big data

Privacy concerns have been raised about the use of digital technologies to combat the spread of the COVID-19. But what is at stake is not merely our informational privacy, but our autonomy, dignity, bodily integrity, and equality. This piece by Tanisha Ranjit is part of an ongoing research on bodies and data at the Internet Democracy Project.

The practice of mapping began within a month since the first outbreaks of Covid-19 as a means of rapid visualisation, accompanied by the division between those who manage data and those who contribute their personal information, while suffering the consequences of it. Is there a more just approach to information-based aid where people have more autonomy over their data?

The articles in this bilingual edition point to how visibility of our bodies and our stories is the starting point of a different way of being. The stories we tell of struggles and perseverance, of movements and solidarity – entangled as they are in the fine wires of technology – are necessary and essential and could be the foundations for the movement for change. This edition is not…

In this article, Serene Lim takes a closer look at how questions of access to the internet relate to the struggles of indigenous people and their movement for rights. Rather than the top-down imposition of connectivity, projects for access should align with their social context and as part of their right to sustainable development and right to equal participation.

Surveillance powers of the state and corporations are escalating and are hugely assisted by information technology. Under regimes of colonialism and patriarchy, women, minorities and all other subjects have experienced being surveilled, enumerated and categorised. There is a need to now relook at how gender is implicated in surveillance practices in the contemporary. In this resource, Internet…

We can no longer ignore the pervasive datafication of our lives - the ways in which our habits, illness, abilities, relations are abstracted, and our bodies made into data by an intersecting range of institutions and processes. In this article, the gendered, sexualised and racialised nature of surveillance is unpacked, so we maintain a focus on the power relations involved. Surveillance…

Surveillance has historically functioned as an oppressive tool to control women’s bodies and is closely related to colonial modes of managing populations. Big data, metadata and the technologies used to collect, store and analyse them are by no means neutral, but come with their own exclusions and biases. This paper highlights the gendered and racialised effects of data practices; outlines the…

Global data volume has grown exponentially in recent years and experts expect this trend to continue. The wider trend towards the pervasive datafication of our lives is not one we can just sit out. Big data and the algorithmic decisions it feeds permeate citizenship, healthcare, welfare states, education, finance, law enforcement as well as the ways in which we shop, travel, and live our social…

Contemporary surveillance practices are to a large extent big data driven, underpinned by a collect-it-all logic, and ever expanding due to fear-mongering, yet pervasive national security discourse. Surveillance technologies and practices have not only multiplied in scale and quantity. Too often, feminist issues on the one hand, and discussions around privacy and surveillance on the other still…