Advocacy in Technology and Society/Data and Society

In class edit-a-thon activity

In this activity, you will be contributing resources to our course's 'living syllabus', building towards a class bibliography. In your group, share what you're reading (books, chapters, or articles), listening to (podcasts or other audio), and/or what you're watching (video or other media, e.g. lectures, TED talks) on emerging tech and society. Draw on what we read for class, what you read for reflections, and/or what you've read in other classes that interacts with our class material. Each group member should contribute at least one resource.

Goal:  Contribute resources on this topic, broadly framed. Please share citations and a brief summary about your contributions.

Format:  Each contribution should include the following:

• APA citation of the resource
• Type of Resource: Book, chapter, article, podcast, etc.
• Brief summary of the resource
• Name of Contributor (that's you! if you choose to include it)

Here is an example of what that would look like when you add it to the page:

Aho, B., & Duffield, R. (2020). Beyond surveillance capitalism: Privacy, regulation and big data in Europe and China. Economy and Society, 49(2), 187–212. Type of Resource: Research Article Summary: The paper employs a comparative approach to analyze two pivotal big data policies: the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) implemented by the European Union and China's social credit system (SCS). It asserts that these policies reflect distinct perspectives on data and individuals, serving as tangible governance measures in response to the proliferation of data surveillance infrastructures and the concept of 'surveillance capitalism' advanced by scholar Shoshana Zuboff. The paper contends that while the EU endeavors to reactively curtail the influence of surveillance capitalism through the GDPR, China actively embraces its principles for enhanced state utilization, thereby setting Europe and China on divergent trajectories of socio-economic development in the era of big data. Contributor: Jaclyn Sawyer

With your group, build out this page with your contributions. To avoid any issues, one person should edit the page at a time. 

What we're reading:

https://www.digitalinclusion.org/

Type of Resource: Organization/Association

Summary: The National Digital Inclusion Alliance is an organization that works to enhance digital equity through community action and lobbying. They offer a range of resources like educational webinars and other media, outside resource links, advocacy tool kits and cheat sheets, and research into emerging concerns and issues. NDIA can be a solid first step toward understanding the impact of social inequities in our digital lives and gaining insight into the obstacles that stand in the way of digital equity. They are resources for learning, organizing, and advocating for an open, inclusive internet.

Contributor: Jasmine Dearman

D'Ignazio, C., & Klein, L. F. (2020). Data feminism. The MIT Press.

Type of Resource: Book

Summary: The focus of this book chapter is on the gender data gap, where research data primarily revolves around men, leading to various consequences, from minor inconveniences to life-threatening situations. The text also highlights the need to examine who benefits from data science and who gets overlooked, and it may involve calling out, characterizing, or collecting missing data. An example is ProPublica's crowdsourcing effort to identify women who died during childbirth, or the AirBeat community monitoring project initiated by youth in Roxbury to address air pollution.

Contributor: Julia Zhu

[https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/costanza-chock/release/4]

Type of Resource: Essay

This essay highlights the multi-faceted nature of how data collected by technology and AI is not only based on societal norms, values, and assumptions but also creates barriers for people living their everyday lives. Author Sasha Constanza-Chock recalls their experience going through the metal detectors at airport security checkpoints. Constanza Chock is a non-binary, transgender, femme-presenting person and is often flagged when the AI support metal detector does not consider their nuanced identities. The essay illuminates the danger of sociotechnical reproduction of the gender binary and the importance of embodied knowledge to the design of AI.