Data, Power and Ethics

The course deals with critical and ethical issues related to platforms and arising from the use and interpretation of data. It blends social and historical perspectives with case examples to help students develop a user-oriented understanding of current ethical issues in analyses of data and platforms. Students are introduced to discourses concerning bias in socio-technical systems, algorithmic openness and accountability, ideologies of data, information asymmetries, and the current political economy of data. Frameworks, concepts, and theories are discussed in order for the students to appreciate the perspectives of multiple actors involved in data analysis and understand how data are socially constructed. A central concern of the course is how the benefits of data analysis can be mobilised beyond notions of efficiency, automation and rationalisation in order to advance a more democratic and sustainable development of society.