21. Co-construction of data and communities as forms of life
Jorge Rojas-Alvarez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; juan carlos moreno, Santo Tomas University; MONICA BUSTAMANTE, Universidad Nacional de Educación, Ecuador
Posted: February 28, 2022 Accepted Languages: English/Inglés/Inglês, Spanish/Español/Espanhol
Data justice is concerned about forms of (dis)engagement in the collection, analysis, and use of data in communities seeking to build bottom-up information infrastructures (Taylor 2017; Dencik et al. 2019; Heeks and Renken 2018). Interventions with technology and data while influencing communities’ issues modifies their forms of life. Winner describes these forms as “individual habits, perceptions, concepts of self, ideas of space and time, social relationships, and moral and political boundaries have all been powerfully restructured in the course of modern technological development” (Winner 2010, 9). The approach to design and produce digital data also entails effects in ethical (Moreno 2021), social terms, and inclusion/exclusion processes. Consequently, interaction with data influences the ways of being and constructing the world.
This panel proposes a conversation about community-based approaches to data construction, especially collaborations among groups usually marginalized of data production or on the technological periphery (Chan 2013). We define communities who share expertise or know-how in community (including citizen science communities). Similarly, we propose to discuss symmetric forms in which these groups find emancipation (Costanza-Chock 2020; Jiménez Becerra, Bustamante Salamanca, and Gutiérrez Pérez 2020) or oppression in design. We want a dialogue about human and non-human agencies in the construction of data, how these exercises transform community life, what political cultures around data production are created, and the ethical implications in care.
