Data & Society

Meredith D. Clark, Ph. D. is an assistant professor in the Media Studies department at the University of Virginia. Her professional journalism background informs her primary research on the relationships between Black communities and news media in social media spaces. Her secondary research in critical journalism studies addresses questions of systemic racism in U.S. news media, with a focus on cu...

Algorithmic impact assessments have emerged as a centerpiece of the conversation about algorithmic governance. Impact assessments integrate many of the chief tools of algorithmic governance (e.g., auditing, end-to-end governance frameworks, ethics reviews) and speak to the challenges of algorithmic justice, equity, and community redress. Impact assessment (or similar accountability mechanisms) are...

In the final episode of our season, “Becoming Data,” scholars Sareeta Amrute and Emiliano Treré join our host, Natalie Kerby, to discuss the concept and lived reality of racial capitalism. The episode explores how data-centric systems perpetuate racial capitalism, and how different communities, particularly in the Global South, have resisted this datafication. Sareeta Amrute (@SareetaAmrute) is an...

Scholars Laura Forlano and Ranjit Singh join our host, Natalie Kerby, to explore the different infrastructures that data interacts with and flows through. Whose values get embedded into the algorithms that increasingly govern our lives? How are these data infrastructures complicating what it means to be human? Ranjit Singh (@datasociety) is a Postdoctoral Scholar at Data & Society. Laura Forlano (...

Over the past year, Covid-19 has exacerbated suffering across every section of life. Harassment and hostility, work pressure, and the strain of a pandemic, along with trauma from ongoing racism, sexism, and other discrimination, have taken a toll on our mental health. Until now, little research has been done on the impact of Covid-19 on the tech workforce. Project Include surveyed almost 3,000 peo...

Researchers Arthur Gwagwa and Deb Raji join our host, Natalie Kerby, to discuss data, AI, and automation, and the different ways they operate across geopolitical contexts such as the US and Africa. The episode covers not only the harms that can result from these systems, but also how we might address and prevent those harms. Arthur Gwagwa (@arthurgwagwa) is a researcher at Utrecht University’s Eth...

At social media and gaming companies, the user is the constant focus — at least in theory. How to get them to use this platform more? To stay longer? To come back tomorrow? Attention and resources are poured into answering these questions throughout the industry. That same attention and those same resources are not, however, put toward the well-being of a major group of their users: young people. ...

Scholar Shaka McGlotten and activist Chris Ramsaroop join our host, Natalie Kerby, to discuss data in the context of labor. The episode addresses the historical ways that data has been used to organize labor, the labor of making ourselves visible to data-centric systems, and the different ways that people, and more specifically workers, are resisting datafication. Shaka McGlotten (@shakaz23) is a...

In the first episode of our new season, “Becoming Data,” artist Mimi Onuoha and data journalist Lam Thuy Vo join host, Natalie Kerby, to consider what is lost when human life becomes translated into data. How do people show up in data, and what are some of the inequalities that can result from data collection? Mimi Onuoha (@thistimeitsmimi) is a media artist who makes work about what it means for...

In the podcast series, Natalie Kerby of Data & Society asks her guests: How long has human life been quantified as data, and in what contexts? What are some major implications of humanity being measured as data? How are people pushing back against the datafication of human life, work, health, and citizenship? She speaks with academics, artists, activists, and journalists to explore these questions...

To facilitate a global understanding of possible vulnerabilities that will arise from vaccine passport adoption, we bring together Ranjit Singh , expert on digital identity systems, Amy Fairchild , public health ethicist, and Imogen Parker , head of policy at Ada Lovelace Institute, to discuss the past and future of digital health systems. The conversation is hosted by Data & Society Health and Da...

Data & Society and Stanford PACS host a special book launch: One of the most far-reaching transformations in our era is the wave of digital technologies rolling over—and upending—nearly every aspect of life. Work and leisure, family and friendship, community and citizenship have all been modified by now-ubiquitous digital tools and platforms. Digital Technology and Democratic Theory looks closely...

