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April 12, 2017

[blog] A RightsCon2017 Post-Mortem: Hot in the digital rights agenda

On March 29-31, three brave members of the DATACTIVE team—Davide, Guillen and Stefania, respectively—descended on the lively city of Brussels to attend RightsCon 2017. The RightsCon Summit Series, organized by the US-based non-governmental organization Access Now, is a yearly event bringing together digital rights activists and practitioners with the tech industry. Brussels 2017 was RightsCon’s 4th edition—earlier editions took place in Silicon Valley (2014 and 2016) and Manila, the Philippines (2015). The rich program of RightsCon 2017 counted 21 conference tracks (!), touching upon a wide variety of subjects that mirrored the complex ecosystem of actors and agendas striving for an open and free internet.

Throughout three busy days of this 2017 edition, we had the chance to mingle with activists, researchers, journalists, the industry and law enforcement gathered to collectively think about the future of the internet. We organized our own panel on ‘Resisting Content Regulation in the Post-Truth Age’ in collaboration with Vidushi Marda from the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India. The panel opened the track ‘The truth is out there’: full house and lively conversation, bringing together the industry, journalism, academia, and multilateral organizations like OSCE. (What this space: a dedicated post will be online soon!). But we also had two other goals in mind. First, we wanted to take advantage of RightsCon’s ability to bring under one roof people from all over the world, with different backgrounds and distinct visions regarding the interplay between the digital and human rights, to make the best of collective learning and look for potential collaboration. Second, we intended to listen to and collect the voices from various projects and organizations currently working towards a free and open internet—in particular, of course, we wanted to swap thoughts with data activists! While we are still re-elaborating the outcome of these conversations, here we provide some reflections on what bubbles in the great minds participating that gathered this year in Brussels. What were the hot topics of RightsCon 2017?

#1 Fake News Fake News Fake News
Although the topic of fake news was dedicated a conference track of its own, the debate was not confined to those panels alone—rather, it permeated several other discussions, too. This is not surprising given the close connection between this fuzzy notion and other topics discussed at RightsCon, such as algorithms, freedom of expression, openness, and transparency. Interestingly, participants seemed to agree on one starting point: what constitutes ‘fake news’ is extremely difficult to determine, and the very same label should probably be abandoned since neither tech corporations nor governments should decide what constitutes ‘truth’ today. In this sense, although the problem of fake news could be tackled both by platforms themselves (for example, by implementing algorithmic curation) or by state institutions (for instance, by creating regulatory legal frameworks), either solution could easily turn into politically motivated censorship. Our own panel, for one, argued that many amongst politicians, experts and the general public are in fact advocating for the wrong fixes to the problem, e.g. content regulation on and by platforms.

However, we did not leave the conference without any suggestions to tackle such a pressing issue. On the contrary, some of the proposals were actually quite far-reaching. For example, it was suggested that although fake news is not entirely a new phenomenon, they have recently turned into a powerful money-making machine due to the fact that economic incentives promote ‘clicks’ and quantity over quality. How can we promote change in the ‘market’ of the Internet, if we are to prevent the spread of information that is specifically meant to deceive? A second productive approach aims at empowering the user and the citizen: ultimately the problem of false or manipulative information spreading on social media is one of digital literacy. Hence, long-term education, more than algorithmic fixes or regulation, is the key answer to the problem. In sum, the problem is socio-technical in nature (rather than solely ‘social’ or solely ‘technical’)—and thus requires a socio-technical response.

