About the event
Speaker: Dr Lina Dencik (JOMEC)
Whilst much debate on this 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 I 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 uneven, 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. I outline a number of different ways in which such a framework can be operationalized, looking across questions of political theory, policy interventions, civil society activity, and developments in design and infrastructure. In doing so, I will advance an alternative approach to understanding and examining the societal implications of datafication than what has been the dominant approach so far.
Dr Lina Dencik is Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture (JOMEC). Her research concerns the interplay between media developments and social and political change, with a particular focus on resistance. In recent years, she has moved into the areas of digital surveillance and the politics of data and she is Co-Founder of the Data Justice Lab. Lina has written several articles and books, most recently, Digital Citizenship in a Datafied Society (with Arne Hintz and Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Polity Press, 2018). Her current project, funded by an ERC Starting Grant, is ‘Data Justice: Understanding datafication in relation to social justice’ (DATAJUSTICE).
A short networking drinks reception will follow the talk.