Talks and Lectures

This paper explores the risks of uncritical approaches to big data on issues of development with a focus on how it is harnessed in images. Accurate information is a basis for effective policy making, yet big data is far too often understood as empirically incontestable. This apparently evidence-based analysis can obscure more than it reveals. We examine how big data is being mobilized in data visualization on issues of human development in ways that serve ideological agendas. We will begin by examining how images work with a re-contextualization of impressionist art. A critic of Cézanne declared that his artwork was nothing more than an ugly untruth, a deliberate distortion of nature. Using this notion as a starting point, this paper questions how data visualisation illustrates trends and presents truth claims, through the privileging certain perspectives and importantly the rejection of others. We will then examine Max Roser’s Our World in Data (OurWorldinData.org) as an example of data visualization on issues of human development. Through these examples we will develop the concepts of digital positivism, datawash and darkdata as critical tools for approaching the communication of big data. Data visualization and artwork both reflect perceptions of the world, power relations, special interests and ideologies. The impressionists painted the unseen and unknown through painting voids. This paper posits that we could avoid the obfuscations of big data by understanding that its voids are political, but also that these voids might help us more clearly see power and ideology in data.

Colombia’s internet connectivity has exploded over the last four years. Colombia has also “opened for business”, leading to an influx of extractive projects to which many social movements objected heavily. Studies on the role of digital medias within this kind of political mobilisation in developing countries are still relatively scarce. This paper, using document and theoretical analysis, interviews, surveys, GIS and content analysis from social media, examines the role of social media and geo-tagged uploads in protest movements and to what extent increased digital connectivity has helped spread knowledge about human rights and environmental issues, and how geospatial information helps to codify and legitimize this information. Results show that the use of social media in Colombia is still embryonic and hindered by strong hierarchical power structures within social movements, meaning its effect on political mobilisation is often limited, or negative. This implies that social media do not spontaneously produce non-hierarchical knowledge structures, and that social movement organisations in Colombia need to further develop their knowledge dissemination strategies. The study goes on to ask whether it is then the geolocation of knowledge rather than solely the much lauded social media that will help legitimize knowledge around human rights and environmental abuses associated with the extractive industries in a way that moves beyond documenting abuses and towards holding those responsible to account.

New developments within ICT’s are, suggests Foucault, able to invert previous metaphors of the panopticon, with these new information technologies allowing for the challenging of elites. While this notion is subject to continuous debate, one such field where this inversion has been stark has been within the production of maps. Maps and spatial representations produced by local people have a long history, yet in the last ten years the field of cartography has moved in directions unimaginable just 20 years ago. Cartography, through increased access to digital platforms, has been slipping from the control of the powerful bourgeoisie bringing about the creation of ‘neogeography’ and the democratisation of participation. This in turn has created the potential for an ‘insurrection of knowledges’ in which GIS platforms allow for the expression of a variety of knowledges creating a more level playing field for comparing consensus and division. In turn allowing for a wider exploration of the cultural and political conditions that direct human understandings of the environment. These ‘counter-maps’ which express local knowledges in cartographic form can be a powerful tool in promoting the rights of communities. This paper seeks to show the ways in which they have been used in Latin America to go beyond spatial representations and towards eliciting competing localities and grounded truths which enunciate and draw conflict to the centre of attention.

As peace comes to Latin America, the continent has been inundated with a new wave of invaders who seek to exploit the vast tracks of land and rich mineral resources, often at the expense of local populations. This has manifest itself in an influx of extractive projects to which many social movements have objected heavily. Studies on the role of digital media in these political mobilisations and in developing countries are still scarce. Using document and theoretical analysis, interviews, surveys, GIS and content analysis from social media, this study examines the role of digital and social media in protest movements from Colombia and El Salvador and explores the extent to which increased digital connectivity can help spread knowledge about human rights and environmental issues. Results show that the use of social media is still embryonic and hindered by strong hierarchical power structures within social movements, meaning its effect on political mobilisation is often limited, or negative. This implies that social media do not spontaneously produce non-hierarchical knowledge structures, and that may be a need to further develop knowledge dissemination strategies. The study goes on to ask whether it is then community mapping, rather than the much lauded social media, that will help legitimize knowledge around human rights and environmental abuses associated with the extractive industries in a way that moves beyond documenting abuses and towards holding those responsible to account.