Between datafication and digital entanglement: Swedish farmers’ everyday use and understanding of weather through apps

Weather applications constitute mundane data infrastructures that people use on a daily basis. However, little attention is afforded to how these everyday technologies and their data potentially shape users’ understanding of weather. One group to which weather conditions are particularly salient is farmers. The field of agriculture is increasingly data-driven, encompassing different commercial and non-commercial digital weather products. However, the potential performativity of said data on farmers’ understandings of weather remains little explored. Taking inspiration from mundane data studies, and by interviewing Swedish farmers, we find that weather app data intensify farmers’ attention to unfolding weather conditions, and affect farmers’ relations to their environment and understanding of weather. Moreover, their experiences of using weather apps are characterised by ambivalence – the co-existence of conflicting feelings, practices and attitudes. This ambivalence emerges at the intersection of farmers’ data use, habits, routines, discourses and embodiment. We propose to call this phenomenon ‘digital betweenness’. ‘Digital betweenness’ directs and sensitises farmers to opposing and concurrent practices, forces, ideas and desires that are entangled in weather data encounters.