A research seminar on 'Fixing the Outcomes of Transparency: Data Context and the Concentration of Explanatory Power'.
PECE is a research software distribution that promotes archiving, sharing, and collaboratively analyzing ethnographic artifacts. In this workshop, Lindsay will lead a discussion on both the design and use of PECE, examining how the software can be deployed to support research data management, collaborative hermeneutic analysis, and the experimental publication of research materials. We will discuss the rationale for certain PECE design choices and how PECE's affordances can be creatively engaged to support collaborative research projects.
About LindsayPoirier
Dr. Lindsay Poirier is a cultural anthropologist of data advocacy, governance and infrastructure; an Assistant Professor of Statistical and Data Sciences at Smith College (Massachusetts, USA); and serves as Lead Platform Architect for the Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography and Chairs the PECE Design Team. Interlacing methods in cultural analysis and exploratory data analysis, she critically examines how meaning gets made from data -- by whom, for whom, under what conditions and toward what ends. Dr. Poirier’s work is informed by prior work in critical data studies, information studies, the digital humanities and data science. In her current research, she studies the provenance, form, semiotics and uptake of public interest datasets documenting social and environmental injustices in the United States. This work underscores the sociopolitical contexts shaping how knowledge claims about contemporary issues are produced from data, and informs critical approaches to data science practice, policy and pedagogy. Prior to joining Smith College, Dr. Poirier served as an Assistant Professor of Data Studies in the Science and Technology Studies Program at UC Davis, and also worked as a data ethnographer and lab manager for BetaNYC, a civic technology organization housed in the New York City Manhattan Borough President’s Office that advocates for improvements to the city’s open data program.
9:00-12:00 PECE workshop @ CWTS, Pieter de la Court building, room 1A.01
In this workshop, Lindsay will lead a discussion on both the design and use of PECE, examining how the software can be deployed to support research data management, collaborative hermeneutic analysis, and the experimental publication of research materials. We will discuss the rationale for certain PECE design choices and how PECE's affordances can be creatively engaged to support collaborative research projects.
Since this will be a hands-on workshop, we would like to set up user accounts and login credentials for the PECE instance we will be using in advance of the workshop: please contact us in advance on [email protected].We will of course be able to accommodate last-minute attendance, but we encourage you to signal your attendance as soon as you can.
14:00-15:30 Fixing the Outcomes of Transparency: Data Context and the Concentration of Explanatory Power @ CADS, Pieter de la Court building, room 0B13
In this talk, I will examine the language and data ideologies that motivate diverse commitments to putting data "in context." As a case study, I will highlight findings from an ethnographic study into a U.S.-based transparency program aiming to document the financial relationships between physicians and medical manufactures in a public database. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and critical readings of the database, I will describe stakeholder involvement in the development of regulations for the data’s collection, highlighting the moments and modes of social advocacy through which the public database materialized. I will argue that campaigns for context became a means of fixing the outcomes of transparency, and at times, a means of controlling data narratives and centralizing explanatory power. Juxtaposing the advocacy that shaped this public database to that of other data-based transparency initiatives, I will draw attention to the ways in which certain semiotic materializations of data can become a means of reinforcing industrial dominance, minimizing regulatory oversight, and keeping public opinion at bay.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)
