Content area
Abstract
While data has the potential to promote positive change, many current data-driven processes are rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy. The very real and oppressive nature of data is often overlooked, unknown, or forgotten, hidden behind technical and empirical jargon that promotes data as a solution and objective. Because data is not going away, it is important for the population to be able to be informed and contextualize their interactions with data through its contentious history, present, and possible future. Critical data literacy is a current pedagogical avenue within Human-Computer Interaction that aims to teach skills for working with data that engages critiques of data bias. My research converges on a similar yet very different route, which I term critical data engagement.
In this dissertation, I detail the emergence of this concept of critical data engagement from research that engages with data through materials to disrupt the normative data practices. My research aims to subvert and make strange common methods for collecting, analyzing, and presenting data to examine their limitations and what is lost along the way. Through the use of autobiographical and designerly methods, I incorporate concepts of materiality and making to investigate data authority. Utilizing the themes from this work, I reflect on the emerging practices that I developed as a result and what it would mean for others to participate in as well. Finally, I synthesize the findings of my research into a crochet and data workbook. These activities focus on important actions and exploratory techniques in the work I present in my dissertation that correlate to fostering critical data engagement.
Details
