This three-year, mixed method, participatory research project explores the nature and experience of digital privacy and “data rights” of adult low-income people in the United States. A team of grassroots organizations—The Center for Community Transitions (Charlotte, North Carolina), Allied Media Projects (Detroit, Michigan), and Los Angeles Community Action Network/Stop LAPD Spying (Los Angeles, California)—will collaborate with principal investigators Virginia Eubanks, Seeta Peña Gangadharan and Joseph Turow to conduct qualitative, participatory action research in three cities and a nationally representative survey.
Both portions of the study focus on poor and working-class people’s understandings of their right and ability to control their personal data across a number of domains: public assistance, housing, employment, education, land use, and criminal justice. The research will result in range of deliverables for academics, policymakers, and community members, including a Popular Guide to Data and Discrimination and a workbook of popular education activities for use in community organizing, training and literacy efforts. The project will benefit not only those most affected by “differential privacy,” but will also serve to broaden national conversation on big data, surveillance and economic inequality.
Grantee: New America (PIs: Virginia Eubanks, Seeta Peña Gangadharan, Joseph Turow)
Press release.