wi-Fi routers—are visible, the “subfaces” (Nake, 2008) of our postdigital condition remain invisible, hidden, atmospheric. Our proposal of counter-practices is both conceptual and methodological. It is a theoretical and practical offer toward understanding human actions in media environments of sensor datafication, that is, in supposedly smart environments which are “co-inhabited” (Kaerlein, 2025) by living and technological actors.

Micro, meso, and macro: Scales of sensor research

Research on sensors is still characterized either by empirical studies that are interested in human agency or by macro-theories that attempt to understand our situation under the conditions of sensor-fueled datafication. By contrast, an analysis of sensor counter-practices, as a methodological heuristic situated between these two poles of research, can show the effects of situated actions within sensor environments, and how they productively subvert the logics of sensors.

Analyzing counter-practices enables a scalable approach that bridges empirical research and epistemological theory. From the immediate sensing situation, to the technological infrastructure, to the epistemology of sensors: counter-practices operate on all these levels, which also means that their analysis can start on all these levels. In this way, not only the counter-practices of individuals but also of various collectives at the micro- and meso-level become observable. Furthermore, counter-practices surface what confuses or undermines the sense-making operations of sensors. By generating epistemic statements about the logics of sensor networks and the algorithms they fuel, they allow us to “zoom out” and bring into focus the datafication biases of our sensor society as a whole.

As embodied actions in physical space, symbolic actions in data space, and epistemic actions in the space of power imbalances, counter-practices operate on several spatial and temporal scales at once. Likewise, the chain of references they produce bridges various levels of scale, from the on-board calculations of smartphones to global data flows.

Counter-practices are never designed for the long term. They are technology-specific, highly situational and thus ephemeral. On the one hand, this short-livedness poses a challenge to studying counter-practices historically. On the other hand, it reconfigures the role of media scholars. If we adopt Poechhacker's (2025) Latourian understanding of counter-practice “as a move to change the processes of assembling the collective and the references that travel in such a system,” studying and documenting acts of sensor resistance becomes part of the counter-practice itself, as it expands the chain of references, rendering it durable in the process.

The politics of counter-practices

What kind of technological world do we want to live in in the twenty-first century? This is the fundamental question that is implicit in our intervention and indeed in many critiques produced by Media Studies. While media scholars have traditionally operated within an essentially idealist framework, analyzing representations and imaginaries, formulating critiques of ideology, and inventing utopian counternarratives (Halpern, 2025), counter-practices are centered around resistance on the practical and material level.

It is true that analog and digital spaces are increasingly intertwined: 360-degree environments such as the “Dataverse” have become a reality; in various games and applications, geographical space itself has become an interface; the technological phenomenon of digital twinning shows that it makes less and less sense to speak of the digital and analog as spheres that can be sharply distinguished from one another. In the wake of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, the internet has become a space in which we are regularly presented with the choice not to consent to being tracked and further datafied. In the smart city—that is, in environments coinhabited by sensors and humans—this “I do not consent” option is much more difficult to realize. In this sense, counter-practices are the means to express nonconsent within smart media ecologies. As they target modes of machinic perception, they necessarily have an aesthetic, sometimes even artistic dimension. At the same time, they carry a political charge, in that they express nonviolent protest (Miyazaki, 2025), resistance, and/or opposition. In a time in which social inequalities and precarious living conditions are technologically reinforced through extractivism, data colonialism, and platform capitalism, being apolitical is not an option for media researchers. Turning to counter-practices opens up research avenues that support and even cross over into political activism, negating the common criticism that micro-sociological, praxeological studies rarely manage to inform political critique at a larger scale.

While “minor counter-practices” (Miyazaki, 2025, following Deleuze/Guattari) aimed at subverting surveillance infrastructures are undeniably well-intentioned, perhaps some skepticism is warranted regarding their long-term effects. As modes of unpaid counter-testing “in the wild” (Kaerlein, 2025), these practices can be instrumental in making sensor algorithms more accurate and robust, ultimately intensifying the surveillance they profess to contest (Kaerlein, 2025; Lingel, 2025; Miyazaki, 2025). That is why artists like Trevor Paglen feel that any attempt at confusing sensors with adversarial patterns, dazzle make-up and the like must ultimately fail; and that productive resistance against sensor surveillance can only happen in the political arena (Halpern, 2025).

These observations accurately grasp the fundamental tension within the coevolution of sensor technology and counter-practice that we call the “sensor game” (Borbach and Kanderske, 2024). But they should not discourage us from becoming counter-practitioners for the fear of inadvertently aiding “big tech.” There is an urgent quality to many counter-practices: they spring from an immediate feeling of vulnerability, a fear of nonconsensual sensing (and who knows what consequences down the line) that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. These fears are justified, and so is counter-acting them. They cannot be waved away by pointing out possible negative consequences in the future. That is why Miyazaki (2025) rightfully points out that counter-practices have to be understood as a mode of defense. One only needs to take a look at the historic trajectory of military camouflage (Borbach and Kanderske, 2024) or, more recently, the way that border securitization has subjected refugees to drone surveillance (Pong, 2024), to see that he is correct.