Algorithms make a wide range of morally important decisions, and many people now argue that members of the public should be more directly involved in deciding the moral tradeoffs that such systems entail. But most ideas for public or stakeholder involvement are still on the drawing board, and there are few real stories of public deliberation over the design of a morally important algorithm. This t...

Automated decision-making systems make decisions about our lives, and those with low socioeconomic status often bear the brunt of the harms these systems cause. Poverty Lawgorithms: A Poverty Lawyers Guide to Fighting Automated Decision-Making Harms on Low-Income Communities  is a guide by Data & Society Faculty Fellow Michele Gilman  to familiarize fellow poverty and civil legal services lawyers...

Drawing on Tim Hwang’s new book, Subprime Attention Crisis , a revealing examination of digital advertising and the internet’s precarious foundation, this talk details how digital advertising—the beating heart of the internet—is at risk of collapsing. From the unreliability of advertising numbers and the unregulated automation of advertising bidding wars, to the simple fact that online ads mostly...

ProPublica editor and reporter Ryan McCarthy and Data & Society Senior Research Analyst Cristina López G. have looked into dynamics of amplification, inconsistent enforcement of community standards, and the democratic pitfalls of hyper-targeting audiences in their reporting and research. In this Databite, they discuss their findings and recommendations for holding companies accountable, protecting...

Joseph Torres , Free Press’ Senior Director of Strategy and Engagement, advocates in Washington to ensure that our nation’s media policies serve the public interest, and builds coalitions to broaden the movement’s base. Joseph writes frequently on media and internet issues and is the co-author of The New York Times bestseller News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media ....

The Simulmatics Corporation, launched during the Cold War, mined data, targeted voters, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge―decades before Facebook, Google, and Cambridge Analytica. Lepore, best-selling author of These Truths , came across the company’s papers in MIT’s archives and set out to tell this forgotten history, the long-lost backstory to the methods, an...

Concurrent with launch of the Trust & Safety Professional Association , Alexander Macgillivray and Nicole Wong provide context and suggestions forward as regulation, policy, and public awareness of content moderation and trust and safety issues evolve. Audience Q&A follows the discussion. Speaker Bios: Alexander Macgillivray , aka “amac,” is curious about many things including law, policy, governm...

The Class Differential in Data Privacy | Michele Gilman Data & Society Faculty Fellow Michele Gilman discusses the ways that data-centric technologies adversely impact low-income communities. In her talk, Gilman argues there is a class differential in privacy law that harms poor people, but that poverty lawyers and their clients are working to challenge this differential in order to advance econom...

This recording is a Q&A with André Brock following his presentation of Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures. In Distributed Blackness , Brock asks where Blackness manifests in the ideology of Western technoculture. Using critical technocultural discourse analysis (Brock, 2018), Afro-optimism, and libidinal economic theory, this talk employs Black Twitter as an exemplar of Black cy...

In Distributed Blackness , André Brock asks where Blackness manifests in the ideology of Western technoculture. Using critical technocultural discourse analysis (Brock, 2018), Afro-optimism, and libidinal economic theory, this talk employs Black Twitter as an exemplar of Black cyberculture: digital practice and artifacts informed by a Black aesthetic. Technoculture is the American mythos (Dinerste...

How can feminist thinking be operationalized into more ethical and equitable data practices? As data are increasingly mobilized in the service of governments and corporations, their unequal conditions of production, asymmetrical methods of application, and unequal effects on both individuals and groups have become increasingly difficult for data scientists—and others who rely on data in their work...

Data & Society kicks off our online Databites series with Sasha Costanza-Chock , whose new book, Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need , re-imagines how design led by marginalized communities can become a tool to help dismantle structural inequality, advance collective liberation, and support ecological survival. In this conversation with Data & Society’s Events Produ...

In this virtual conversation, Blind Accessibility Advocate Chancey Fleet and Artist Taeyoon Choi teach us about network building and activism opportunities. Now that we're more online, how can we seize this moment to build more inclusive, accessible communication and modes of connection? What tools and best practices can we activate in the current moment, and continue to prioritize in our programm...