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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Inequalities And Asymmetries, Tamara Kneese Mar 2014

Inequalities And Asymmetries, Tamara Kneese

Media Studies

The availability of data is not evenly distributed. Some organizations, agencies, and sectors are better equipped to gather, use, and analyze data than others. If data is transformative, what are the consequences of defense and security agencies having greater capacity to leverage data than, say, education or social services? Financial wherewithal, technical capacity, and political determinants all affect where data is employed. As data and analytics emerge, who benefits and who doesn't, both at the individual level and the institutional level? What about the asymmetries between those who provide the data and those who collect it? How does uneven data …


Inferences & Connections, Tamara Kneese Mar 2014

Inferences & Connections, Tamara Kneese

Media Studies

Data-oriented systems are inferring relationships between people based on genetic material, behavioral patterns (e.g., shared geography imputed by phone carriers), and performed associations (e.g., "friends" online or shared photographs). What responsibilities do entities who collect data that imputes connections have to those who are implicated by association? For example, as DNA and other biological materials are collected outside of medicine (e.g., at point of arrest, by informatics services like 23andme, for scientific inquiry), what rights do relatives (living, dead, and not-yet-born) have? In what contexts is it acceptable to act based on inferred associations and in which contexts is it …


Predicting Human Behavior, Tamara Kneese Mar 2014

Predicting Human Behavior, Tamara Kneese

Media Studies

Countless highly accurate predictions can be made from trace data, with varying degrees of personal or societal consequence (e.g., search engines predict hospital admission, gaming companies can predict compulsive gambling problems, government agencies predict criminal activity). Predicting human behavior can be both hugely beneficial and deeply problematic depending on the context. What kinds of predictive privacy harms are emerging? And what are the implications for systems of oversight and due process protections? For example, what are the implications for employment, health care and policing when predictive models are involved? How should varied organizations address what they can predict?