  This paper provides a systematic and critical review of the economics
literature on data as an economic good and draws lessons for data governance.
We conclude that focusing on data as an economic good in governance efforts is
hardwired to only result in more data production and cannot deliver other
societal goals contrary to what is often claimed in the literature and policy.
Data governance is often a red herring which distracts from other digital
problems. The governance of digital society cannot rely exclusively on
data-centric economic models. We review the literatures and the underlying
empirical and political claims concerning data commons. While commons thinking
is useful to frame digital problems in terms of ecologies, it has important
limitations. We propose a political-ecological approach to governing the
digital society, defined by ecological thinking about governance problems and
the awareness of the political nature of framing the problems and mapping their
ecological makeup.
