Data have over the recent years been commonly associated with analytics and data science. The underlying idea is that data are standardized enough incidents (e.g. clicks or likes in social media, sensor data in IoT based infrastructures) that can be handled by statistical methods. There is no doubt that data can be quantified and used to chart and sometime predict trends in markets, organizations and institutions. This is probably correct but data do much more than this. A click or like makes assumptions about humans and their preferences, sensor data abstract the contexts in which they occur and homogenize technical signals. From this point of view, data are used to tell narratives of the world. They are, in fact, the means for making or filtering facts, framing what is going on 'out there' and building up knowledge. In great deal of occasions, they are employed as media of communication and dissemination of opinions (including fake news) and are often the source of organizational and social restructuring.

It does not take much to see that we need to study data from perspectives alternative to data science. Data Rules lays down the milestones for a social science of data able to disclose the many semiotic, cognitive and communicative functions data perform and trace their social and economic implications.