Tech and Social Justice: Personal Data, Data Literacy, and Discrimination

The Illinois Tech Office of Community Affairs and Outreach, the Real-Time Communications Lab, and the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions present a discussion series on technology and social justice, with the latest event titled Personal Data, Data Literacy, and Discrimination: It’s About Much More Than Friends. 

We will discuss how your personal data—from sources such as your social media—is being used by others to make decisions about things such as your interest rate, job offers, university admissions, and much more. What conclusions are drawn about you, based on personal information that you may think you are sharing only with friends? What are the relative benefits and dangers associated with giving your personal data? What can we as individuals and as a society do to ensure that our
personal data is not abused?

This Q&A session will feature Tamara K. Nopper, a sociologist, writer, and editor. She is the editor of We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, a book of Mariame Kaba’s writings and interviews (Haymarket Books); researcher and writer of several data stories for Colin Kaepernick’s Abolition for the People online series and book; and guest editor of the recently published critical sociology forum Race and Money. Her current scholarship examines the credit scoring industry and the push for alternative data among elected officials, policymakers, and community advocates. She is an affiliate of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies, a member of the inaugural cohort of the NYU Institute for Public Interest Technology, a 2021–2022 faculty fellow at Data & Society as part of a cohort focused on race and technology, and a former fellow at Data for Progress. Carol Davids, adjunct industry professor of computer science and director of the Real-Time Communications Lab at Illinois Tech, will moderate the discussion.