Abstract
Is education and more specifically, data literacy initiatives in Higher Education, an appropriate instrument to promote social justice in a context of datafication? Education is (and has been) at the center of the debate over the achievement of social justice as a desirable quality of the human society. However, which type of educational interventions should be promoted to deal with a complex, multi-layered, emergent problem, such is the case of datafication in society? Since the problem is heavily entrenched with a shifting socio-economic model (the so called “surveillance capitalism”) and the technological infrastructures connected to it, educational approaches could be diversified and even contradictory in their purpose of heralding the skills to live in a datafied society. This paper explores nine initiatives in Higher Education aimed at developing the literacies to deal with data in society. Their efforts are concentrated in promoting freedom of choice, awareness, and agency. Though their original intention is not promoting social justice, the analysis is carried out on the theoretical basis provided by Martha Nussbaum on social justice. The initiatives span educational activities with open data as open educational resources, to more formal data literacy activities such as educational engagement with students’ data and students’ personal and educational data. There emerges a still fragmented panorama in responding to the need of promoting social justice in a context of datafication. Given this fragmentation, the article provides a conceptual scheme to address further pedagogical reflection and practice with the aim of supporting social justice against datafication.
Highlights
In the technological infrastructures of the contemporary society, the massive amounts of digital data tracked allow very few agents to control the Internet traffic and to extract high value from the behavioural, emotional, and cognitive patterns observed through data and by the development of specific algorithms [1,2]
In order to answer this research question, the present study explores nine interventions generated in the context of Higher Education aiming at developing forms of data literacy as a specific set of skills which could promote active and agentic engagement with data infrastructures
As expressed in the reported literature, there is no possibility of promoting social justice in a space where the phenomenon of datafication constrains the individuals to a passive use of the techno-structure
Summary
In the technological infrastructures (or “techno-structure”) of the contemporary society, the massive amounts of digital data tracked allow very few agents to control the Internet traffic and to extract high value from the behavioural, emotional, and cognitive patterns observed through data and by the development of specific algorithms [1,2]. Data have become an exchange value, a situation that can be obscured according to the social condition [3] Coined concepts such as “data slavery” (the personal freedom constrained by the algorithms built over our interaction with the techno-structure) and “dataveillance” (the continuing tracking of our wired lives with personal data) highlight the fact that we are paying a high price in the digital interaction [1,4,5,6]. Nussbaum developed her approach while working for the United Nations on a new approach to measure human development instead of just the wealth of nations, considering the disparities within the same rich countries relating disadvantaged peoples’ quality of life Her philosophical work with women and disabled people inequalities brought new light to the problem of defining social justice on the basis of rationality and the social contract between equals.
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