#2 Internet infrastructure between censoring and sensing technologies
The fundamental layer of the digital world we experience is the technological infrastructure of the internet. Two recurrent, somehow complementary themes, which appeared to be central to RightsCon 2017 are internet shutdowns and ubiquitous surveillance technologies. It is interesting to consider them together for two reasons. First, they both bring to the surface the importance of the lower layers of communication technology, in an era dominated by ‘apps’, ‘clouds’ and other intangible metaphors. Second, they represent complementary strategies of politicization of data flows: stopping the flow on the one hand, and somewhat multiplying the flow on the other.
In order to keep the internet free and open, one must first keep the internet running. This is an increasingly serious concern, given the often political use of internet shutdowns, ad hoc censorship and network manipulation, to prevent people getting their news or mobilizing to protest. As an example, some noticed a clear connection between the growth in internet shutdowns and the general increase of activism particularly in South East Asia. Consequently, some initiatives emerge in order to test, monitor and report internet shutdowns and censorship. The Open Observatory for Network Interference (OONI) is a spinoff of the Tor Project, which set the stage for “a global observation network for detecting censorship, surveillance and traffic manipulation on the internet”. Another brilliant project along these lines is TurkeyBlocks, which monitors “wide-scale internet slowdown and shutdown incidents using a combination of digital forensic techniques”, with a focus on the delicate Turkish situation.

Next to censoring, another much-debated theme is that of today’s omnipresence of sensing technologies. Alongside the many promises of simplifying life and empowering people, the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) is bringing surveillance technology literally in every corner of our daily life. While activists (and sometimes governments and companies, too) advocate for “privacy-by-design”, the IoT is objectively promoting “surveillance-by-design”. Moreover, especially with the advent of smaller companies in the market, these technologies present not only a higher number of vulnerabilities, but also kinds of vulnerabilities that can hardly be patched, thus representing a permanent threat to individual and group privacy. Consequently, one should not only focus on whether or not this technology is currently used by government to spy on citizens; the urgent need to regulate the market of surveillance products comes from their potential uses, as it is impossible to anticipate their trajectory from country to country, from government to government, and from present to future uses.

#3 Digital Rights in the Global South
Nowhere else in the world is the number of internet users growing more than in the Global South. Unfortunately, this positive trend is usually not adequately accompanied by the creation or reinforcement of the necessary legal frameworks to protect digital rights. Many activists at RightsCon 2017 shared the problems they face when defending their privacy, resisting surveillance and generally struggling to exercise their rights in the Global South. On a positive note, however, the creativity abounds. In Brussels, activists shared the strategies they use to make their voices heard by both states and corporations. A cluster of Latin American organizations emerged, where groups and individuals are pushing for a regional strategy for the defense of digital rights since they have identified that not only the challenges they face are similar, but also that the tools available to overcome them can be mobilized at the transnational level. Among the problems highlighted by the attendees to RightsCon was the perception within governments in the Global South that digital rights are a matter for developed countries, which results in a generalized lack of political will to engage with civil society actors to develop adequate policies. In addition to that, there seems to be a strong historical and cultural connection between the exercise of basic rights and personal data collection policies implemented by institutions. Telling examples are Argentina, where a longstanding tradition of identification has produced countless databases with personal information, whose management is unclear and far from transparent, and Venezuela, where citizens need to surrender their biometric information in order to access basic services like food distribution. Among the strategies showcased by activists to address these issues, strategic litigation in national and international courts was presented as one of the most efficient tools to force governments and corporations alike to respect internet users’ rights. Therefore, a few organizations in South America, led by the Fundación Datos Protegidos, are calling for the creation of a regional network for strategic litigation related to digital rights, with the goal of triggering a process of knowledge transfer among peers in different countries.

All in all, RightsCon 2017 was an enriching experience for the DATACTIVE team—and it was mostly due to all the people we got to meet and to the excellent organization (thanks, Access Now!). We would like to acknowledge everyone who dedicated some of his/her precious time to talk to us: you know who you are, See you at RightsCon 2018, in Toronto, Canada!

April 7, 2017

[blog] Communication and Activism – a research visit to the Center of Social Movement Studies

By Kersti R. Wissenbach, March 2017

This week I returned to the beautiful city of Florence to spend several months with the Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS) located at the Institute of Humanities and Social Science at Scuola Normale Superiore. It is my second visit to the institute and whilst Tuscany is always worth a visit, I did not (just) return for the great weather. Spending time at COSMOS proved to be a very enriching experience given the stimulating environment of like-minded social scientists and particularly a great group of researchers working on the intersection of social movement studies and media sciences –as I do.

