Turning away from a ‘big picture’ view, Lina Dencik will speak about the use of data and algorithmic processes for decision-making affecting individuals and social life. Digitally monitoring, tracking, profiling and predicting human behaviour and social activities is what underpins the information order now frequently described as surveillance capitalism. Increasingly, it is also what helps determine decisions that are central to our ability to participate in society, such as welfare, education, crime, work, and if we can cross borders. A recent report from the Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University showcases that such technologies are already being used by local authorities across the UK. How should we understand what is at stake with such developments?
Often, we are dealt a simple binary that suggests that the issue is one of increased (state-)security and efficiency on the one hand and concerns with privacy and protection of personal data on the other. However, 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 turn to data-driven systems is not merely technical, but a distinctly political development.
In this presentation Lina Dencik 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 logic of prediction and pre-emption that fundamentally transforms political process. In outlining such a framework, Line advances an engagement with data politics, as the performative power of or in data, that considers how the implementation of data-driven technologies in different contexts relate to wider interests, power relations, and agendas.
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