Stefania Milan – Citizen agency in the datafied society

When: 2021-10-25 14:00-16:00 (Tallinn time)
Where: CUDAN Open Lab (online)

Websites: data-activism.net & stefaniamilan.net
Video of the seminar: https://youtu.be/3rgrIAvIGqQ

Abstract – The talk explores the evolution of citizenship in the age of big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Stunning technological advancements increasingly raise concerns about the implications for civil rights and citizen sovereignty: think of invasive smart city technologies and the data infrastructure devised to curbe virus diffusion in the COVID-19 pandemic. These technologies are frequently rolled out in the absence of public debate, without adequate regulation and outside of established mechanisms of democratic oversight, exposing citizens to serial abuse. Dialoguing with critical data studies and political sociology, this talk surveys how the expansion of intelligent systems into society alters the perception and exercise of political agency, focusing in particular on the consolidation of governance by data infrastructure and the emergence of grassroots responses such as data activism.