Data Justice: exploring the dark side of data in society

Before starting!

Before participating in the synchronous sessions we are asking for your consent to collect data during the workshops for learning and/or for research purposes. This data includes recordings of your discussions, reflections and the digital mindmaps or infographics that you produce. Your participation is completely anonymous and any information you provide cannot be traced to you personally. Please read and sign the Registration & Informed Consent Form to indicate if you give your consent. Once you complete the form you will be given access to the link for the synchronous session regardless of whether you agree or not to take part in the research.

Understanding

Self-paced learning - [Asynchronous Activity - '15 minutes]

Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: “In reality, who I am?” (Fanon, 2001, p. 200)

Fanon is portraying here the devastating effects of colonialism, but any form of oppressive power in human groups will generate depersonalization. Indeed, as Kimberlé Crenshaw theorised, the intersections of the several vulnerabilities are more the rule than the exception (Crenshaw, 1991). Depersonalisation is the effect of under-representation within symbolic structures, instruments, procedures, attitudes, discourses and of course, technology. In the power relationship, there is a structural privilege and structural oppression. Within this structure, some groups experience the advantage of behaving, speaking, using and understanding the context because it has been designed by people like them. Not surprisingly, this reproduction is the kernel of the power architecture (Bakker & Gill, 2003). From the other side, there are minorities or diversities which experience systematic disadvantages emerged from their difference. A difference that can be materialized as being a woman, illiterate, disabled, poor, or being born in the Global South. What these collectives experience is the unjust distribution not only of material, but above all, of symbolic wealth.

But which are the liaisons between such a situation with the emergent phenomenon of datafication?

In a relatively short period the data extraction and algorithmic manipulation for different purposes has become widespread, leading to what has been called “datafication”. The term assumes negative connotations, connected to massiveness, obscure procedures, biased assumptions and unexpected deleterious effects over vulnerable collectives. Here are some examples of these negtive, unfair effects:

1. The pioneering work of women such as Cathy O’Neil(2016), Safiya Noble (2018) and Virgina Eubanks (2018) have uncovered the perilous effects of datafication, by disassembling the algorithms as “objective” devices and showing clear examples of inequalities deepen by them.

2. Recently coined concepts as “data slavery” (the personal freedom constrained by the algorithms built over our interaction with the techno-structure) and “dataveillance” (the continuous tracking of our wired lives with personal data) highlight the fact that there are huge imbalances in the way some see and extract data and others are seen and abused through extracted data. More recently, Shoshana Zuboff (2019) has taken the debate a step beyond proposing a new form of an extractive economy, the age of surveillance capitalism.

3. In the recent social research, some have pointed out the constraining effects over personal freedom by behavioural control and quantification of the self (Lupton, 2016).

4. Others have emphasized how race and gender is made invisible in certain forms of data visualization, and it is otherwise over-represented and over-tracked in others (Ricaurte, 2019; Thompson, 2020).

5. The way data is used to control and oppress workers has also deemed attention (Busch et al., 2015).

6. In education, children, teen-ages and young adults are being constantly tracked as a form to exert power by taking decisions over their behaviours, motivations and patterns of success according to technocratic expectations (Chi, Jeng, Acker, & Bowler, 2018; Lupton & Williamson, 2017; Prinsloo, 2020).

References: Go to the section Further Learning

Activity 1 - See and Reflect

Take a look at Linnet Tylors' brief video on Data Justice (3 min). (Here is also the longer version , 18 min).

Read the case of Racial Discrimination in Faces (un)recognition (5 min) and/or the case of Amazon gender discrimination in automated recruiting processes (8 min ).

Exploring & Reflecting

Self-paced learning - [Asynchronous Activity - '25 minutes]

Design for Learning

Collaborative learning - [Synchronous Activity - '90 minutes]

Activity 4 - Create and Reflect.

Introducing a Data Justice perspective into one learning activity

For this activity, you will compile a mindmap or infographic to capture your "design ideas" to introduce/integrate a data justice perspective into one of your learning activities . After a brief presentation by the trainers explaining the activity, you'll collaborate with peers in a discussion to capture an ideal learning design idea, considering the following:

• Who is going to learn with your activity?

• In which context? How this learning activity could be relevant for such socio-cultural context?

• Which are the learning goals I would propose to my students?

• Which "injustice" do you want to focus and review with your students? Algorithms used in public or private services? The way data is presented in an informational context? The way a collective is represented through data? The lack of data around a key social or cultural problem? The lack of access to data by a human collective?

• What kind of solutions could be explored in this learning activity? How could you use the resources (explored at the activity 3) to support your activity?

• What should the students do? Could the families or the community get engaged in their inquiry or experimental activity?

• How could do the students present their work? Could you (or the school) open this work to raise awareness on a local or globally relevant problem?

For the mindmap or infographic, you can either use tools like MINDMEISTER, MINDOMO or CANVA or design your own in a paper, take a picture and share!