Data Activism: Reviving, Extending and Upgrading Critical Citizenship Education and Consumer Rights Movements

Öz

Considering the omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence of big data as the upgraded big brother, any resistance appears to be in vain. However, pessimistic accounts usually revolve on a model of a citizen as an individual. This atomized version of citizenship underestimates the power of citizens’ social solidarity networks which can be as traditional as nuclear or extended families or as modern as professional organizations and rights movements. However, big data activism and these forms of resistance are rarely connected with each other. In this article, we discuss how to integrate already existing rights organizations with data activism. The following themes are explored for this purpose: Snowden revelations and evolution of state surveillance; digital activism and data activism; and data activism and critical citizenship education. The notion of ‘critical’ citizenship education rather than citizenship education is mobilized in our reflection, since the mainstream, official citizenship education agenda is far from addressing the negative effects of big data and associated double surveillance by the state and corporations. Contrary to a merely theoretical understanding of citizenship, data activism needs to unite its forces with already existing rights movements, including human rights and consumer rights movements as distinguishing components of a critical citizenship. The purpose of this article is to show in what ways citizenship education and consumer rights movements can be integrated and updated within the context of data activism. The introductory section provides the background for the main arguments of the article. The method of this work is critical reflection and a theoretical discussion supported by a survey of a set of relevant research papers. 

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Big data,surveillance,data activism,critical citizenship education,consumer rights movement

Kaynakça

1. Arora, P. (2019). Decolonizing privacy studies. Television & New Media, 20(4), 366-378.
2. Arora, P. (2016). Bottom of the data pyramid: Big data and the global south.  International Journal of Communication, 10, 1681-1699.
3. Baack, S. (2015). Datafication and empowerment: How the open data movement re-articulates notions of democracy, participation, and journalism.  Big Data & Society,  2(2), 1-11. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1177/2053951715594634
4. Barnhizer, D. (2013). Through a prism darkly: Surveillance and speech suppression in the ‘post-democracy electronic state’. Retrieved from http://docshare01.docshare.tips/files/17756/177568199.pdf
5. Biesta, G. (2009). What kind of citizenship for European higher education? Beyond the competent active citizen. European Educational Research Journal, 8(2), 146-158.
6. Bonney, R., Shirk, J. L., Phillips, T. B., Wiggins, A., Ballard, H. L., Miller-Rushing, A. J., & Parrish, J. K. (2014). Next steps for citizen science. Science, 343(6178), 1436-1437.
7. Chee, Y. S., Mehrotra, S., & Liu, Q. (2013). Effective game based citizenship education in the age of new media. Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 11(1), 16-28.
8. Chenou, J. M., & Cepeda-Másmela, C. (2019). # NiUnaMenos: Data Activism From the Global South. Television & New Media, 20(4), 396-411. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1527476419828995

