Vol. 14 No. 1 (2023): MEDIA EDUCATION – Studi, ricerche e buone pratiche
Articles

Pathways for Social Justice in the Datafied Society: Reconsidering the educational response

PDF
  • Juliana Raffaghelli
Juliana Raffaghelli
Università degli studi di Padova
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/me-13383

Published 2023-01-30 — Updated on 2023-04-07

Keywords

  • Counter-hegemony,
  • Data Literacy,
  • Data Justice,
  • Educators,
  • Social Justice

Copyright (c) 2023 Juliana Raffaghelli

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Funding data

Abstract

Can education be a response to the injustices generated by datafication? Although education has been considered a crucial instrument to generate a more democratic and egalitarian society, there is no linear relationship between education and social justice. In the same vein, data literacy as an approach to generate data justice or social justice in the context of datafication should be explored. In this article, I offer a conceptual analysis of the educational response to datafication. As a result of this exploration, I contend that, although the educational interventions are evolving towards forms of sensitivity and attention to the problem of datafication, there is a need for integrated approaches that consider complexity. Indeed, digital infrastructures, regulations, and political contexts shape a problem that goes well beyond the educator’s degrees of freedom. Notwithstanding the fact that this set of contingencies might be seen as limitations, it is only by taking them into account that the educational response can be imagined. Notably, the educators’ role should go in the direction of expanding knowledge and criticism towards the digital infrastructures, beyond technological competence, to promote counter-hegemonic antagonisms as means to build new contexts of data justice, and therefore, social justice.

Can education be a response to the injustices generated by datafication? Although education has been considered a crucial instrument to generate a more democratic and egalitarian society, there is no linear relationship between education and social justice. In the same vein, data literacy as an approach to generate data justice or social justice in the context of datafication should be explored. In this article, I offer a conceptual analysis of the educational response to datafication. As a result of this exploration, I contend that, although the educational interventions are evolving towards forms of sensitivity and attention to the problem of datafication, there is a need for integrated approaches that consider complexity. Indeed, digital infrastructures, regulations, and political contexts shape a problem that goes well beyond the educator’s degrees of freedom. Notwithstanding the fact that this set of contingencies might be seen as limitations, it is only by taking them into account that the educational response can be imagined. Notably, the educators’ role should go in the direction of expanding knowledge and criticism towards the digital infrastructures, beyond technological competence, to promote counter-hegemonic antagonisms as means to build new contexts of data justice, and therefore, social justice.

