Approaching datafication from the perspective of social justice

OPEN BROWN-BAG LUNCH
Lunch talk with the Data Justice Project
Approaching datafication from the perspective of social justice
Thursday, 13 September 2018 · 1 pm · HIIG Kitchen

Whilst much debate on the datafication of society has focused on the need for efficient and supposedly more objective responses to social problems on the one hand and a concern with individual privacy and the protection of personal data on the other, it is becoming increasingly clear that we need a broader framework for understanding these developments. This is one that can account for the disparities in how different people might be implicated and that recognises that the shift to data-driven economies is not merely technical.

In this presentation we will advance a research framework for studying datafication that is rooted in a broader concern for social justice. Such a framework, referred to here as ‘data justice’, pays particular attention to the ways in which data processes are contingent upon historical and social context, are uneven and can and do discriminate, create new social stratifications of ‘have’ and ‘have nots’, and advance a particular politics based on a logic of prediction and preemption that caters to certain interests over others. We outline a number of different ways in which such a framework can be operationalized, looking at how data is used in the context of refugees, policing and low wage labor, and explore experiences of datafication pertaining particularly to resource-poor and minority groups.

This talk is based on the research of the Data Justice Project, an ERC funded research project. The research team consists of Lina Dencik, Fieke Jansen, Philippa Metcalfe, Javier Sánchez-Monedero and another post-doc yet to be announced.

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