9. Chu, D. S. (2018). Media Use and Protest Mobilization: A Case Study of Umbrella Movement Within Hong Kong Schools. Social Media+Society, 4(1), 1-11.
10. Colardyn, D., & Bjornavold, J. (2004). Validation of Formal, Non-Formal and Informal Learning: policy and practices in EU Member States 1. European Journal of Education, 39(1), 69-89.
11. Cox, J., Oh, E. Y., Simmons, B., Lintott, C., Masters, K., Greenhill, A., Graham, G. & Holmes, K. (2015). Defining and measuring success in online citizen science: A case study of Zooniverse projects. Computing in Science & Engineering, 17(4), 28-41.
12. Creemers, R. (2018). China’s Social Credit System: An evolving practice of control. Retrieved from http://www. iberchina.org/files/2018/social_credit_china.pdf
13. De Ville, J. (2010). Revisiting Plato’s Pharmacy. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law-Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique, 23(3), 315-338.
14. Degli Esposti, S. (2014). When big data meets dataveillance: The hidden side of analytics.  Surveillance & Society, 12(2), 209.
15. Dencik, L., & Cable, J. (2017). The advent of surveillance realism: Public opinion and activist responses to the Snowden leaks. International Journal of Communication, 11, 763-781.
16. Dencik, L., Hintz, A., & Cable, J. (2016). Towards data justice? The ambiguity of anti-surveillance resistance in political activism. Big Data & Society, 3(2), 1-12. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2053951716679678
17. Ekbia, H., Mattioli, M., Kouper, I., Arave, G., Ghazinejad, A., Bowman, T., ... & Sugimoto, C. R. (2015). Big data, bigger dilemmas: A critical review. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(8), 1523-1545.
18. Eraut, M. (2000). Non-formal learning and tacit knowledge in professional work. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 70(1), 113-136.
19. Gabrys, J., Pritchard, H., & Barratt, B. (2016). Just good enough data: Figuring data citizenships through air pollution sensing and data stories. Big Data & Society, 3(2), 1-14. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2053951716679677
20. George, J., & Leidner, D. (2018). Digital Activism: a Hierarchy of Political Commitment. Retrieved from https:// scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/50176/1/paper0289.pdf
21. Goode, L. (2015). Anonymous and the political ethos of hacktivism. Popular Communication, 13(1), 74-86.
22. Gray, J. (2015). Democratising the Data Revolution: A Discussion Paper. Retrieved from https://assets.okfn.org/ files/reports/DemocratisingDataRevolution.pdf
23. Gray, J., Gerlitz, C., & Bounegru, L. (2018). Data infrastructure literacy. Big Data & Society, 5(2), 1-13. https://dx.doi. org/10.1177/2053951718786316
24. Greenhow, C., & Lewin, C. (2016). Social media and education: reconceptualizing the boundaries of formal and informal learning. Learning, Media and Technology, 41(1), 6-30.
25. Gurin, J. (2014). Big Data and Open Data: How Open Will the Future Be. I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, 10(3), 691-704.
26. Hansson, K., Belkacem, K., & Ekenberg, L. (2015). Open government and democracy: A research review. Social Science Computer Review, 33(5), 540-555.
27. Hintz, A., & Dencik, L. (2016). The politics of surveillance policy: UK regulatory dynamics after Snowden. Internet Policy Review, 5(3), 1-16.
28. Hogan, M., & Shepherd, T. (2015). Information ownership and materiality in an age of big data surveillance. Journal of Information Policy, 5, 6-31.
29. Jordan, T. (2007). Online direct action: Hacktivism and radical democracy. In  Radical democracy and the internet (pp. 73-88). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
30. Kara, N. (2018). Understanding University Students’ Thoughts and Practices about Digital Citizenship: A Mixed Methods Study. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 21(1), 172-185.
31. Keating, A., & Melis, G. (2017). Social media and youth political engagement: Preaching to the converted or providing a new voice for youth?. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19(4), 877-894.
32. Kern, R. (2014). Technology as Pharmakon: The promise and perils of the internet for foreign language education. The Modern Language Journal, 98(1), 340-357.
33. Kotska, G. (2018). China’s social credit systems and public opinion: Explaining high levels of approval. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Genia_
34. Kostka Lewis, S. C., & Westlund, O. (2015). Big data and journalism: Epistemology, expertise, economics, and ethics. Digital journalism, 3(3), 447-466.
35. Lim, C. P. (2008). Global citizenship education, school curriculum and games: Learning Mathematics, English and Science as a global citizen. Computers & Education, 51(3), 1073-1093.
36. Lim, K. Y., & Ong, M. Y. (2012). The Rise of Li’Ttledot: A study of citizenship education through game-based learning. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 28(8), 1420-1432.
