LO: “Imagine an internet that is by and for us all, inclusive of marginalised voices and diverse knowledges.”
I put my name down for this webinar but I couldn’t make it so I’ve just watched it via this link. Slides available here.
Presenters: Kira Allmann (@KiraAllmann) Media Law and policy at Oxford, feminist activist. Connected to “Whose knowledge” interest in digital inclusion and exclusion and Anasuya Sengupta (@Anasuyashh) Co-director and co-founder of: “Whose Knowledge” https://whoseknowledge.org/
The webinar was an overview of the way most peoples and their knowledge is missing from the internet, and in fact all formal knowledge structures (such as books, journals etc). They present their case and give some ideas on how we can do our bit to change this – I’ve included these slides at the end of this blog.
They focus on two elements in this session – the physical connectivity and infrastructure of the internet and the inequalities with that. Then, once you’re connected, the content of the internet and the missing voices and knowledge there. Here are my notes, I would highly recommend looking at the slides too (link above).
What and who is missing from our digital world and what we can do about it?
There is a common assumption is that the internet is inherently democratic and inclusive, but today we want to challenge those assumptions and to demonstrate and illustrate that this isn’t necessarily the case.
Knowledge Infrastructures / architecture of internet can be exclusionary when we don’t include diverse knowledges into the planning and design of the technologies that allow us to share, create and comment on information online.
For example – some communications technologies (including the software being used for this webinar!) do not work well with open source software – these are often used in communities that cannot pay for Microsoft tools, but the digital world is built on these softwares, and means they can be exclusionary to those not able to gain access to Microsoft, etc.
(slide 6) Who is online?
Around 4billion people don’t have regular access to the internet
Of that 75 % of those who are online are from the global south, but they are severely under-represented
In sub-Saharan Africa the online gender male female gap is bigger.
(slide 7) Who builds our network infrastructures (gender and race)?
Companies publish their stats – so you can keep and eye on this.
(slide 8) Who builds our network infrastructures (geography and gender)?
Making sure the internet works! The IETF is responsible for protocols (URLs, DNS servers etc). IETF = Internet Engineering Task Force. ICANN = Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers. These are the decision-making bodies that make the internet work, but they are not representative.
The internet doesn’t look like many of us and doesn’t include many people’s voices.
People are unconnected due to intersecting reasons: marginalised by geography, linguistic diversity, social economic, pollical factors, race, ethnicity. Telecom companies need to overcome these barriers, but this hasn’t happened so far.
Community networks is one solution – they are owned, managed and built by local communities. Such as Broadband for the rural north (B4RN in Lancashire). Rural areas in UK, 17% ok UK live rurally and of those around 11% can’t get reliable internet connection (see more info here). And also the Zenzeleni Network in South Africa – rural eastern cape. Network owned operated managed and designed by people who live in the community (more info here).
Language as key aspect of knowledge infrastructure. Language is a proxy for knowledge.
“Whose Knowledge” are currently creating a report that shows the numbers and experiences of people using the internet in different languages, map challenges and opportunities and suggest practical agendas for action, it will be called State of the Internet’s Languages Report and is coming later this year (2020).
Us in the knowledge sector can think of language as a tool as awareness and who’s language we do and do not listen to, include and affirm.
Question to the audience: how many of you speak more than English?
0 – only english 56% 1 more 25% 2 more 14% 3+more 5%
Knowledge injustices
Think about how the knowledge you process and access is influenced by the language you use.
Digital and published content and knowledge injustices:
(slide 15) Whose knowledge?
Books in 480 languages but there are 7000 languages in the world!
(slide 16) Whose knowledge facts
(slide 17) Whose knowledge facts – UK
People are knowledge and most of the knowledge in the world are not textual, they are oral, visual, experiential, embodied.
Michael Polanyi “tacit knowledge” – We all exist with embodied knowledge, what makes institutional knowledge is the changing embodied knowledge by the creation of an artefact.
Makes an example of a dancer – embodied knowledge of your dance, you dancing is videoed and you are interviewed talking about your dance forms. That gets archived and a book is written about you – this becomes formal knowledge.
Then there is a feedback loop we embody some of the formal knowledge we receive through these artefacts.
But unless we can identify that people are knowledge, we cannot see the how deeply unjust the formal forms of knowledge are.
(slide 20) embodied (tacit) and disembodied (formal) knowledge
This results in a form of:
(slide 21) Epistemic injustice
Epistetemic injustice is the wrong done to somebody in their capacity as a knower.
Miranda Fricker says Epistetemic injustice has two main forms: Testimonial and hermeneutical [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemic_injustice]
Testimonial: An injustice of this kind occurs when someone is ignored or not believed because of their gender, their race or broadly, because of their identity. When the police don’t believe a young black man on the streets in the UK or US, an example of the police reaction to Stephen Lawrence’s friends is given in the wiki page above.
Hermeneutical: injustice related to how people interpret their lives and make sence of their social experiences, you don’t believe someone because you don’t believe in the concept they are speaking to you about – you don’t believe their conceptual world. A good example using the development, use and understanding of the term “sexual harrassment” is on the wiki page above.
How can we look a the theoretical concepts of “embodied knowledge” and “epistemic injustice” and turn it into practice into what we know and do everyday?
Linda Tuhiwai Smith in her book Decolonizing Methodologies says – Academic research is dominated by western notions of credibility and validity “The word itself, ‘research‘, is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary” p.1
She asks us not to use decolonizing as a metaphor but turn it into practice. We need to learn how to shift these structures of power and privilege through practice. How do we make sure our research is not colonizing in practice.
(slide 25) Wikipedia facts]
From metaphor to action – Wikipedia for online public knowledge.
In a study completed in 2012 the Oxford Internet Institute found most wiki articles that had place locations (geo-tagged) were within the western European area than outside it.
Centering marginalized communities
(slide 28) Centering marginalized communities
A way to practically adjust this is to centre marginalised communities. By working with them to write wiki pages, by centring them within places that have not centred them before, example mainstream academia – creating articles – https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616742.2019.1701515 (free until 31st august).
Project called #VisibleWikiWomen bringing images of women onto Wikipedia – Less than 20% of all biographies on wiki are women, and less than 25% of those have images.
CALL TO ACTION!
Action we can do on our own, and together to contribute to future inclusive internet
Important to ask because then we need to take action once we see that invisibility.
…and why are they missing and how do we do this in a way that is meaningful.
Who are you looking to as your sources for expertise – even at the most basic level of social media. Whose missing? Then include them in your own universe of knowledge and understanding.
Has this given any of you ideas about how you might contribute to a fairer, more inclusive internet?
University of Sunderland Library and Study Skills Professional Sharing 