Data Activism and Social Change

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xix

   PDF

2. Mapping a Better World: A Journey

   • Miren Gutiérrez

   Pages 1-29

3. The Many Faces of the Data Infrastructure

   • Miren Gutiérrez

   Pages 31-47

4. Proactive Data Activism

   • Miren Gutiérrez

   Pages 49-105

5. Crowdsourcing and Mapping Data for Humanitarianism

   • Miren Gutiérrez

   Pages 107-136

6. Conclusions and Areas for Further Research

   • Miren Gutiérrez

   Pages 137-146

7. Back Matter

   Pages 147-178

   PDF

This book efficiently contributes to our understanding of the interplay between data, technology and communicative practice on the one hand, and democratic participation on the other. It addresses the emergence of proactive data activism, a new sociotechnical phenomenon in the field of action that arises as a reaction to massive datafication, and makes affirmative use of data for advocacy and social change. By blending empirical observation and in-depth qualitative interviews, Gutiérrez brings to the fore a debate about the social uses of the data infrastructure and examines precisely how people employ it, in combination with other technologies, to collaborate and act for social change.

• data activism
• data
• communicative practice
• democracy
• social change
• data skills
• sociotechnology
• big data
• collective number-churning
• map-making
• action
• society
• collective
• number-churning
• maps

• University of Deusto, San Sebastián, Spain

  Miren Gutiérrez

Miren Gutiérrez is the Director of the ‘Data Analysis, Research and Communication’ postgraduate programme at the University of Deusto, Spain and Research Associate at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), London, where she works on data-enabled projects. She has been Greenpeace Spain Executive Director, and a journalist as EFE Spanish News Agency’s Asia-Pacific Correspondent (based in Hong Kong); La Prensa’s Business Editor (Panama); El País’s Correspondent (New York); and Inter Press Service Editor in Chief (Rome).

Policies and ethics