Expanding and Co-Creating Public Knowledge and Data Fluencies
This stream will produce data fluencies and public knowledge through five intersecting projects that model a different type of community-engaged academic research. Although each engages a distinct audience, they are linked by their commitment to understanding and redressing discriminatory mis- and disinformation aimed at silencing diverse voices through research co-creation. These five projects will also trial the tools developed in Streams 1 and 2 and contribute to their development. The outcomes and comparative analysis of these different prototypes will be developed in a joint publication.
Read more on each project below, or click on the links on the left-side < to read more about a specific project.
Ōtautahi Data Centre
Led by Dr. Giulio Dalla Riva
The Ōtautahi Data Centre will go beyond the current top-down, elitist, and a-critical nature of existing data centres—which mainly surveil rather than serve community members—by empowering local communities to use data as a critical instrument. This project has its roots in a partnership formed by Dalla Riva (a data scientist), Dr. Mazharuddin Syed (an Architect at the ARA Institute of Canterbury, community leader, and survivor of the Christchurch attack), and a network of local anti-racist and anti-fascist organizations to address concerns expressed by members of the Muslim community in Ōtautahi, Christchurch, about online anti-Muslim disinformation—concerns raised (and tragically ignored) prior to the white-supremacist terrorist attack on two Mosques in that city in March 2019. Specifically, the researchers produced a social network monitoring platform to provide community members with data on online disinformation, hate speech, and radicalization.
Developing these critical interventions further and working with Stream 1, the Data Centre and its customized app will produce user-friendly data visualization and fluency tools in order to open this monitoring platform to a larger community via a web portal. The community co-construction of the Ōtautahi Data Centre will be supported through data activist residences and participatory design workshops, which will run in various locations in Christchurch and through gatherings (huis). Supported by Mellon, the University of Canterbury and Te Pūnaha Matatini, the data activist will be given access to the networking platform and support structure (staff, postgraduate students, technicians) in order to develop a data-informed campaign. The workshops—led by the invited data activist and assisted by a PhD student—will be developed in collaboration with Te Pūnaha Matatini, with technical support provided by SMAT (Social Media Analysis Toolkit), TohaToha (Creative Commons Aotearoa), and the Center on Sustainable and Digital Transformation of Aalborg Universitet. These workshops will deploy the mixed methods developed in Stream 1 and guide the development of customized tools and web interfaces based on the needs of the community. In addition, particular focus will be given to building an inclusive governance structure to manage the Data Centre through huis with the Māori community, which will be facilitated by the University of Canterbury Kaiārahi Rangahau Māori. Dalla Riva has a track record of collaborations with Te Mana Raraunga, the network for Māori Data Sovereignty. These collaborations will be essential to developing an adequate governance structure, honoring Te Tiriti o Waitangi. A PhD student will work with Dalla Riva and the invited data activist to develop new analytic tools to create data infrastructures that reflect New Zealand’s commitment to Indigenous Data Sovereignty. Any ethical and technical challenges we may face will become productive opportunities for useful and timely case studies for the educational materials and courses developed in Stream 4.
People Involved
Senior Lecturer in Data Science in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Canterbury, Aotearoa | New Zealand. His research focuses on developing data science methods to understand complex, dynamical phenomena where interactions are crucially important.
Maureen Johnson-León (Mo) is a public scholar, community organizer and creator. Her work spans public health policy, infectious disease research, data and tech ethics, democracy, equity and cooperative governance of multi-stakeholder community-based research projects. She is currently focused on data equity in pandemic response in collaboration with the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, and on mixed methods survey research with the Rural Pandemic Modeling group at the University of Idaho. Public engagement, interpreting science policy, and responsible communication are key parts of her role, and she regularly shares the Consortium’s work on TV, radio and print, as well as participates in local community events.
Reclaim Project
Led by Dr. Tara McPherson
The Reclaim Project at USC will draw from the rapidly expanding body of research on right-wing extremism in digital platforms to intervene within the platforms themselves. If the Ōtautahi Data Centre was inspired by activist responses to the Christchurch massacre, the Reclaim Project responds to events such as the August 2017 deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and the 2014-5 Gamergate online harassment campaign, in which women game designers and journalists were relentlessly attacked and forced out of the industry. Specifically, we will produce media to counter the far-reaching online disinformation and recruitment efforts of white supremacist groups. Academic researchers and cybersecurity experts have shown that these extremist groups use various digital platforms (such as gaming sites, Discord, YouTube, and TikTok) to spread their messages and have developed elaborate recruitment protocols that often begin with the circulation of videos and memes to pull young people deeper into their operations and to organize campaigns that spread racist, anti-Semitic materials on college campuses and that interrupt university classrooms.
