D!ARC Lecture: Automated and Datafied Welfare Futures

June 18^th 2024 4.00 – 6.00 pm HS V.1.34

Dr. Doris Allhutter

Abstract:

In many countries across the globe, the public sector is expanding its efforts to introduce data-driven and intelligent systems in the administration of core welfare services such as social benefits provision, unemployment services and healthcare. Critical data studies and adjacent fields have raised concerns that datafication as a social and political process mainly caters to commercial and governance interests. The risks of automation in welfare have primarily been discussed as “black-boxing” (i.e. algorithmic assessments of welfare applicants rest widely inaccessible and unexplainable for case workers and citizens alike), as fundamentally problematic practices of profiling and categorizing citizens (which limits their life experience to what is observable and quantifiable, omitting the complexity of their life situations), and in terms of biased and discriminatory outcomes for protected groups in vulnerable life situations.

Digitalization and sustainability: Seminar and book project

Digitization and sustainability are widely discussed both scientifically and politically. A close look at their complex interrelations provides an entry point to the the analysis of challenges and the development of promising perspectives for sociotechnical developments. Over the course of the summer term 2023, advanced students from a variety of disciplines followed this call and participated in the interdisciplinary seminar series “Digitalization and Sustainability: Strategic Visions for Future Development” that was co-organized by Profs. Daniel Barben (STS), Wilfried Elmenreich (Networked and Embedded Systems), Caroline Schmitt (Educational Science), Rainer Winter (Media and Communications) and D!ARC’s own Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda.

In September, the seminar culminated in three days spent in beautiful Drautal in western Carinthia, presenting, discussing, and writing texts for a collaborative book project. This comprised working on digital participation in sustainable city planning, drone technologies, sustainability in online teaching, sustainable online delivery platform design and many other topics at the intersection of science, technology and society. The event was generously supported by the Privatstiftung Kärntner Sparkasse, enabling students to participate in this productive, intense and thought-provoking event. The publication of the book is expected for 2024.

Plenary talk: “Framing Digital Discourse: Infrastructures of Datafication and Automation”

Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda will be plenary speaker at the 4th Approaches to Digital Discourse Analysis (ADDA) conference, which will be held at the University of Klagenfurt from 12-14 October 2023.

Abstract:

Digital discourse is facilitated and structured by complex algorithmic systems that gather, process, and analyze user data to create value. The use of social media, search engines, video streaming services, and mobile applications results in the creation of vast amounts of digital data, such as images, videos, and text. Additionally, digital interactions generate numerous other digital traces, including timestamps, locations, and other automatically collected data. This datafication has enabled the development of various business models that allow users to pay for services with data, knowingly or unknowingly. The emergence of new data economies has created a situation in which some entities derive value from other individuals’ data, and participation is often predicated on providing data. The inability to access these proprietary data for research presents unique methodological, ethical, epistemological, and practical challenges in the study of digital spaces. At the same time, there is growing public awareness that the algorithmic curation of data, particularly on social media, is often problematic, with fake content and vulnerable individuals being targeted. Greater transparency of algorithms and data is needed, which necessitates additional research on digital discourse and its framing. This talk will discuss the ways in which researchers become involved in the creation of value out of data when studying digital discourse, as well as how their research influences the spaces that they examine. Furthermore, I will examine current developments in research data infrastructures that aim to address data inequality.