"Google Got Yo Life": Opening Portals for Ethical Sense-Making With Relational Design

• In Event: Creating Digital Counter-Spaces: Exploring Social Media, Science, and Culture in the Data Age

Abstract

We highlight an example of how attending to relational goals in a critical computing education environment can open portals for deep ethical sensemaking and world-building opportunities. Through a curricular activity aimed at generating collective understandings of trust, intimacy, privacy, and consent, participants strengthen a relationship with one another while examining their relationship with a surveillance capitalism platform. Performing interaction analysis on a 15 minute clip of the activity, we examine the significance of relations in the process of consciousness-raising about the power dynamics inherent to these platforms. This paper moves toward centering relations and an ethic of collective care, which we contend acts as a critical intervention into the ongoing, global crises that young people face today.

Authors

• Natalie Araujo Melo, Northwestern University

• Benjamin Nober

• Alisa Reith, Northwestern University

• Sarah Van Wart, Northwestern University

• Sepehr Vakil, Northwestern University