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Dear Colleagues,



We wish to invite you to submit an abstract proposal to the panel

Surveillance infrastructures or open platforms? Aid and control of vulnerable

populations through digital data (track 12) at the 8th STS Italia Conference

Dis/Entangling Technoscience: Vulnerability, Responsibility and Justice,

University of Trieste, Italy, 18-20 June 2020.



Information about the conference can be found at this link

https://www.stsitaliaconf2020.com/call-for-abstracts. Abstract must be

submitted by February 9th.For any questions please email

lorenzo.olivieri3@unibo.it





Best regards,



Lorenzo Olivieri and Annalisa Pelizza

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Track 12: Surveillance infrastructures or open platforms? Aid and control of

vulnerable populations through digital data



Convenors:



Annalisa, Pelizza, University of Bologna,annalisa.pelizza2@unibo.it



Lorenzo, Olivieri, University of Bologna,lorenzo.olivieri3@unibo.it





Panel description:



The multiple ways in which data infrastructures and digital platforms can

shape the organisation of society are clearly revealed when it comes to

vulnerable populations like refugees, minors, the elderly, to name a few.

There seems to exist a division of labour in this field, between data

infrastructures conceived of as control tools and platforms as selfempowering

resources. On the one hand, data infrastructures are obligatory passage points

at any step of the processing of vulnerable populations, both by governmental

and humanitarian actors. On the other hand, the semantic richness and

ambiguity of the term platform allows attracting users, clients and

advertisers by promising an open, neutral and egalitarian space. Facebook,

Whatsapp and Twitter, for example, play an increasingly important role in the

movement of migrants and asylum seekers, enhancing their possibilities of

sharing information. Yet closer attention shows a more articulated landscape.

While institutional data infrastructures allow controlling people and

mobility, they also give access to welfare services like healthcare and

shelter. While commercial platforms allow bottom-up coordination and

selfmanagement, they exert a role on delicate issues such as privacy, mobility

tracking, identitybuilding. They represent a further source of control

available to governments and European agencies. In addition, private companies

analyse the data and meta-data of their users for commercial purposes,

eliciting a further tension between vulnerable-people-as-everydayconsumers and

vulnerable-people-as-such. Within this context, the technical affordances of

each platform are decisive in determining uses. For example, migrants choose

to use Whatsapp chats because they are encrypted. Minors communicate in

Facebook closed groups to avoid parental control. Tailored platforms - like

InfoMigrants.net or WatchTheMed, anonymizations techniques and zero

knowledge architectures might become a crucial factor in the management and

protection of vulnerable people. This panel invites presentations discussing

the two-fold dimension inherent to data infrastructures and platforms: how do

they allow empowering innovations in the communications strategies of

vulnerable people? How do they on the contrary produce novel or exacerbate

already existing vulnerabilities? How is the modern distinction between

government, business and civil society de facto reshuffled as a consequence?



Contributions are expected to address, but are not limited to:



 Development and use of tailored platforms in the humanitarian sector or by

local, bottom-up communities

 Co-optation of private companies in surveillance and risk analysis

 Accessibility, privacy and vulnerability issues at stake in the use of

platforms by migrants and infrastructures about migrants

 Inscription of migrants identities in interfaces, classifications and

ontologies.



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Kind regards,

Anna Melnyk

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