While the critical perspective outlined above accounts for the continued development of sensing technology and sense-making algorithms, it fails to grant counter-practices the same potential for evolution. Of course, practices that subversively address sensors may look different in a few years than they do today. But they will continue to exist, because, historically speaking, the development of technologies and algorithms is not headed toward a finite end point, an ideal state of unassailable systems. On the contrary, as they outwardly reinforce imbalances and asymmetries of all kinds, their ongoing development inwardly introduces ever-new seams, biases, data discriminations, and weak points to be exploited by resourceful counter-practitioners. This coevolution all but guarantees that studying counter-practices will remain a worthwhile method for shining a light on the role that sensors and algorithms play within networks of surveillance and control. Bruno Latour once famously summarized the main methodological premise of Actor–Network Theory (ANT) as “follow the actor.” From our perspective, the main concern should be to “follow the counter-action,” because who will observe the technological infrastructures of more-than-human observers? Counter-practitioners.

Counter-practices are “the other” of technocratic worldviews, according to which everything worldly can be measured and quantified; they are the opposite of hegemonic postfascist fantasies of omnipotence and complete datafication. Counter-practices are “queer tactics” (Szcześniak, 2014) in many ways. They subvert the digital principle of “yes” or “no,” of “either or,” through a polymorphic multitude of intermediate stages. In doing so, they challenge the technocratic worldviews that are inscribed into the digital. To maintain this range of possibility, future counter-practitioners are needed to confront the “heteronormativity” of digital technologies with a queer twist.

Sensors’ perception: “data-worlding”

Sensors are actors in our media society. But they don’t see colors as humans do, they don’t hear voices as humans do, they do not feel temperature as humans do, and they do not taste water as humans do. As Kaerlein (2025) notes in reference to Joseph Vogel, sensor media produce specific visibilities or—evading the trap of ocularcentrism—perceptiblities, while generating certain blind spots or “anaesthetic fields” (Kaerlein, 2025) at the same time. However, sensor media’s environmental perception and perceptual topology must be understood not only as a way of sensing but above all of making environments the very moment they supposedly merely datafy preexisting ones. Sensors do not sense the world, they make worlds. And these worlds are not the same ones as ours—counter-practices operate precisely in this multiplicity of environments and make visible the differences in sensing by human and technological actors. Halpern (2025) reminds us that for Harun Farocki “reality has to begin”—which implies that realities can and do end and that reality is a matter of construction in which different collectives and actor networks shape different worlds. This applies in particular to sensors.

Sensors make evident that—as Halpern (2025) suggests in reference to Latour (1993)—“we have never been true.” The plurality of environments corresponding to the sensory equipment of human and nonhuman actors evokes different accesses to the world. Can a face be distinguished in a certain environment? A sensor algorithm might have a different answer to this question than we would (Borbach and Kanderske, 2024).

When Lingel (2025) asks “What does a sensor know?,” she does not only refer to the limits of the perceptual apparatus but also to the limits of machinic sense-making. Drawing a parallel to ethnography’s modes of thin and thick description, Lingel argues that sensors can measure, that is, datafy, but cannot interpret—and this is an essential difference to human actors, who supposedly can learn to contextualize the contents of their perception, producing a deeper understanding of the situation in the process (Lingel, 2025). Following ANT’s symmetry principle, we argue that focusing on the ontological question whether sensor media actually produce interpretations of the surrounding situations and claiming some kind of human exceptionalism might be less productive than analytically treating them as if they did. In doing so, we orient the study of sensor media toward recent attempts at conceptualizing machinic sense-making as a more-than-human endeavor (McLean, 2024).

Datafication and embodiment

Counter-practices refer to embodied interventions that disrupt, subvert, or make visible the operational logic of algorithmic systems. Engaging with these counter-practices highlights the material and corporeal dimensions of digital data production and interpretation. This perspective is particularly significant in the context of Critical Data Studies, which has traditionally prioritized structural critiques of datafication while paying comparatively less attention to the role of human bodies in these processes. Scholars such as Gitelman (2013) have emphasized how data are never raw but always shaped by social and material conditions, a claim that is once again gaining in importance when related to the bodily dimension of counter-practices in digital sensor environments.

Incorporating insights from Body Theory, our approach positions the human body as an active site of resistance and epistemic engagement with digital technologies. Drawing from Lepecki's (2006) work on the politics of movement and resistance, we argue that digital sensors do not merely process abstract data points but interact with physical performance, gestures, and embodied presences in ways that shape the outcomes of algorithmic processing. This challenges the notion of algorithmic neutrality from another angle, highlighting how bodily practices influence, and in turn are influenced by, digital sensing technologies. The body here emerges not only as a site of data extraction but of critical contestation, where “minor practices” challenge hegemonic modes of algorithmic governance.

This intersection between Critical Data Studies and Body Theory offers a more nuanced understanding of algorithmic governance, particularly in contexts where bodily presence and movement are central to data generation—such as biometric surveillance, motion tracking, and affective computing. Conceptualizing bodies as agents capable of counter-practices shifts the analytical focus from disembodied computation to an integrated view of digital sensing as an embodied phenomenon. This allows for a more holistic critique of digital sense-making operations, one that acknowledges the crucial role of human bodies in negotiating, resisting, and reinterpreting algorithmic processes. Studying counter-practices directs our attention to how resistance and critique are enacted through the body in environments of pervasive datafication, enabling a politically engaged media research.