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Data Justice and Surveillance Capitalism

Module description

Digital platforms that conglomerate the data of billions of individuals around the world have become transnational monopolies, and powerful international political players on such a scale that scholars recognise it as a new form of surveillance capitalism. Capable of regulating flows of information and giving access to analytics and intelligence to the highest bidder, digital platforms’ profit seeking logics shape the public sphere in ways no one imagined a decade ago. The arrival of the internet and social networks, along with an increasingly globalised trade was signalled as the end of sovereignty and national borders. Similarly, digital platforms are multiplying and connecting bigoted worldviews, new forms of oppression, aiding state surveillance and tactics to destabilise democratic processes in the global north and south. Nonetheless, resistance is also facilitated by digital platforms. This module will help you reflect in a critical way into how power operates in the datafied society, exploring current ways of searching for justice in these techno-scientific contexts.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The module has three main aims:

1)     To explore the various ways in which spatially bounded states are weakened in our digital age due to big data platforms’ ability to become market makers in their own right and de facto regulate themselves. Experts in digital political economy such as Pasquale (2016) have identified this phenomenon as the move from territorial to functional sovereignty. For instance, Facebook set up its own regulatory body to tackle fake news and created its own cryptocurrency (Libra) hailed as a ‘seismic moment for global finance’ (Parkin 2019); with ~ 2.3 billion users Libra could become the widest used currency in the world. 

2)      To bring forth exploration of non-modern ways of knowing the world, and its entanglements with digital technologies. Uncovering lived worlds in which dreams, science and ritual coexist and cross-fertilise each other. These cultural landscapes have seldom been theorised or researched in the current literature; this is why in this module they are informed by first hand ethnographic research done in Colombia, Mexico, and Indonesia. 

3)     To imagine and theorise how citizens engaging with digital platforms could be so much more than prosumers participating in a market economy. Thus, we will interrogate and reflect on why and how, we need to build them as citizens’ platforms that put forward common challenges, even those that require questioning our values, assumptions, modes of production and habits.

At the end of the module you will be able to engage in a meaningful way with the contemporary challenges arising from the transformation of sovereignty, its mutation, transformation & (re)construction, in times of surveillance capitalism, but also, they will read and think about postcolonial approaches to justice and non-western takes on knowledge, data and power that will challenge their taken for granted ideas.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate knowledge and critical understanding of a range of perspectives on contemporary environmental intelligence, surveillance capitalism and postcolonial approaches to data justice.
• 2. Critically evaluate these perspectives and relate them to empirical studies and findings.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Analyse the effects of ‘powerful’ and ‘weak’ social actors and their decisions, and how, why and through what means resistance has been made possible. The module will focus specifically on movements on the social structure, culture, the economy and the environment.
• 4. Reflect upon, apply, and criticise social theories and empirical social science findings that engage with Data justice and Surveillance capitalism.

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Demonstrate in writing and orally, a capacity to question taken-for-granted assumptions.
• 6. Engage in complex arguments in writing, orally and in small groups to speak about the ways in which algorithm and datafied forms of governance affect your everyday life.

Syllabus plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all the following topics:

1. Freedom and oppression in the Digital Society
2. Sovereignty and Surveillance Capitalism
3. Post-truth, social media, and Postcolonial Theory
4. Ethnographies of Big Data.
5. Dreams and Science in the digital sphere
6. The Database of Dreams
7. The Dream of Artificial Intelligence and its discontents
8. Creative engagements with Data Justice in conflict scenarios.
9. Participatory Action Research & Climate Change in a datafied society

The ethics of Big Data and Data Justice: a critical perspective

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to redo the assessment(s) as defined above. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Agamben, G. (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford University Press.
• Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago University Press.
• _______ (1977) Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin Books.
• Butler, J. (2009), Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso.
• Correa-Cabreara, G. (2017) Los Zetas Inc.: Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• Foucault, M. (2003[1975- 76]) Society Must Be Defended. New York: Picador.
• Hansen, T & Stepputat, F. (2005, eds.), Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants and States in the Postcolonial World, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford.
• Haraway, D. (1989) Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of  Partial Perspective, Feminist Studies, 14 (3): 575 – 599
• Jasanoff, S. (2005) Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States, Princeton University Press.
• Zuboff, S. (2015) Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30 (1): 75-89.

Key words search

Data Justice, Surveillance Capitalism