This project will translate academic research for the greater good, building on efforts like the Redirect Method, which has already begun to illustrate the potential for intervention into digital searching,[i] while also tapping into the insights uniquely provided through humanistic inquiry into the use and power of persistent stereotypes and symbols. We will bring together this humanities research with work into existing anti-extremist techniques. Our focus will be on producing content for YouTube and TikTok that provides a broader context for controversial symbols deployed by white supremacist groups while also offering positive stories of white identity and of cross-racial alliance. Youth at risk of recruitment into hate groups are often seeking community. Our media productions will aim to defuse the power of extremist recruitment by offering alternative models for white identity and by reclaiming the meaning of certain symbols.[ii]
While the exact content of the media will be determined as we develop our prototypes with our partners and our students, we will draw from the award-winning team at USC’s Media Institute for Social Change (MISC) to produce YouTube video content in both short and medium formats. We will also test two popular TikTok genres using recirculated sound clips and TikTok challenges. We will document and distribute our methods through a Media Toolkit and course modules, drawing from and building upon the engagement and audience-building efforts already in use by collaborating partners at KCET and MISC. Each has extensive experience distributing media and working with specific communities in Los Angeles and beyond. In developing our process and media products, we will utilize tools developed in Streams 1 and 2 to assess and fine-tune our media distribution methods, aiming for greater impact.
[i] The Redirect Method intervenes in search queries in an attempt to “off ramp” potential extremists as they search for material, offering them alternative video content. It was developed in the EU to address Islamic extremism and is now being piloted in the U.S. against white supremacy. See https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/search-extremism-deploying-redirect-method.
[ii] This media will draw from valid research and evidence in its design, but our approach will not be didactic. Hard-core extremists may distrust or discount our messaging, but our aim is to reach those not yet solidified into participation in these groups.
People Involved
HMH Endowed Chair for the Study of Censorship and Professor and past chair of Cinema + Media Studies in USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. She is also Director of the Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, which includes the Ahmanson Lab, and Faculty Chair of the university-wide arts and humanities initiative, Visions and Voices.
Intersectional Technology Project: Reimagining Futures Through Gaming
Led by Dr. Kishonna Gray
The Intersectional Technology Project: Reimagining Futures Through Gaming at the University of Kentucky (UK) will utilize an intersectional design approach[i] to explore how marginalized communities imagine alternative futures using gaming as its case study. Video games are the largest and fastest growing sector of the entertainment industry, valued at over US$160 billion worldwide—larger than the film and music businesses combined. In the U.S., 75% percent of households have at least one gamer, and the industry has seen record growth during the pandemic. As in other digital environments, video game communities struggle with disinformation, racist stereotyping, sexism, and aggression among players. Events like Gamergate, to which the Reclaim Project responds, underscore how online aggression can lead to violence in the physical world. At the same time, diversity in both gamer demographics and the variety of games produced has greatly expanded over the past decade—although much work remains to be done in this area.
Building on Dr. Gray’s prior workshops with Black and Latino youth at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) and her ground-breaking studies of intersectional technology, this project will explore video games as rich opportunities for creative expression, sociality, employment, and as a gateway into higher learning through a series of four workshops (with three cohort groups) that will engage geographically isolated communities in the Appalachian foothills, an area that is home to socioeconomically disadvantaged White, Black, and Latinx families. This project will enable community-driven research around gaming to address exclusionary tech practices (lack of Wi-Fi/internet access, limited resources, information disparities, etc. Gray has built ties with these communities through programs such as the “Call Me Mister” program, in which Gray created workshops geared towards using gaming technologies for teaching, and “Camp Camino,” a workshop she hosted for Latinx/Hispanic youth centered on developing skills to improve their chances of entering college. In this work, she not only focused on youth but also introduced gaming to caregivers of young gamers, which inspired a related research trajectory in which Gray has used gaming technologies (specifically Xbox’s Kinect) to help address minority health disparities.
