Consider a time when you felt surveiled, misrespresented, or under-represented by a data system. How did you respond?
Turn to a neighbor and discuss:
- What do you suppose the designers of this system believe about the data it’s collecting?
- What would it look like to resist this system?
Social Movement Theory
- Sociological research that studies how social movements form, operate, sustain, and fizzle out
- Political Process Theory: suggests that certain political formations enable social movements to form and operate
- Political opportunities
- Mobilizing structures
- Framing processes
- Protest cycles
- Repertoires of contention
- Resource Mobilization Theory: suggests that the ability to leverage certain resources enable social movements to mobilize
- Materials resources, human resources, organizational resources, cultural resources, etc.
Data Activism
- A range of practices that confront the politics of datafication
- May involve affirmative data action
- May involve resistance to data systems
Social Movement Theory