[WiSe 2024/25] Seminar: Introduction to Critical Data Studies

Module: 

for computer science: Current Developments in Internet and Society (3 LP)

for social science: Arbeitswelt, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (3 LP)

A central focus is the study of data and data-driven technologies and techniques through a critical, intersectional lens with profound attention to power dynamics. From the interplay of ML algorithms and surveillance systems to digital media and the use of social media data, various systems rely on the storage, transaction, classification, and exploitation of datasets. The module discusses methods for studying data technologies and techniques from multiple interdisciplinary perspectives. For example, Critical Data Studies is a field that examines data as a site of contested meanings and politics, analyzing how digital data acts as an instrument of power that gives shape to and is shaped by social, cultural, and economic structures. In short, data is both a medium that relies on and reconfigures power. Central questions covered in this module are: - How is data constituted through entanglements of computing, labor, and power? - What is the relationship between data and social inequality? - What methods can we use to study the making of data? - How can data as a form of power be resisted and subverted?