Complicity (original) (raw)
Related papers
Introduction: Politics of Big Data Special Issue, Digital Culture & Society 2:2, 2016
This special issue offers a critical dialogue around the myriad political dimen-sions of Big Data. We begin by recognising that the technological objects of Big Data are unprecedented in the speed, scope and scale of their computation and knowledge production. This critical dialogue is grounded in an equal recogni-tion of continuities around Big Data’s social, cultural, and political economic dimensions. Big Data, then, is political in the same way in which identity, the body, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity are political, that is, as sites of struggle over meaning, interpretations, and categorisations of lived experience. Big Data is political in the way circuits of production, distribution, and consumption are political; that is, as sites where access, control and agency are unequally distrib-uted through asymmetrical power relations, including relations of data produc-tion. Big Data is political in the way contemporary politics are being reshaped by data analysis in electoral campaign strategy, and through state surveillance as strikingly evidenced by the Snowden revelations on the NSA and GCHQ. Big Data is also political in the contestation of this advanced scientific practice, wherein the generation of data at unprecedented scale promises a precise and objective measure of everyday life. However, the computational dreams of an N = all verisimilitude – that is, of datasets providing a one-to-one correspon-dence to a given phenomenon – are haunted by the normative biases embedded in all data. This is not to suggest that Big Data – more specifically processes of datafication1 – are best or at all understood as socially constructed. Indeed, discursive analysis or unreconstructed social theory cannot fully grasp how data re-articulates the social, cultural, political and economic in a deeply recursive manner. Thus, any political reckoning must equally account for the materiality of data, alongside the logic guiding its processes and the practices that deploy its tools. In short, what are the power relations animating the knowledge generated by data analytics?
Big Data & Society: Big Data & Society On behalf of
he Snowden revelations about National Security Agency surveillance, starting in 2013, along with the ambiguous complicity of internet companies and the international controversies that followed provide a perfect segue into con- temporary conundrums of surveillance and Big Data. Attention has shifted from late C20th information technologies and networks to a C21st focus on data, currently crystallized in ‘‘Big Data.’’ Big Data intensifies certain surveillance trends associated with information technology and networks, and is thus implicated in fresh but fluid configurations. This is considered in three main ways: One, the capacities of Big Data (including metadata) intensify surveillance by expanding interconnected datasets and analytical tools. Existing dynamics of influence, risk-management, and control increase their speed and scope through new techniques, especially predictive analytics. Two, while Big Data appears to be about size, qualitative change in surveillance practices is...
Citizens media meets big data The Emergence of Data Activism
“We are living in a time in which we are surrounded by data. Governments around the world are opening up their data vaults, allowing anybody access to it,” explained Simon Rogers, editor of the Guardian Data blog. We indeed live in a time of data abundance. Vast data sets are continuously generated and automatically stored by a variety of technologies such as aerial sensors, ubiquitous mobile devices, and radio-frequency identification readers. As we move in cyberspace, our activities leave behind digital traces of our doings, in a myriad of software logs and communications metadata collected by service providers. The ability of generating and making sense of ever-larger quantities of data has prompted observers to speak of a new breakthrough phase in human history, which Hellerstein (2008) termed the “industrial revolution of data”.
2017
We are in the midst of a data revolution, one reliant on the capture, analysis, and visual representation of enlarged quantitative data, in increasingly digital formats. Hamish Robertson and Joanne Travaglia argue that big data quantification is now not only a mechanism for extracting information but has become an idea with social and political power in its own right. The lack of critique of quantitative methods and their application contributes to the existing and potentially coercive power of digital information systems and their attendant methods, and enhances the potential for “collateral damage” associated with such applications.
Rage Against the Machine: Profiling and Power in the Data Economy
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 2023
This contribution deals with algorithmic profiling as an example of datafication and machine colonization. It examines to what extent Teubner's theory of societal constitutionalism (SC) describes the emergence of an EU digital constitution, including its capacities to deal with datafication and machine colonization. This article advances an internal critique of SC, by questioning its assumptions concerning the capacity of societal actors and nonlegal media, such as public outrage and litigation, to exert the pressure needed for change from within. Using Habermas's colonization theory as well as the insights of the law and political economy literature helps to understand the structural power of companies as an inhibition to the buildup of external pressure and to justify the adoption of a counter-concept of structural digital vulnerability, which can be used to interpret existing rules in a stricter way.
Big Data: From modern fears to enlightened and vigilant embrace of new beginnings
Big Data & Society
In The Black Box Society, Frank Pasquale develops a critique of asymmetrical power: corporations’ secrecy is highly valued by legal orders, but persons’ privacy is continually invaded by these corporations. This response proceeds in three stages. I first highlight important contributions of The Black Box Society to our understanding of political and legal relationships between persons and corporations. I then critique a key metaphor in the book (the one-way mirror, Pasquale’s image of asymmetrical surveillance), and the role of transparency and ‘watchdogging’ in its primary policy prescriptions. I then propose ‘relational selfhood’ as an important new way of theorizing interdependence in an era of artificial intelligence and Big Data, and promoting optimal policies in these spheres.
Politics of Data: Algorithmic Culture, Big Data, and Information Waste (syllabus)
2018
Syllabus. “Big data” describes everything from weather satellites to Google search histories and Twitter feeds. “Data exhaust” — the “waste” information we leave behind about ourselves whenever we use computers or cellphones — has become a valuable resource for commerce as well as for sociology and political analysis. Algorithms — well-defined procedures for processing information automatically —provide the key to detecting patterns in big data, and turning data exhaust into useful knowledge about people and processes. Taken together, these three phrases capture a major sociotechnical transformation manifested in politically significant phenomena such as “fake news,” Twitter bots, prediction markets, racial profiling, autonomous robotic weapons, Bitcoin, and hacked elections. These phenomena create unprecedented policy challenges. Effective intervention starts with understanding exactly what these challenges are. The trajectory of this course runs from questions of definition through examples of the often-unexpected, difficult-to-control effects of algorithmic processes and data-centric analysis to the cultural changes associated with algorithmic systems such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Finally, we will explore contrasting approaches to the governance of data and algorithmic systems in the United States, the European Union, and the People’s Republic of China. Readings are drawn from science & technology studies, information science, anthropology, communication, media studies, legal theory, sociology, and computer science, with additional contributions from psychology and philosophy. No particular technical, humanistic, or social scientific background is required, but some familiarity with basic computer science concepts is assumed.
Colonization of the Web: How is Capitalism using Big Data to favor its interests?
Many privacy advocates have questioned the legitimacy of these databases containing personal information, very often sold and elaborated to create aggressive advertisement or to advise and improve companies’ business strategies as well as to support government surveillance. Others argue that these data, commonly called “Big Data” have an enormous potential and will improve our life and contribute to a very efficient society. The aim of this paper is to analyze the problems related to Big Data and their relationship with the capitalist mode of production. Social Big Data in the context of online service providers will be the principal realm of inquiry. Yet, to conduct this analysis I will draw on the ideas of Marcuse and I will follow a critical approach to technology.