In Fall 2023, GSLIS will be offering a new class on Data Ethics. The class emerges from GSLIS’ ongoing curriculum reform process.

This course will introduce students to the foundations of ethics – the moral principles that govern behavior – and ethical approaches to information problems. Shaped by the current and emerging big data environment, this class considers problems in data ethics related to identity and intent, visibility and control, responsibility, and truth and trust, as well as special topics in data ethics. The course covers algorithmic accountability, ethics in machine learning and other types of artificial intelligence, the ethics of computational approaches to information work, and the contributions of LIS to ethical data futures.

In the Fall 2023 semester, the special topics covered will be: content moderation; the encoded body; surveillance capitalism; and privacy and obfuscation.

The learning outcomes for the course are:

• Explain foundational concepts in ethics (applied, normative and metaethics)

• Analyze information problems or issues for their ethical dimensions.

• Apply ethical approaches to solving information problems.

• Identify social issues where data ethics might contribute value.

There are two required textbooks for this class:

Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Polity, 2019. 

Louise Amoore, Cloud Ethics: Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others, Duke University Press, 2020.

The learning outcomes will be assessed through a short paper, in class exercises, and a video essay. The class will include a workshop on video essay production.

The class will meet virtually (Zoom) on Tuesdays from 3:55pm to 6:30pm. The class will be taught by Dr. James Lowry.