Page 100 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

86 J. BATES

Sandra Braman (2006) alludes to these developments in her concep-
tualisation of the “Informational State”. In her work, she observes the
development of a deepening form of “informational power” beginning in
the 1970s and 1980s. She argues that while analyses of power have tended
to categorise the concept into instrumental, structural and symbolic forms
of power, processes of information intensification in recent decades have
brought a further type—“informational power”—to the core of contem-
porary power relations. This “informational” form of power, she argues,
interacts with other forms of power by “manipulating” their “informational
bases” (p. 26). She illustrates a number of examples of this developing
“informational base” for instrumental, structural and symbolic forms of
power with reference to Smart Weapons, internet surveillance, personalised
web-services, social profiling and manipulation of public opinion. Braman
further argues that the processing and distribution of information are also
often key factors in “the transformation of power from potential to actual”
(p. 27).
It is important that this informational form of power is addressed as we
try and navigate through the complex and uncertain terrain of the con-
temporary era. It is clear that data analytics will contribute to how societies
respond to the significant challenges we face in the twenty first century, but
also that many of these data-related practices generate deep uncertainties of
their own. The different interests that are empowered and disempowered
by how data are generated, processed and used will be heavily influenced
by the wider dynamics of political economy and culture. It is therefore
important to integrate an understanding of datafication into our analysis of
the broader processes of change. In order to ‘make real’ some of these
issues, the rest of the chapter will now turn to examining such develop-
ments in relation to climate risk markets.

THE CLIMATE RISK MARKET
Similar to climate science, financial markets have long been data-
dependent. Streams of data are crunched by algorithms and models, and
feed into human and automated decision-making processes which have
significant impact throughout society. Weather derivatives are a type of
climate risk product traded in the global financial markets. These financial
products cover businesses for “moderate departures” from expected
weather conditions, as opposed to traditional indemnity insurance, which
covers for significant departures (e.g., extreme events) and catastrophic loss