Background on Counter Data/Mapping 

“mobilizing data science to push back against existing and unequal power structures and to work toward more just and equitable futures.” Data Feminism, Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein

Counter Data and Mapping

Stages of a Counterdata Science Project

Toolkit for counterdata science

Counterdata – Data that are produced by civil society groups or individuals in order to counter missing data or to challenge existing official data. This could be through contesting official definitions, official measurement practices, or official analysis practices. Producing counterdata isn't only about filling in the gaps of official data, but is also used to challenge state bias and inaction, to galvanize media and public attention, to work towards policy change and to help heal wounded communities.

Counterdata science – An explicit, systematized, rigorous, and usually collective, challenge to the data practices (measurement, collection, analysis, publication) of mainstream "counting institutions" such as governments and corporations. Appropriates conventional data science practices and uses them to produce knowledge about a phenomena from outside the official counting institutions. Counterdata science is not only countering official data (or lack thereof) but also countering hegemonic data science by enacting an alternative vision of what data science is, who does it, and who it benefits. Counterdata science is a citizenship practice – a way of using data and measurement to enact democratic dissent about data and measurement.

• Glossary

Scholars

• Ida B. Wells

• W.E.B. Du Bois 

  • Philadelphia and Atlanta study

  • Visualizing Black America

• Maria Elena Torre

  • Community self-surveys

  • NYC youth survey

Readings

• Counterdata by Seyi Oloj (10 pages)

• Counter mapping data science Dalton and Stallman, 2018 (8 pages)

Projects

• Anti-eviction mapping project

• Data 4 Black Lives -- A movement of activists, organizers and mathematicians based mainly in the US which aims to use data "to create concrete and measurable change in the lives of Black people". See in particular https://d4bl.org/ and their 2021 report on Data Capitalism and Algorithmic Racism.

• Tierra Común Interventions for data decolonization

• This is not an atlas

• Counter Cartographies Collective

• Decolonial Atlas 

  • Video: Whose maps, Our Maps! Decolonizing Cartography to Serve Movements of Resistance and Resilience.

Data Sovereignty and Governance Guiding Principles and Processes

Data sovereignty refers to the management and governance of information according to the laws and protocols of the nation-state where information is located. This is extended to community control over information or data being extracted and research being conducted within their communities.

• Data Sovereignty in Community-Based Environmental Monitoring: Toward Equitable Environmental Data Governance (3 pages)

Indigenous data sovereignty readings

Spatial Data and (De)colonization, Lucchesi

Decolonizing the Map: Recentering Indigenous Mappings

Engagement, Governance, Access, and Protection (EGAP) Framework

1. Engagement: Genuine, cyclical, accessible consultation with communities regarding data collection management, analysis and use

2. Governance: Community decision-making about engagement processes and data collection, management, analysis and use, achieved through the establishment of Community Governance Tables

3. Access: The right of communities to access their collective data and to determine who else can access it, along with the capacity building required to enable this right

4. Protection: The safeguarding of all individual rights and types of data, including identifiable, de-identified and anonymized data.

Engagement, Governance, Access, and Protection (EGAP) Framework

CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance 

• Collective benefit

• Authority to control

• Responsibility

• Ethics

https://www.gida-global.org/care 

The Design Justice Network

A community of practitioners with an important set of principles focused more specifically on using design to support social justice. See https://designjustice.org/ and the book Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chockundefined.