Personal digital data are often imagined and experienced as invisible and immaterial phenomena, albeit with increasingly powerful impacts on people’s lives. In this article we discuss findings from an ethnographic project involving 30 participants in Sydney, Australia, directed at identifying their practices and understandings concerning their home-based digital device use and the personal data generated with and through engagements with these technologies. As well as engaging in a video-recorded home tour, we asked participants to hand draw maps of the digital devices located within their homes and the flows of digital data emitting from the devices. These maps mark the presence, interconnections and mobilities of digital technologies and the digitised details generated by their sociomaterial entanglements. The maps were also used to spark further discussion with the participants about their devices and data, seeking to understand their sense-making practices. Working with our concept of ‘digital scaffolding’, we explore what these participant-generated maps can reveal and make visible about digital technologies and data in relation to the domestic environment as well as the world outside the home. We consider what the maps themselves show in terms of digital presence, and what the mapping activity made perceptible within the research encounter.

个人数字数据通常被想象和体验为无形和非物质的现象，尽管它对人们的生活的影响越来越大。在本文中，我们讨论了一个涉及澳大利亚悉尼 30 名参与者的民族志项目的调查结果，旨在确定他们对家庭数字设备使用以及使用这些技术生成的个人数据的实践和理解。除了进行视频录制的家庭参观外，我们还要求参与者手绘出家中数字设备的地图以及从设备发出的数字数据流。这些地图标志着数字技术的存在、互连和移动性以及其社会物质纠缠所产生的数字化细节。这些地图还被用来引发与参与者关于他们的设备和数据的进一步讨论，试图了解他们的意义建构实践。利用我们的“数字脚手架”概念，我们探索这些参与者生成的地图可以揭示和显示与家庭环境以及家庭之外的世界相关的数字技术和数据。我们考虑地图本身在数字存在方面所显示的内容，以及地图活动在研究过程中可以感知的内容。我们探索这些参与者生成的地图可以揭示和显示与家庭环境以及家庭以外的世界相关的数字技术和数据。我们考虑地图本身在数字存在方面所显示的内容，以及地图活动在研究过程中可以感知的内容。我们探索这些参与者生成的地图可以揭示和显示与家庭环境以及家庭以外的世界相关的数字技术和数据。我们考虑地图本身在数字存在方面所显示的内容，以及地图活动在研究过程中可以感知的内容。