Here’ s a video of a short talk I gave recently at the Harvard Data Across Scales conference. As part of their Open Data and Civic Media panel, I spoke about Data Analysis as Civic Engagement.
The abstract and talk were written by Emily and myself:
Increasingly, open data efforts and data-driven decision making processes have created a power disparity between those that “speak data” and those that do not. While data-driven public policy decisions can increase the impact and efficacy of interventions, they leave many community members out of conversations and out of decision-making processes. In this session we will present case studies of the collaborative arts-based techniques the Connection Lab and the MIT Center for Civic Media have developed to bring these conversations back into the public sphere. These hands-on activities prepare community members without a background in data analysis to participate actively in the creation and public presentation of data-driven messaging. This offers a new model for civic engagement, bringing people together around data to create public interventions that alter the urban sphere, creating audience-appropriate messaging and increasing the data literacy of participants.
Data Therapy 