Social Justice in the Digital Economy: Summer
Webinar Series
What do we understand social justice to be in
the fast-changing world of adjusting to and
developing digital technology? What can we learn
about changing values of/for social justice by
considering four different areas of the digital
economy? We hosted four events to discuss this
critical topic.
The Evolution of Social Justice in the age of
Networks and Machine Learning
World-leading researchers and academics in
Design, HCI and Human Rights help us explore the
‘life’ of data; how thinking about AI as
relational infrastructures changes the ethical
questions and concerns we work with; and how Big
Tech and AI are affecting human rights.
Keynote Speakers
Prof Irina Shklovski, University of Copenhagen
– AI as Relational Infrastructure
Dr Michael Muller, Research and Master
Inventor, IBM – Interrogating the
Machine Learning Pipeline from Within
Prof Lorna McGregor, Human Rights Centre,
Essex University – Human Rights
Implications of New and Emerging Technologies
Current neoliberal economic models driving
much digital innovation are exploitative and
contribute to the reproduction and widening
of inequalities. Can design help forge
equitable economic models and reshape
current value-systems? How?
We can begin to repair these weaknesses, but we
will need to pay more attention
to the necessarily human and collaborative
work-practices of data science, and we will need
to re-think our technologies to preserve a more
transparent and accountable provenance of human
decisions and human outcomes that contribute to
data science applications.
Panel Speakers
Dr Tawanna Dillahunt, University of
Michigan’s School of Information (UMSI)
– Eliciting alternative economies using
speculative co-design
Dr Pitso Tsibolane, University of Cape Town
– “It feels like slavery all over
again!” Critical Perspectives on Digital Gig
Labour in the Global South
Ruth Catlow, Furtherfield – The role of
art and culture in critical engagement with
alternative economies and decentralised
technologies
Prof Ann Light, Sussex University/Malmo
University – Transformative Economies
and Relational Assets
Dr Maurizio Teli, Aalborg University – A
few thoughts on commoning, participatory
design, and going beyond capital
Chair: Prof Lizzie Coles- Kemp,
Royal Holloway University of London
Not all data is made equal. As data is
increasingly mobilized in the service of
governments and corporations, their unequal
effects on both individuals and groups
become increasingly difficult for data
scientists. We ask data science by whom?
Data science for whom? Data science with
whose interests in mind?
Hear from Catherine D’Ignazio (MIT) who
helped us consider how feminist thinking can
be operationalized to enact more just data
practices, and Giselle Cory who talked about
the role data science has in the social
sector.
Speakers
Prof Catherine D’Ignazio, MIT – Data
Feminism
Giselle Cory, DataKind UK – What role
does data science have in the social sector?
Imagination and storytelling are the basis
of all social transformations and social
movements. They help us visualise, enact and
share the kind of futures we wish to shape
up together. What stories and what futures
do we need to imagine now more than ever?
Carl Di Salvo (Georgia Tech) describes the power
of experimentation as a means of cultivating and
sustaining imagination.
He was joined by director and playwright Sarah
Naomi Lee, who has been thinking playfully about
academic ideas using cartoon illustration and
Sci Fi writer Al Robertson, reading a sci-fi
story written to reflect thoughts and
conversations heard during Not-Equal Summer
webinars events.
Panel Speakers
Dr Carl Di Salvo, Georgia Institute of
Technology – Experimentation and
Imagination
Sarah Naomi Lee, Plenty Productions
– What can the multifarious expressions
of sheep (MEOS) tell us about social justice
in the digital economy?
Al Robertson, Fiction Writer – Turning
the Not-Equal Summer events into fiction