As a communication and political science scholar with a background in critical development studies, I am working on the intersection of social movements, democracy, and communication. I am particularly interested in the role of communication in relation to power. During my stay at COSMOS I will advance a part of my theoretical work and finalize an article aiming to (re)introduce the concept of communication, as distinct from media or technology, to the field of social movement studies. I am a huge communication advocate when it comes to social and political change processes, no matter how much attention is given to the potentials of data and new technologies. I will briefly explain why.

There is much blurriness when it comes to the terminology around communication, media, and technology. In the fields of social movement studies and Development Communication much reference is made to media and oftentimes we do not clearly distinct between the terms or we find authors speaking of the use of communication where in fact referring to media as institution or technological infrastructure. Lumping together everything under the media term, however, risks disproportional techno or data deterministic attention whilst underestimating dynamics between activists that might be crucial for how (seemingly) technological interventions play out.

Why is that problematic? Communication is essentially a social practice, based on human interaction and as such relations between people. Where we have human relations and societal interactions we have power dynamics. Those power dynamics ultimately shape activist as much as governance spaces.

My doctoral research deals with what I call civic tech activism -activist groups making use of the abundance of data and new technologies to open up civil society space for direct engagement in formal governance processes and to directly hold government institutions to account. An example would be the community around the freedom of information request tool Alaveteli, which supports citizens willing to exert power over under-performing institutions in currently twenty-five countries. At its core stands a belief in the potential of ICTs and data to support citizens in the exercise of their democratic agency. There has been much attention on the potential of data and technology for governance in recent years, usually looking at platforms and tools that enable governments to open up information or that enable citizens to claim information from governments. Little attention, however, is usually given to power dynamics that emerge and persist within activist communities and thus ultimately shape who is actively engaged in building and practicing mechanisms to hold governments to account or to voice demands to government institutions. So community dynamics – relations, interactions, hierarchies- ultimately affect whose voices are heard, how accessible and accessible to whom respective tools are built, etc.

In consequence, we could say that social practices and relations within activist communities shape social practices and engagement mechanisms between civil society and government institutions. This is why I will deep-dive into communication approaches, mainly those rooted in non-western scholarship, over the coming months. My intention is to provide a conceptual framework that supports a communication driven analysis to social movement dynamics within the governance activism field.

Stay tuned for more!

March 22, 2017

[blog] The politics of network graphs

Author: Jeroen de Vos, humanities scholar, entrepreneur and research assistant at DATACTIVE.

How do the graphs above differ? With their different colors, layouts and visual densities, they seem to each adhere to their own unique network. However, as an image they consist of the same kind of materiality: a network plotted in nodes and edges, dots and their connections, actors and their ties. What if I would say they actually present exactly the same network? That would challenge our notion of a network as one uniformly tangible, portrayable, showable and renderable object. This short blogpost will introduce ‘collaborative reading’ as a method to question the affordances these graphs have in a research setting -it reflects DATACTIVE’s quest for more mixed- and interdisciplinary research methods.

Collaborative readings

It builds on a larger research effort to map the Dutch entrepreneurial ecosystem using mixed methods, which combined an analysis of the Twitter-data of Dutch startup entrepreneurs with exploratory semi-structured interviews. In such interviews, I would introduce one of the graphs above to any of the Dutch entrepreneurs in question, together with a descriptive explanation of the method and logic of its production. This would look something like: [Every node [dot] represents a Twitter user account / If one user mentions another, this creates an edge [link] between the two nodes / The more mentions, the stronger the traction between the nodes / The node size represents a number of times the user is mentioned / The colours express statistical communities]. I would leave the floor open to see how the interviewees reacted, and in a follow-up question invite them to interpret the graph for me. Obviously, the process of triangulating the product of social network analyses by providing it to the subject of research is as old as early anthropological attempts to annotate kinship structures through early categorization practices (ie. Anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, 1818–1881). However, just giving back a networked representation as a form of consent or reciprocity is different from an actively collaborative reading the graph in question. Internalizing the validation of your methods through the practice of collaborative readings can serve multiple purposes.