37. Madden, M., Gilman, M., Levy, K., & Marwick, A. (2017). Privacy, poverty, and Big Data: A matrix of vulnerabilities for poor Americans. Washington University Law Review, 95(1), 53-125.
38. Mattoni, A. (2018). From data extraction to data leaking. Data-activism in Italian and Spanish anti-corruption campaigns. Partecipazione e Conflitto, 10(3), 723-746.
39. McCaffrey, G. (2016). Compassion, Necessity, and the Pharmakon of the Health Humanities. Journal of Applied Hermeneutics. Retrieved from https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/index
40. Meng, A., DiSalvo, C., Tsui, L., & Best, M. (2019). The social impact of open government data in Hong Kong: Umbrella Movement protests and adversarial politics. The Information Society, 35(4), 216-228. https://dx.doi. org/10.1080/01972243.2019.1613464
41. Michaelsen, M. (2017). Far Away, So Close: Transnational Activism, Digital Surveillance and Authoritarian Control in Iran. Surveillance & Society, 15(3/4), 465-470.
42. Milan, S. (2016). Data activism as the new frontier of media activism. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/ download/40974104/media-activism-chapter-v2-SENT.pdf
43. Milan, S., & Gutiérrez, M. (2015). Citizens’ media meets big data: The emergence of data activism. Mediaciones, 11(14), 120-133.
44. Milan, S., & Treré, E. (2019). Big Data from the south (s): Beyond data universalism. Television & New Media, 20(4), 319-335.
45. Milan, S., & Trere, E. (2017). Big Data from the South: The Beginning of a Conversation We Must Have. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/download/54804190/BigDatafromtheSouth-SSRN.pdf
46. Milan, S., & Van Der Velden, L. (2016). The alternative epistemologies of data activism.  Digital Culture & Society, 2(2), 57-74.
47. Morva, O. (2013). An alternative way of political criticism: the Redhack team as a case study for hacktivism. In Breaking the media value chain. VII International Conference on Communication and Reality (pp. 477-484). Facultat de Comunicació Blanquerna.
48. Newman, G., Wiggins, A., Crall, A., Graham, E., Newman, S., & Crowston, K. (2012). The future of citizen science: emerging technologies and shifting paradigms. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 10(6), 298-304.
49. Pohle, J., & Van Audenhove, L. (2017). Post-Snowden internet policy: between public outrage, resistance and policy change. Media and Communication, 5(1), 1-6.
50. Polat, B., Bakıroğlu, C. T., & Sayın, M. E. D. (2013). Hactivism in Turkey: the case of Redhack. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 4(9), 628-636.
51. Pybus, J., Coté, M., & Blanke, T. (2015). Hacking the social life of Big Data. Big Data & Society, 2(2), 1-10. https:// dx.doi.org/10.1177/2053951715616649
52. Rajão, R., & Jarke, J. (2018). The materiality of data transparency and the (re) configuration of environmental activism in the Brazilian Amazon. Social Movement Studies, 17(3), 318-332.
53. Ribeiro, A. B., Rodrigues, M., Caetano, A., Pais, S., & Menezes, I. (2012). Promoting” Active Citizens”? The Critical Vision of NGOs over Citizenship Education as an Educational Priority across Europe. International Journal of Progressive Education, 8(3), 32-47.
54. Romele, A., Gallino, F., Emmenegger, C., & Gorgone, D. (2017). Panopticism is not Enough: Social Media as Technologies of Voluntary Servitude. Surveillance and Society, 15(2), 204-221.
55. San Chee, Y., Tan, E. M., & Liu, Q. (2010, April). Statecraft X: Enacting citizenship education using a mobile learning game played on Apple iPhones. In Wireless, Mobile and Ubiquitous Technologies in Education (WMUTE), 2010 6th IEEE International Conference on (pp. 222-224). IEEE.
56. Segura, M. S., & Waisbord, S. (2019). Between Data Capitalism and Data Citizenship. Television & New Media, 20(4), 412-419. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1527476419834519
57. Steinfeld, N. (2017). Track me, track me not: Support and consent to state and private sector surveillance. Telematics and Informatics, 34(8), 1663-1672.
58. Taylor, L. (2017). What is data justice? The case for connecting digital rights and freedoms globally. Big Data & Society, 4(2), 1-14. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2053951717736335
59. Treré, E. (2017). Distorsiones tecnopolíticas: represión y resistencia algorítmica del activismo ciudadano en la era del big data. Trípodos, 39, 35-51.
60. Treré, E. (2016). The dark side of digital politics: Understanding the algorithmic manufacturing of consent and the hindering of online dissidence. IDS Bulletin, 47(1), 127-138.
61. Tupper, J. (2014). Social Media and the Idle No More Movement: Citizenship, Activism and Dissent in Canada. Journal of Social Science Education, 13(4), 87-94.
62. van der Vlist, F. N. (2017). Counter-Mapping Surveillance: A Critical Cartography of Mass Surveillance Technology After Snowden. Surveillance & Society, 15(1), 137-157.
63. Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75-89.