Essential New Book! “Data Are Made, Not Found”

A new book by dana boyd provides an ethnographic study of the 2020 US Decennial Census.

• Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census. by danah boyd. University of Chicago Press (September 24, 2026).

  Census data determine how political power and federal funding are allocated. Census data make politics, and consequently, politics make census data. In this urgent book, danah boyd explores what it took for the Census Bureau to make the 2020 census, amidst a global pandemic and natural disasters, and while navigating political forces that constrained the budget, micro-managed the schedule, and attacked statisticians’ methods.

  With rare insider access to the Census Bureau, boyd observed and interviewed hundreds of government civil servants who made the 2020 census. By documenting the perspectives of government workers, Data Are Made, Not Found provides a rare glimpse into what it takes to make democracy’s data.

  Boyd shows how many of the challenges that the Census Bureau faced in 2020 resulted from decades of political operatives, data users, and various stakeholders playing what boyd calls “Jenga politics,” weakening the administrative state for short-term political gains by removing support and adding more requirements.

  Contents

  1. Data Make Politics, Politics Make Data
  2. Politicizing Who Counts
  3. Modernizing Data Collection
  4. An Out-of-Control Schedule
  5. The Case of the Missing College Students
  6. When Help Is Not Helpful
  7. How to Anger Everyone
  8. Documenting the Undocumented
  9. When the Numbers Are Asked to Speak
  10. Resilience in an Era of Jenga Politics

A book-launch podcast brings together an interview with boyd plus presentations by boyd and by Dan Bouk, the author of Democracy's Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them (Picador, 2023). The presentations and interview include discussions of what is happening now in preparations for the 2030 Census.

• Protecting Democracy's Data ('Data Are Made, Not Found' by danah boyd) (youtube). Data & Society "Book Talk" (Sept. 28, 2026).

  On September 23, professor, researcher, and Data & Society founder danah boyd delved into her research and its implications with historian and author Dan Bouk, in a conversation moderated by Data & Society Executive Director Janet Haven.

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