Complications

This technique, that is clearly resonating with other naive interview techniques (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2010), helped to flesh out the role of the graph as an actor intervening in the space between the interviewee, the researcher, the Twitter accounts in question, and the colorful dots that represent their contested place in a field of other actors.

The first complication of using these network graphs was the fact that as a researcher, one often has little explanation for the statistical correlations that are continuously rendered in various network plots. Since these networked correlations are not self-evident, every methodological step taken to work towards a single readable visual network can be challenging. The researcher often has little understanding of the underlying mechanism that could either support or discourage a particular way of plotting. This problem coincides with the discussion between social- and data scientists on the question whether data-correlations are self-explanatory, or that we still need a man-made hypothesis to allow structural knowledge gathering (boyd & Crawford, 2012; Burrows & Savage, 2014).
A second consequence of working with these visuals as a means to represent the ecosystem was the constant struggle over readability. With the sheer size and ‘messiness’ of network representations, the collaborative reading consisted of much panning in zooming. It shows the inherent constraints of forcing a (3d) network to be visualized on a small rectangular screen, and other researchers experimented with other ways to plot a network graph, as a poster, a large map on the floor in which actors can be enacted. Nevertheless, the mere size and inclusivity of larger network representations inevitably force to constantly switch, in which the overview will typically be as insightful as the detail.
Lastly, with its graphical inclusivity, many respondents read the networks as some form of entirety. Rather than providing a self-contained overview, the Dutch entrepreneurial ecosystem is produced through a series of very specific sociotechnical criteria. This is the result of many people sending tweets in a particular context, often with an (imagined) audience in mind – data which is re-appropriated for mapping purposes. The subsequential visual representations clearly demarcate one set of actors which evokes an understanding of the entrepreneurial ecosystem which might be somewhat superficial. The graphs float in a void like the contours of a nation-state map. They thereby surpass the idea that any peripheral node is again center of other social networks inherent part of any network analysis.

What ecosystem

Which brings me to my last point, regarding the contribution to entrepreneurial ecosystem studies. The study of ecosystems arose from the socioeconomic economic cluster analyses. From early comparative research comparing the proliferation of (mostly US-based) economic clusters in the 1980s (Saxenian, 1996), the effort to map and understand the entrepreneurial ecosystem infused with the promise to reproduce success (Hospers, Desrochers, & Sautet, 2009; Moore, 1996). This lead to many scholars and experts in the field contributing to case-studies and ideal types (Feld, 2012; Isenberg, 2011). However, the notion of an economic cluster as an ecosystem might be criticized. Drawing on the biological metaphor of ‘a heterogeneous set of interdependent living and nonliving actors’, the ecosystem metaphor is used to denote an inherently closed system in which everything coexists into some form of natural equilibrium. It presupposes the same kind of delimitations that is one of the pitfalls of the network graphs above: in their serenity, they invite to interpret an all inclusive and finalized representation. Instead, this post is meant to invite to think beyond the delimited ecosystem analyses, to be able to create a more flexible framework which can better bare notions of messy, unfinalized and impartial perspectives. What would such a representation look like?

For more information:

See the research website or the full thesis, or simply drop a line using jeroen@data-activism.net

This research project has originally been established with the help of Dealroom and in a collaboration with Digital Methods Initiative [UvA].

References

boyd, danah, & Crawford, K. (2012). CRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR BIG DATA: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 662–679. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878

Burrows, R., & Savage, M. (2014). After the crisis? Big Data and the methodological challenges of empirical sociology. Big Data & Society, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951714540280

DeWalt, K. M., & DeWalt, B. R. (2010). Participant observation: A guide for fieldworkers. Rowman Altamira.

