Data Activism and Digital Justice
Summary
Data activism encompasses a diverse set of practices through which civil society actors contest, repurpose and democratise data generation, analysis and governance. Rooted in critical data studies and social movement theory, it brings together grassroots initiatives, non-governmental organisations and progressive technologists to challenge entrenched power asymmetries embedded in datafication and surveillance capitalism. Digital justice, in turn, frames the equitable distribution of data rights and benefits as a matter of fundamental social justice. It extends concerns about data privacy and algorithmic bias to broader issues of representation, accountability and sovereignty, especially for marginalised communities in both Global North and South contexts. By foregrounding data as both a resource and a stake in political struggle, these interlinked fields seek to transform dominant infrastructures and policies, promote community-centred data governance and advance a vision of data futures that uphold human rights, collective empowerment and global solidarity.
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Data Activism and Digital Justice publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in data activism and digital justice across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Datafication: The process by which social action and interactions are rendered into quantifiable digital data.
Surveillance capitalism: An economic system centred on the commodification of personal data for profit and behavioural prediction.
Data activism: Collective and individual practices that challenge unequal power relations in data production, sharing and use.
Digital justice: A normative framework calling for equitable access to data rights, representation in data governance and fair distribution of data-driven benefits.
Data colonialism: The extension of colonial logics to the digital realm, where data extraction replicates patterns of resource exploitation and dispossession.
References
- Citizens’ media meets big data: the emergence of data activism. Mediaciones (2015).
- From data politics to the contentious politics of data. Big Data & Society (2019).
- Towards data justice? The ambiguity of anti-surveillance resistance in political activism. Big Data & Society (2016).
- The decolonial turn in data and technology research: what is at stake and where is it heading?. Information Communication & Society (2021).
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