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 culture and processes in print and digital newsrooms. Her current work contextualizes Black Americans’ use of Twitter to create digital counter-narratives to mainstream news coverage of Black lived experiences as contemporary forms of resistance.Shaka McGlotten is Professor of Media Studies and Anthropology at Purchase College-SUNY, where they also serve as Chair of the Gender Studies and Global Black Studies Programs. Their work stages encounters between Black study, queer theory, media, and art. Their research focuses on networked intimacies and messy computational entanglements as they interface with QTPOC lifeworlds.

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 at the core of recent headlines about procurement practices in Canada, leaked regulatory proposals in the EU, and new efforts to regulate the tech industry in the US. But do impact assessments promise too much? Multiple national and state governments have instituted, or are considering, requirements for impact assessment of algorithmic systems, but there is a surprisingly wide range of structures for these regulations.Sarah Chander leads EDRi's policy work on AI and non-discrimination with respect to digital rights. She is interested in building thoughtful, resilient movements and she looks to make links between the digital and other social justice movements. Sarah has experience in racial and social justice, previously she worked in advocacy at the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), on a wide range of topics including anti-discrimination law and policy, intersectional justice, state racism, racial profiling and police brutality. Comment endFenwick McKelvey is an Associate Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University. He studies digital politics and policy. He is the author of Internet Daemons: Digital Communications Possessed (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) winner of the 2019 Gertrude J. Robinson Book Award. He is co-author of The Permanent Campaign: New Media, New Politics (Peter Lang, 2012) with Greg Elmer and Ganaele Langlois.Jacob (Jake) Metcalf, PhD, is a researcher at Data & Society, where he is a member of the AI on the Ground Initiative, and works on an NSF-funded multisite project, Pervasive Data Ethics for Computational Research (PERVADE). For this project, he studies how data ethics practices are emerging in environments that have not previously grappled with research ethics, such as industry, IRBs, and civil society organizations. His recent work has focused on the new organizational roles that have developed around AI ethics in tech companies.Brittany Smith is the Policy Director at Data & Society. Prior to joining Data & Society, Brittany worked at DeepMind and Google in policy, ethics and human rights roles. Brittany also currently serves on the Advisory Board of JUST AI, a humanities-led network inviting new ways of thinking about data and AI ethics. Brittany graduated from Northwestern University and the London School of Economics.

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 anthropologist, associate professor at the University of Washington, and Director of Research at Data & Society.Emiliano Treré (@EmilianoTrere) is a senior lecturer in Media Ecologies and Social Transformation and co-director of the Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University."Becoming Data" is co-produced by Data & Society and Public Books.

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 (@laura4lano) is associate professor at the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology."Becoming Data" is co-produced by Data & Society and Public Books.

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 people and interviewed dozens more about the shift to remote online workplaces. In their latest report, “Remote work since Covid-19 is exacerbating harm: What companies need to know and do”, they take an intersectional lens and data equity-focused approach to understand specifically who has been harmed, how they were harmed, and how to fix it.Speaker BiosOne of Silicon Valley's leading advocates for fairness and ethics, Ellen Pao is also a long-time entrepreneur and tech investor. Her landmark gender discrimination case against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins sparked other women, especially women of color, to fight harassment and discrimination in what’s been called the "Pao Effect.” Currently, Ellen is CEO of nonprofit Project Include, which uses data-based, practical solutions and recommendations to give everyone a fair chance to succeed. At reddit, she was the first major social platform CEO to ban revenge porn, unauthorized nude photos, and cross-platform harassment, with other social media sites quickly following suit. Ellen has written and spoken extensively, including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, Recode, and WIRED. Her book “Reset” recounts her long-time advocacy of diversity and inclusion and her own experiences with discrimination.Yang Hong works as Shoshin Insights, an in(ter)dependent data and machine learning consultancy with a justice-centered approach for societal issues. She’s worked on the global refugee crisis, hearing aids, data poverty, climate justice, tech equity, and more. As a community builder, she has tended to gardens such as Work On Climate, Activist Teahouse, and South Park Commons. Yang is a creative apprentice to lifelong practices of tea and collective liberation.McKensie Mack (pronouns: they/them) is a trilingual anti-oppression consultant, researcher, facilitator, and the founder & CEO of MMG. MMG is a global social justice organization that specializes in organizational change management through a lens of data equity; helping people transform culture, practices, and policies at the intersection of race, gender, class, disability, and LGBTQ+ identity. Their clients are currently based all over the world in the U.S., the UK, France, South Africa, Nigeria, Germany, Spain, and Peru. McKensie is the former inaugural Executive Director of Art+Feminism, one of the largest gender equity focused projects on Wikipedia.

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 Ethics Institute in the Department of Philosophy.Deb Raji (@rajiinio) is a fellow at Mozilla and works closely with the Algorithmic Justice League."Becoming Data" is co-produced by Data & Society and Public Books.

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. Data & Society’s new report, The Unseen Teen: The Challenges of Building Healthy Tech for Young People investigates how social platform companies think about and design for young people and their health and digital well-being. Based on a multi-year, qualitative research project interviewing social media and social gaming company workers in a variety of roles, we learned that many companies struggle to imagine and design for the breadth of their users, especially minors. Instead by focusing on averages, and limited quantitative metrics, tech companies miss the nuance in differential impacts that has real consequences for real people. We discuss the report, our recommendations, and the real world implications of our findings on those entrusted to help companies think about the well-being of their youngest users.Speaker BiosAmanda Lenhart studies how technology affects human lives, with a special focus on families and children. A quantitative and qualitative researcher, Amanda is the Health + Data Research Lead at the Data & Society Research Institute. Over decades, she has examined how adolescents and their families use and think about technology, how young adults consume news, how harassment has thrived in online spaces, and how automation will impact workers. Most recently, as deputy director of the Better Life Lab at New America, Amanda focused on the ways technology affects workers’ jobs and lives, as well as the family-supportive policies that enable balance between the personal and the professional. She began her career at the Pew Research Center, studying how teens and families use social and mobile technologies.Charlotte Willner is the Founding Executive Director of the Trust & Safety Professional Association (TSPA) and the Trust & Safety Foundation after fourteen years of working in trust and safety operations. She began her career at Facebook, where she led international user support, then built out their first safety operations team. She went on to build and lead Pinterest's trust and safety operations team, overseeing online safety, law enforcement response, and intellectual property matters. She holds a degree in English from Bowdoin College and is delighted to show you that this is, in fact, what you can do with an English degree.Aden Van Noppen is the Founder and Executive Director of Mobius, an unconventional collective of technologists, scientists, activists, and spiritual teachers working together to create a world in which technology brings out the best in humanity. She was a Senior Advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer in the Obama White House Office, where she developed the led programs that leverage tech as a tool for social and economic justice. After that, she spent a year as a Resident Fellow at Harvard Divinity School focusing on the intersection of tech, ethics and spirituality and was an affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Aden was also part of the founding leadership team of The Sanctuaries, the first interfaith arts community in the country. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, The New York Times, WIRED, and elsewhere.

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 professor of anthropology and media studies at Purchase College, SUNY and 2020-2021 Faculty Fellow at Data & Society.Chris Ramsaroop (@j4mw) is an organizer with Justice for Migrant Workers and a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto."Becoming Data" is co-produced by Data & Society and Public Books.

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 the world to take the form of data.Lam Thuy Vo (@lamthuyvo) is a reporter who digs into data to examine how systems and policies affect individuals. She is an incoming Data Journalist-in-Residence at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism."Becoming Data" is co-produced by Data & Society and Public Books.

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 and more.