Feld, B. (2012). Startup communities: Building an entrepreneurial ecosystem in your city. John Wiley & Sons.

Hospers, G.-J., Desrochers, P., & Sautet, F. (2009). The next Silicon Valley? On the relationship between geographical clustering and public policy. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 5(3), 285–299.

Isenberg, D. (2011). The entrepreneurship ecosystem strategy as a new paradigm for economic policy: Principles for cultivating entrepreneurship. Institute of International European Affairs, Dublin, Ireland.

Moore, J. F. (1996). The death of competition: leadership and strategy in the age of business ecosystems. HarperCollins Publishers.

Saxenian, A. (1996). Inside-out: regional networks and industrial adaptation in Silicon Valley and Route 128. Cityscape, 41–60.

February 10, 2017

[blog] Taking a look at institutional resistance to citizen empowerment

By Guillén Torres

(Image copyright: Bob Mankoff)

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in July, 2016, ProPublica, a U.S. nonprofit newsroom, published a long essay titled Delayed, Denied, Dismissed: Failures on the FOIA Front, in which several journalists detailed their frustrating experiences when requesting government data from U.S. institutions. In the comments section of ProPublica’s website, a reader captured the general feeling of the article as follows:

“To summarize: byzantine internal processes governed by antiquated laws operate with insufficient resources and no sense of urgency or accountability, and are shepherded by sometimes incompetent or dishonest public servants to produce documents that often have self-serving redactions or outright denials (sic)”.

This grim picture of the U.S. Government’s openness -with recent concerns related not only to Trump, but also Obama– is not an isolated case, unfortunately. Around the world, other governments have been accused by journalists and activists of discursively pushing openness forward, despite effectively making the use of government data difficult. For example, the Mexican government takes pride in having one of the most advanced transparency legislations, yet is currently discussing a new General Archives Law that will leave in the discretional and unaccountable hands of the Ministry of Interior the decision of what information should be preserved, and hence what data exists to be accessed. Moreover, the federal government is still struggling to make a buggy National Transparency Platform work, almost a year after it was presented as the main tool to guarantee Mexican citizens’ right to information. In the opposite side of the world, India’s recent public consultation to draft its License for Open Data use ended with a blatant disregard of the advice given by citizens, producing a regulation that does not offer any warranty against errors or omissions in the data held by the government, and transfers the liability for misuse to the citizens (instead of the data controller).

These examples point to the existence of a reactive process to citizen empowerment, in which some governments have found institutional ways to resist civil society’s access to data, hindering its ability to influence political processes. The research I will be conducting within the DATACTIVE project aims to locate empirically and frame theoretically this institutional reaction to citizen empowerment, to describe how it influences the configuration of the power relation between the State and citizens, and more broadly, how it affects the practice of data activism. To do so, I will start with a question originating in my own experience as an activist in Mexico: what if institutional resistance to public use of data is a political strategy, instead of the result of non-political flaws in the regulation related to Government Data?

By not taking for granted the State’s compromise to openness, I will explore whether the sociomaterial practices related to the production, dissemination and use of Government Data might make possible not only the empowerment of citizens, but also the State’s monopoly over some political issues which, according to the ideals of modern democracy, should be subject of collective discussion. The point of departure will be the work of proactive data activists who, while looking to mobilise Government Data to strengthen their attempts to influence public policy or oversee governmental action, have struggled to get the information they seek. In a second stage, I will look at how institutional actors deploy their resistance strategies, tracing the regulatory and material components involved in the process. Finally, I will develop a similar analysis over the strategies used by activists to counter institutional resistance. In the process, I hope to contribute to the study of the role played by data in configuring the power relation between citizens and the State in the age of Open Government, as well as helping to identify (and ideally produce) formal and informal mechanisms that activists can implement to keep rogue institutions under citizen control.

