Abstract
This article examines the multi-faceted politics of digital platforms in the context of the Korean Digital Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA) system. Based on semi-structured interviews with environmental experts, this study analyzes digital platforms in terms of three roles: as a surveillance system for ethopolitics; as a marketplace that sustains interest group politics; and, as a data display interface that shapes sensory politics. First, as a surveillance system, the DEIA monitors the moral conduct of environmental assessors to ensure data integrity and transparency. This aspect reflects ethopolitics—the regulation of research ethics through mechanisms of governmentality. Second, as a marketplace, the DEIA system demonstrates interest group politics, as the system has the potential to install domestic software for environmental impact prediction modeling (EIPM), potentially disrupting the market dominance of larger environmental impact assessment firms that currently use expensive foreign modeling software. Third, as the data display interface between the government and citizens, the DEIA system employs sensory politics by prioritizing data visualization over haptic and auditory elements in data presentation. I conclude that while data science will not save environmental impact assessment from politics, it may give rise to novel forms of environmental politics.
Published Version
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