PDF

References

  1. Andrejevic, M. (2014). The big data divide. International Journal of Communication, 8(1), 1673–1689.
  2. Baack, S. (2015). Datafication and empowerment: How the open data movement re-articulates notions of democracy, participation, and journalism. Big Data and Society, 2(2), 205395171559463. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951715594634
  3. Biesta, G. (2020). What constitutes the good of education? Reflections on the possibility of educational critique. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(10), 1023–1027. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1723468
  4. Blaschke, L. M. (2012). Heutagogy and lifelong learning: A review of heutagogical practice and self determined learning. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 13(1), 56–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2004.09.015
  5. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. (1970). La reproducción. Elementos para una teoría del sistema educativo. Siglo XXI Editores.
  6. Bozkurt, A., Jung, I., Xiao, J., Vladimirschi, V., Schuwer, R., Egorov, G., Lambert, S. R., Al-Freih, M., Pete, J., Olcott, D., Rodes, V., Aranciaga, I., Bali, M., Alvarez, A. V., Roberts, J., Pazurek, A., Raffaghelli, J. E., Panagiotou, N., De Coëtlogon, P., … Paskevicius, M. (2020). A global outlook to the interruption of education due to COVID-19 Pandemic: Navigating in a time of uncertainty and crisis. Asian Journal of Distance Education, 15(1), 1–126. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3878572
  7. Carey, K. (2015). The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere. Penguin Publishing Group. https://books.google.com/books?id=FCh-BAAAQBAJ&pgis=1
  8. Carretero, S., Vuorikari, R., & Punie, Y. (2017). The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens With eight proficiency levels and examples of use. European Commission. https://doi.org/10.2760/38842
  9. Crawford, K. (2021). Atlas of AI. Yale University Press.
  10. Davies, T., Perini, F., & Alonso, J. (2016). Researching the emerging impacts of open data ODDC conceptual framework. Journal of Community Informatics, 12(2 (Special issue on Open Data for Social Change and Sustainable Development)), 148–178.
  11. D’Ignazio, C., & Bhargava, R. (2015). Approaches to Building Big Data Literacy. Bloomberg Data for Good Exchange, online. https://damprod.media.mit.edu/x/2016/10/20/Edu_D'Ignazio_52.pdf
  12. D’Ignazio, C., & Klein, L. F. (2020). Data Feminism. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11805.001.0001
  13. Eubanks, V. (2018). Automating Inequality. How High. tech tools profile, police, and punish the poor(1st ed.). St. Martin’s Press.
  14. Filc, D. (2020). Is resistance always counter-hegemonic? Journal of Political Ideologies, 26(1), 23-38, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2020.1825281
  15. Fraser, N. (2000). Rethinking Recognition. New Left Review, 3(May-June), online.
  16. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogía del Oprimido. Tierra Nueva.
  17. Gray, J., Gerlitz, C., & Bounegru, L. (2018). Data infrastructure literacy. Big Data and Society, 5(2), 205395171878631. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951718786316
  18. Gutiérrez, M. (2018). Data Activism and Social Change. Palgrave Pivot. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78319-2
  19. Hargittai, E. (2003). The Digital Divide and What to Do About It. In D. C. Jones (Ed.), New Economy Handbook (pp. 822–841). Academic Press.
  20. Kennedy, H., Poell, T., & van Dijck, J. (2015). Data and agency. Big Data & Society, 2(2), 2053951715621569. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951715621569
  21. Kerr, A., Barry, M., & Kelleher, J. D. (2020). Expectations of artificial intelligence and the performativity of ethics: Implications for communication governance. Big Data & Society, 7(1), 205395172091593. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951720915939
  22. Lareau, A., & Weininger, E. B. (2003). Cultural Capital in Educational Research: A Critical Assessment. Theory and Society, 32(5/6), 567–606.
  23. Lehtiniemi, T., & Ruckenstein, M. (2019). The social imaginaries of data activism. Big Data & Society, 6(1), 205395171882114. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951718821146
  24. Lupton, D. (2016). You are Your Data: Self-Tracking Practices and Concepts of Data. In Lifelogging(pp. 61–79). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-13137-1_4
  25. Markham, A. N. (2018). Critical Pedagogy as a Response to Datafication. Qualitative Inquiry, 107780041880947. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418809470
  26. Maybee, C., & Zilinski, L. (2015). Data informed learning: A next phase data literacy framework for higher education. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 52(1), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.2015.1450520100108
  27. Milan, S., & van der Velden, L. (2016). The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfmabstract_id=2850470
  28. Miller, D. (2001). Principles of Social Justice (Vol. 28). Harvard University Press.
  29. Mortier, R., Haddadi, H., Henderson, T., McAuley, D., Crowcroft, J., & Crabtree, A. (n.d.). Human-Data Interaction. In Interaction Design Foundation (Ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Human-Computer Interaction (2nd Editio). Interaction Design Foundation. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/human-data-interaction
  30. Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism by Safiya Umoja Noble. In NYU Press. https://doi.org/10.15713/ins.mmj.3
  31. Nussbaum, M. (2002). Capabilities and Social Justice. International Relations and the New Inequality, 4(2), 123–135.
  32. Nussbaum, M. (2011). Creating Capabilities. The Human Development Approach. Harvard University Press.
  33. O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of math destruction: How big data increases inequality and threatens democracy. Penguin.
  34. Pangrazio, L., & Selwyn, N. (2019). ‘Personal data literacies’: A critical literacies approach to enhancing understandings of personal digital data. New Media and Society, 21(2), 419–437. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818799523
  35. Pangrazio, L., & Selwyn, N. (2020). Towards a school-based ‘critical data education’. Pedagogy, Culture and Society. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2020.1747527
  36. Papavlasopoulou, S., Giannakos, M. N., & Jaccheri, L. (2017). Empirical studies on the Maker Movement, a promising approach to learning: A literature review. Entertainment Computing. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2016.09.002
  37. Popat, S., & Starkey, L. (2019). Learning to code or coding to learn? A systematic review. Computers and Education. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.10.005
  38. Prinsloo, P. (2019). A social cartography of analytics in education as performative politics. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(6), 2810–2823. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12872
  39. Pybus, J., Coté, M., & Blanke, T. (2015). Hacking the social life of Big Data. Big Data & Society, 2(2), 205395171561664. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951715616649
  40. Raffaghelli, J. E. (2018). Educators’ Data Literacy Supporting critical perspectives in the context of a “datafied” education. In M. Ranieri, L. Menichetti, & M. Kashny-Borges (Eds.), Teacher education & training on ict between Europe and Latin America (pp. 91–109). Aracné. https://doi.org/10.4399/97888255210238
  41. Raffaghelli, J. E. (2020). Is Data Literacy a Catalyst of Social Justice? A Response from Nine Data Literacy Initiatives in Higher Education. Education Sciences, 10(9), 233. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci10090233
  42. Raffaghelli, J. E., Manca, S., Stewart, B., Prinsloo, P., & Sangrà, A. (2020). Supporting the development of critical data literacies in higher education: Building blocks for fair data cultures in society. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 17(1), 58. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-020-00235-w
  43. Raffaghelli, J. E., & Stewart, B. (2020). Centering complexity in ‘educators’ data literacy’ to support future practices in faculty development: A systematic review of the literature. Teaching in Higher Education, 25(4), 435–455. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2019.1696301
  44. Ricaurte, P. (2019). Data Epistemologies, The Coloniality of Power, and Resistance. Television & New Media, 20(4), 350–365. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476419831640
  45. Snowden, E. (2019). Permanent Record. Pan Macmillan.
  46. Taylor, L. (2017). What is data justice? The case for connecting digital rights and freedoms globally. Big Data & Society, 4(2), online. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951717736335
  47. Thompson, T. L. (2020). Data-bodies and data activism: Presencing women in digital heritage research. Big Data & Society, 7(2), 205395172096561. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951720965613
  48. Tygel, A. F., & Kirsch, R. (2016). Contributions of Paulo Freire for a Critical Data Literacy: A Popular Education Approach. The Journal of Community Informatics, 12(3).
  49. Van Dijck, J. (2014). Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big data between scientific paradigm and ideology. Surveillance and Society, 12(2), 197–208. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v12i2.4776
  50. Walker, M., & Unterhalter, E. (2007). Amartya Sen’s capability approach and social justice in education. In Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach and Social Justice in Education. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230604810
  51. Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Profile Books.