Data ethics in practice: rethinking scale, trust, and autonomy

Powell, Alison ORCID: 0000-0001-5780-9132 (2023) Data ethics in practice: rethinking scale, trust, and autonomy. In: Söderström, Ola and Datta, Ayona, (eds.) Data Power in Action: Urban Data Politics in Times of Crisis. Bristol University Press, Bristol, UK, 59 - 78. ISBN 9781529233544

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Abstract

Ethics as practice in data-driven contexts refers to ways of organizing, acting with, relating to, or contesting data. The use of data within urban settings provides a number of specific contexts and practices, intersecting and transcending what might be considered ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’ dynamics. Data-based governance, management, and civic engagement are deeply embedded into the function and experience of cities, raising issues of justice that require considerations of meaning that cut across scale, since issues of justice are temporally dispersed and contextually specific. Ethnographic methods can surface a range of possibilities for understanding issues of data justice across these contexts and scales. Areas of practice with ethical and justice implications include: commercial practices of data-based companies; participatory and civic data-gathering and engagement processes, including data activism; and community- or commons-based data governance strategies. A future data ethics can move away from responsive actions set within frameworks set by existing powerful actors and towards attention to implications across scale and time, producing and drawing from dynamics of resistance, resilience, and community strength. This chapter outlines a multiscalar data ethics in practice, using examples to illustrate the processes of trust and autonomy modelled through practices of ethics including governance, management, and civic engagement.

Item Type:	Book Section
Official URL:	https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/data-power-in...
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author
Divisions:	Media and Communications
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BJ Ethics
Date Deposited:	11 Jun 2024 11:15
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2024 18:14
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/123841

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