Pathways for Social Justice in the Datafied Society

Abstract

Can education be a response to the injustices generated by datafication? Although education has been considered a crucial instrument to generate a more democratic and egalitarian society, there is no linear relationship between education and social justice. In the same vein, data literacy as an approach to generate data justice or social justice in the context of datafication should be explored. In this article, I offer a conceptual analysis of the educational response to datafication. As a result of this exploration, I contend that, although the educational interventions are evolving towards forms of sensitivity and attention to the problem of datafication, there is a need for integrated approaches that consider complexity. Indeed, digital infrastructures, regulations, and political contexts shape a problem that goes well beyond the educator’s degrees of freedom. Notwithstanding the fact that this set of contingencies might be seen as limitations, it is only by taking them into account that the educational response can be imagined. Notably, the educators’ role should go in the direction of expanding knowledge and criticism towards the digital infrastructures, beyond technological competence, to promote counter-hegemonic antagonisms as means to build new contexts of data justice, and therefore, social justice.