Using a community-participant model, this project will elevate the expertise of community members through a series of four workshops with three cohorts hosted at UK or community centers on Saturdays. These workshops will culminate in the production of a wide range of game prototypes, from Augmented/Virtual Reality games (AR/VR) to board games, to be featured in a gaming symposium as part of the Data Fluencies Exhibition at the UK (see below), as well as innovative ethnographic research and publications on intersectional design. To facilitate this process, consultants/designers such as Terrance Williams, a senior designer at Microsoft, will provide education and training in their area of expertise and hands-on experiences for the participants to learn from and incorporate into their own game designs/development. These consultants will also learn from the participants—one goal of these workshops is to produce games and ways of envisioning digital futures that will influence the development of games and algorithmic content moderation (Stream 2). Thus, the purpose of this intervention will be four-fold: 1) to magnify the rich histories of geographically isolated populations through creative design and gaming technologies; 2) to introduce students to specialized aspects of gaming technologies to foster interest in these fields and to increase data fluency regarding disinformation and stereotypes within gaming cultures; 3) to introduce students to experiences that will generate sustained interest in higher education opportunities and pathways, thereby fostering increased participation of historically underrepresented youth in higher education settings, and 4) to produce more nuanced studies of intersectional gaming.
[i] Gray, Intersectional Tech.
People Involved
Associate Professor in the Writing, Rhetoric, Digital Studies program at the University of Kentucky. She is an interdisciplinary, intersectional, digital media scholar whose areas of research include identity, performance and online environments, embodied deviance, cultural production, video games, and Black Cyberfeminism.
Public Night School for Data Fluencies, and Data Fluencies Exhibitions
Led by Dr. Gillian Russell and Roopa Vasudevan
The Public Night School for Data Fluencies and Data Fluencies Exhibitions will bring the research methods, experimental algorithms, media, and gaming outputs of Stream 1, 2, and 3 to wider communities (in-person in Vancouver, Boston, and Lexington) and online, inviting these groups to imagine, perform, and develop possibilities for new data futures that support justice-oriented approaches to sociotechnical problems. These projects stem from Russell’s and Vasudevan’s previous experiences creating spaces for research co-creation and hybrid data exhibitions, respectively.
The in-person Night School for Data Fluencies is a community intervention that focuses on how frameworks for public engagement, co-creation, and co-design can foster renewed and multi-vocal perspectives on our data futures. With an explicit focus on mis- and disinformation and their impacts on cultural diversity, the Night School will create opportunities for community members to develop technical knowledge and the critical and creative skills needed for data fluency. Members of the public will be invited to participate in a variety of master classes, workshops, and co-creation sessions, such as Data Walks, Anti-Fascist Content-Creation Workshops, Citizen Data Assemblies, Machine Learning Rapid Prototyping and Futurescaping workshops. Each session will be designed to engage with the research questions connecting the four intersecting streams of the project, during which participants will have the opportunity to learn about, evaluate, and build upon the research methods, tools, and experimental algorithms produced in the prior streams. To further support the Night School curriculum, visiting artists/designers will run special satellite events for all Night School participants.
The Night School will run over a 30-day period in the spring term of Year 2. Moving sites of research and learning off-campus, the school will be hosted in a variety of venues in the Downtown core and East Vancouver: community centers, artist-run centers, and public libraries. Targeting four different participation objectives (information exchange, education, support building, and representational input), the Night School programming will employ a variety of mechanisms for supporting/encouraging participation (workshops, classes, events and co-creation sessions). Programming will occur in the evenings and will require varying levels of commitment; in addition, participants will be compensated. Russell, artist fellow (Samein Shamsher), and PhD fellow (holtzclaw) will participate in all the other streams in order to develop the Night School syllabus and evaluate its success, in consultation with world experts in Participatory Design.
The Data Fluencies Exhibition will similarly provide more open public engagement with our projects’ outputs and place them next to cutting-edge and critical work of artists. Scholars working in critical data studies have consistently pointed to the ability of artists and artworks to broaden our understanding of computation and data-driven systems. Because they so often use high-tech tools in unconventional ways, digital/new media art and creative practices enable a more nuanced understanding of the impacts of data and technology on our day-to-day lives—and spark generative conversations with more strictly quantitative fields. Building on these insights, the exhibitions consist of a series of three separate but conceptually interconnected events, taking place in three cities connected to collaborating institutions (Vancouver, Boston, and Lexington), along with an accompanying catalogue that will document the exhibits and feature critical essays. The catalogue will exist in print, but, like the exhibition, will contain images and material that can be activated by technological devices, thus continuing to bridge the “arts” space with the “everyday.” In addition to featuring work by artists and creative technologists examining data and power, the exhibitions will also feature work created by participant communities in other projects spanning all streams, such as the Night School, the Reclaim Project, and the Intersectional Technology Project; they will also be designed to be activated by performances in both Boston and Vancouver (see below).
