big data

People living with HIV and AIDs in India face greater risk of exposure in relation to their private health information and data, especially as the government, hospitals, insurance companies etc. collect data. COVID-19 crisis also raises concerns whether big data is a tool of prevention and health care or at the service of government repression.

A three part series that dives into the concerns around privacy and data in Africa in the context of artificial intelligence and also covid-19 from a feminist data justice perspective.

Privacy rights are becoming increasingly important and especially in the context of increasing datafication. Shmyla Khan of Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan talks about the ways in which privacy rights are relevant, used and abused in the lives of women and gender diverse people.

The rollout of the Huduma namba is taking place over Kenya. This article traces the experience of one young woman Nyangi as she tries to get a card, and more broadly the problems and hurdles posed by the system of digital identity.

This article explores mental health facilities in Kenya and if artificial intelligence can provide solutions for the dire need for infrastructure. Even if the use of artificial intelligence poses a solution to this, there are risks for data and privacy, algorithmic bias and large scale misdiagnosis. AI can only work when alongside human and humane treatment.

Privacy allows women and members of marginalised communities to create safe spaces of expression and makes available tools that challenge norms that restrict equality, access and control. Bianca Baldo interviews Eva Blum-Dumontet, one of the authors of the recent report from Privacy International on gender and privacy.

Here are insights into research on online gender-based violence against women and other minorities - especially around sexual objectification, delegitimisation of public personas, non-conformity to gender stereotypes and idealised notions of womanhood. Elena Pavan shares also about doing research using data scraped from online public discourses and the key questions going forward.

In this column series we unpack keywords relevant to the internet and the digital age. Here we look at algorithms, their origin in the work of Ada Lovelace. At how they are a sequence of steps, how they enfold consequences. And lastly we ask - can we talk about feminist algorithms?

Is technology neutral or is coding political? In this article Smarika Kumar explores how algorithms work in the real world, and how they are a reflection of existing biases and forms of exclusion and discrimination in society.

In this second post in a series on artificial intelligence, research in the African context, Chenai shares why she believes that a feminist approach to research around AI is the only way.