Data Fluencies

Creating communities of care in the digital world

Data Fluencies offers a model for enacting theories of data justice, methods of community engagement, and practical approaches to disrupting institutions and infrastructures that have diminished the capacities of everyday digital technology users. Combining humanities-based critical thinking, computational data analyses, arts-based research cocreation, and media making, data fluencies offer creative and imaginative approaches to investigating and countering algorithmic discrimination, digital surveillance, mis- and disinformation, and deep fake versions of reality.

Not fixed or static, data fluencies move with, through, and against data streams to build the worlds we want, not the ones algorithms push on us. Presenting real-world examples, the authors demonstrate how data fluencies transcend difference and counter the proliferation of hate and toxicity online. As they outline visions for disrupting the past to reimagine the future, the authors guide the way in devising new ways to think, act, and imagine―to influence and reshape the currents that flow through our data-driven world.

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Philippa R. Adams is postdoctoral fellow at the Digital Democracies Institute at Simon Fraser University and program manager of the Data Fluencies Project.

Roopa Vasudevan is assistant professor in the Department of Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and principal investigator on the Data Fluencies Exhibitions.

Gillian Russell is assistant professor in Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology and principal investigator of the Public Night School for the Data Fluencies Project.

Kishonna Gray is a professor, author, and gamer who leads the Intersectional Tech Lab and workshops in the School of Information at the University of Michigan.

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Simon Fraser University’s Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media and principal investigator of the Data Fluencies Project.

Tara McPherson is HMH Foundation Endowed Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and principal investigator of the Reclaim Project for Data Fluencies.