I am always interested in hearing about instances where public institutions do not follow through on their claims of making data effectively open and accessible to interested activists. If you have any examples or experiences, please drop me a line: guillen@data-activism.net

August 25, 2016

New logo – new design!

Just in time for the Contentious Data kick-off workshop on September 15, we are happy to announce that DATACTIVE has a new logo! The design is by Federica Bardelli and Carlo De Gaetano, who explain the concept as follows:

“A word (DATACTIVE) is a data point that can be encrypted, hidden and disguised – both in its shape and meaning. It is also and action of communication, a statement of resistance and awareness.

In reference to the lo-fi printing/photocopy techniques of the 70’s punk fanzines and to the recent rediscovery of that visual language by the new wave of experimental design clusters (see: Metahaven) we scanned the word DATACTIVE as an action of re-appropriation of meaningful data. Moving the printed word on the scanner multiple times generates new shapes, new distortions, meaning the active and evolving nature of both DATACTIVE objects of study and therefore of DATACTIVE itself.”

If you like the design by Federica Bardelli and Carlo De Gaetano, please check out their portfolios here and here.

October 8, 2015

Introducing DATACTIVE

We are DATACTIVE, a research project and a research collective exploring the politics of big data broadly defined. We take a critical look at massive data collection, privacy and surveillance | social movements, activism and internet activism | internet infrastructure, cybersecurity and their governance | open data and civic tech networks (and more). The Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam is our nest, and we hang out with the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis and the Digital Methods Initiative. We are grateful to the European Research Council (StG-2014_639379 DATACTIVE) for the great opportunity to engage in collective, critical thinking about the relationship between people, data and technologies.

We are researchers, meaning we exercise both curiosity and scientific rigor in exploring social reality and its manifold web manifestations. We like to think of our research as antidisciplinary: we are empowered by our differences and our respective mixed backgrounds in the social sciences and humanities. We muddle up the borders between sociology | science and technology studies | critical security studies |philosophy | political science | development studies | human computer interaction | liberal arts.

Not only are we curious about the world, we also seek to make a difference. We experiment with engaged research an approach to research that, without departing from systematic, evidence-based, social science research, aims to make a difference for groups and individuals beyond the academic community. This approach emerges from our individual engagement over the years with a variety of social movements and non-governmental organizations across the world. It affects, for example, the questions we ask and the ways we engage with groups and individuals. In other words, we take the ethics of research very seriously. We explicitly privilege a grassroots perspective, and our research often takes sides. It is activism by other means.

We seek to engage critically with our role in academia and the public education system. We acknowledge (our) privilege but also listen to our dissatisfaction with hierarchical and authoritarian systems. This is why we try to experiment with horizontal, participatory dynamics in our daily practices. We learn from each other and our differences, and engage in prefigurative politics, subverting here and now the hierarchical relationships and dynamics of academia.

The DATACTIVE project revolves around three main questions that explore the politics of big data: how do citizens resist massive data collection? How do people use big data to foster social change? How do big data and data activism affect the dynamics of transnational civil society? We use the lenses of data activism, an umbrella term that indicate grassroots mobilizations enabled but also constrained by software, which take a critical stance towards massive data collection. They emerge from, for example, the hacker and open software movement, but increasingly involve ordinary users, signaling a change in perspective and attitude towards massive data collection emerging within civil society.

DATACTIVE, however, is also a springboard for a number of related individual projects, touching upon threat modelling as a growing practice in the design and implementation of security, data divides and civic tech communities, grassroots visions of the internet, internet infrastructure and human rights, app-enabled surveillance, data infrastructure and genealogies, and cybersecurity governance.

Here you will find what makes us excited and what keeps us busy. Soon this digital home will be populated with research findings, background readings, data, project-related events and our writings, but for now enjoy reading about our group. For now, please follow us on Twitter: @data_ctive.

And thanks much to our Frederike for designing this website!

stefania |amsterdam, 8 december 2015