The data economy poses challenges arising from the collection, processing, sharing and use of data. Many of the debates around privacy, consent, security or digital anonymity are framed in the realm of ethics. However, that problems such as new forms of algorithmic discrimination and injustice are addressed as moral problems serves as an excuse for technology corporations to avoid regulation and accountability. It is therefore necessary to find a critical and common ethical framework to avoid arbitrary criteria with no real impact on the discriminatory effects of such algorithms.
One such possible framework is feminist data ethics, a recent field of study that examines from an intersectional approach how standard practices in data science serve to reinforce existing inequalities such as sexism, racism or classism. In the words of Catherine D’Ignazio, it is “a critique of the machismo hidden in most narratives around big data”. Beyond providing simple recipes to avoid bad practices, this framework carefully analyzes the power relations that are woven in the different phases of the technological process (from design to dissemination) and raises crucial philosophical questions about the embodied dimension of data, the epistemological richness of plurality, or the hermeneutic importance of context.
In this session, that will be coordinated by Toni Navarro, we will have the participation of Digital Fems, an organization that defends gender diversity in the tech industry and that has promoted projects such as “Data against noise” using big data to make male violence visible.
- Date: 24 march 2021
- Place: Canòdrom -Ateneu d’Innovació Digital i Democràtica
- Registration for the event here
Materials of interest:
Photo Vector by Tecnopolitica.net