DATACTIVE is proud to present ‘Big Data from the South/desde el Sur’, a one-day conference interrogating the mythology and universalism of datafication and big data from an epistemology of the South perspective. The event is co-organized with Emiliano Trerè (Scuola Normale Superiore), and sponsored by DATACTIVE with Fundacion Karisma (Bogotà, Colombia). Critical scholarship has exposed how big data brings along new and opaque regimes of population management, control, and discrimination. Building on this scholarship, the pre-conference engages in a dialogue with traditions that critique the dominance of Western approaches to datafication that do not recognize the diversity of the Global South. Moving from datafication to data activism, this event will examine the diverse ways through which citizens and the organized civil society in the Global South engage in bottom-up data practices for social change as well as resistance to “dark” uses of big data that increase oppression and inequality.

Special thanks go to Guillen Torres (DATACTIVE) and Carolina Botero (Fundacion Karisma) for the organizational support, to Amparo Cadavid (Uniminuto) and the local committee of IAMCR and Universidad Tecnological Bolivar for making the space available.