Conferences and Workshops

Digital Inequalities and Discrimination in the Big Data Era

International Communication Association Preconference, May 25, 2017
Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel


Co-chairs: Jenifer Sunrise Winter (University of Hawaii at Manoa), Nyle Sky Kauweloa (University of Hawaii at Manoa), and Wayne G. Buente (University of Hawaii at Manoa)


Sponsors: Pacific Information and Communication Technology for Development Collaborative, School of Communications (University of Hawaii at Manoa), Institute for Information Policy (Pennsylvania State University)

8:00-8:25am Overview and Introductions

8:25-9:15am Legal Perspectives on Data and Discrimination

  • Disclosure requirements for use of big data in employment, Mark Cenite (Nanyang Technological University)
  • A proposal to adopt data discrimination rather than privacy as the legal justification for rolling back U.S. government surveillance, Benjamin Cramer (Pennsylvania State University)

9:15-10:30 East Asia Perspectives on Big Data

  • An analysis of China’s big data policy: An ecosystem approach, Yang Bai (Pennsylvania State University)
  • Big data as a new economic pageant: How the discourse of economic growth deepens digital inequality in South Korea, Siho Nam (University of North Florida)
  • Emotional labor in authoritarian Internet governance: The surveillance of Chinese Internet public opinion and its commercialization, Rui Hou (Queen’s University) and Mengjun Guo (University of Washington)

10:30-10:45 Coffee Break

10:45- 12:00 Classification and Ontology

  • AI, discrimination and inequality in the ‘post’ classification era, Anja Bechmann (Aarhus University) and Geoffrey C. Bowker (University of California at Irvine)
  • Social ontology in big data organizing, Andrew Iliadis (University of Ontario Institute of Technology)
  • Privacy and prejudice in big data: Algorithms can discriminate on the basis of data they lack, Betsy Williams (University of Arizona/Center for Digital Society and Data Studies), Volodymyr Lysenko (University of Arizona/Center for Digital Society and Data Studies), Catherine Brooks (University of Arizona/Center for Digital Society and Data Studies), and Yotam Shmargad (University of Arizona/Center for Digital Society and Data Studies)

12:00-1:30pm Lunch

1:30-2:20pm Big Data for Evidence-based Policy

  • Democratic implications of the use of big data: Public interest groups and communications regulation in the UK, Jelena Dzakula (University of Westminster)
  • Autoethnography as an approach for scholarly inquiry on big data inequalities, Chamil Rathnayake (Middlesex University)

2:20-2:35 Coffee Break

2:35-3:25pm Consumers and Risk

  • Health wearables: Ensuring fairness, preventing discrimination, and promoting equity in an emerging Internet-of-Things environment, Kathryn Montgomery, American University
  • Consumers on the Internet – Unanimously indifferent or merely unaware about digital inequalities?, René Arnold (Wissenschaftliches Institut für Infrastruktur und Kommunikationsdienste), Anna Schneider (Fresenius University of Applied Sciences), and Johanna Bott (Wissenschaftliches Institut für Infrastruktur und Kommunikationsdienste)

3:25-3:40pm Journal of Information Policy – information for prospective authors

3:40-4:00pm Closing Remarks and Discussion