People Involved
Assistant Professor in design at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Vancouver, Canada. Working at the intersection of critical design, anthropological futures, and narrative environments, her work investigates the unique cultural, ethical and critical challenges posed by digital technologies, focusing on ways to re-shape technology through value-based imagination.
PhD student in the School for Interactive Arts and Technology
A media artist, computer programmer, and researcher. Her practice examines social and technological defaults; interrogates rules, conventions and protocols that we often ignore or take for granted; and centers humanity and community in explorations of technology’s impacts on society.
Data Fluencies Theatre Project
Led by Dr. Ioana Jucan
The Data Fluencies Theatre Project at Emerson College is an artistic research project that aims to extend and make accessible to wider publics the work developed in the broader Data Fluencies Project by mobilizing theatrical performance’s potential to build data fluencies through embodied experience. The project brings together an interdisciplinary team to co-create a participatory, devised, hybrid multimedia performance that engages with algorithmic and AI systems and seeks to imagine and enact alternative socio-technical systems that strive towards pluriversal future-presents and ways of world-making. The performance is developed in partnership with CultureHub and will be performed in person in Boston and Vancouver as well as online in the Spring 2025. The performance’s hybrid format aims to expand access and engage the Internet as both a stage for performance and an object of investigation and critique.
People Involved
Ioana Jucan is an artist and scholar and Assistant Professor of Social and Cultural Inquiry at Emerson College. Informed by decolonial and feminist thought and practice, her current research follows several intersecting threads: media epistemologies and mechanisms of knowledge, affect, and value production in the age of “post-truth” and big data; and more just and sustainable alternatives to toxic capitalist models and mindsets as well as aesthetic practices that can help us imagine and enact such alternatives.
CultureHub advances new work by artists experimenting with emerging technologies.
Katherine Helen Fisher is an Emmy Award-nominated director, choreographer, and performer whose work explores the confluence of dance and emerging technology. She is currently serving as a Visiting Assistant Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of The Arts in the Collaborative Arts Department.
Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo (SAMMUS) is a black feminist rapper, beatmaker, and scholar from Ithaca, NY with Ivorian and Congolese family roots. She holds a PhD in science and technology studies (STS) from Cornell University and is currently the David S. Josephson assistant professor in music at Brown University
Jae Neal is a dancer who joined A.I.M by Kyle Abraham in 2011 and has since focused their dance intentions primarily in being a collaborator and teacher for the company.
Aidan Nelson is a creative developer and educator working to create more engaging and human ways for people to connect in physical and hybrid arts spaces. He works as a technical director for the Park Avenue Armory, leads a studio creating immersive 3D virtual experiences with museums and cultural organizations, and teaches graduate courses on media technologies at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Sahar Sajadieh is a digital performance/media artivist (artist+activist) and theorist, interaction designer, computer scientist, and poet, born and raised in Iran.
Dr. Suzanne Kite is an Oglála Lakȟóta performance artist, visual artist, and composer whose work investigates contemporary Lakȟóta ontologies.
David Mesiha is a Toronto and Vancouver based, award-winning music composer, sound/video designer and co-artistic director of Theatre Conspiracy.
Gavan Cheema is a director, writer, producer, dramaturg and co-Artistic Director of Theatre Conspiracy. She is a recent recipient of the Sam Payne Award for MostPromising Emerging Artist at the Jessie Richardson Awards.
Sydney Skybetter is a choreographer. Hailed by the Financial Times as “One of the world’s foremost thinkers on the intersection of dance and emerging technologies,” Sydney’s choreography has been performed at such venues as The Kennedy Center, Jacob’s Pillow and The Joyce Theater. He is a founding member of the Guild of Future Architects, and is the Founder of the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces. Sydney is the Deputy Dean of the College for Curriculum and Co-Curriculum at Brown University and recipient of a 2023 Creative Capital “Wild Futures” Award. www.skybetter.org
Nicholas Medvescek is a creative producer working across divergent disciplines to upend paradigms and inspire new connections. Currently, he manages a consultancy dedicated to art-thinking practice for innovation and is an affiliate faculty member at Emerson College, teaching in the Business of Creative Enterprises program.
Maya Rubio is an independent curator, after-school teacher, and editor at Boston Art Review.
People Involved at SFU
Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media
SFU-Mellon Data Fluencies fellow.