The Nice Thing about Context Is That Everyone Has ItThis essay was written as part of a special section of Media, Culture & Society reflecting on danah boyd and Kate Crawford’s “Critical Questions for Big Data.” It takes on the idea that the meaning of data is crucially dependent on context. What does this mean? By placing this common critique alongside the emergence of recommender systems designed to appreciate context, the piece argues that we should recognize a variety of “context cultures”: approaches to data that agree context is important, but disagree what to do about it.