In the United States, the census is democracy’s data. These data make politics – and politics make these data. “Data Are Made, Not Found” tells the story of what it took for the US Census Bureau to make its canonical data in 2020, amidst a pandemic, natural disasters, and political pressure. The making of these data is more than meets the eye. After all, what do government officials do when people refuse to participate or when workers submit fabricated data? And how does the government balance the competing goals of publishing as much data as possible without inadvertently breaching the confidentiality of the public? To complicate matters, government officials must navigate “Jenga politics” as both well-intended and malevolent actors try to achieve their goals by weakening the administrative state and putting pressure on a wobbly structure. Civil servants do their best to keep the tower from collapsing, but the precarity is real. In this talk, danah boyd will discuss what it takes to make democracy’s data – and what those who care about data and democracy should understand about the complexities of making high-stakes data.
About the Speaker:
danah boyd is the Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University. Dr. boyd’s research focuses on the intersection of technology and society. Her upcoming book, Data are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census, is an ethnography of the US Census Bureau, Jenga politics, and the struggle to make democracy’s data in 2020. Her first monograph, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, examines young people’s relationship to social media. Dr. boyd founded Data & Society, where she currently serves as an advisor. She is currently a fellow of AAAS, a 2026 Sloan Research Fellow, a non-residential fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a trustee of the Computer History Museum, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and on the advisory boards of Electronic Privacy Information Center. She was also a founding director of Crisis Text Line, a mental health organization that serves people in crisis. She received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Brown University, a master’s degree from MIT Media Lab, and a Ph.D in Information from the University of California, Berkeley.
About the Series:
The New Civic Terrains Speaker Series convenes public conversations with thinkers and practitioners working at the frontiers of digital civic life. Through lecture and dialogue, the series highlights diverse ways of knowing and making, from empirical research and policy critique to creative practice and grassroots organizing. The series creates a collective opportunity for reflection, debate, and collaboration, fostering cross-disciplinary exchange and inviting audiences to imagine new civic imaginaries for a technologically mediated world.
About the Digital Civics Initiative:
The Digital Civics Initiative at Northeastern University is an interdisciplinary platform dedicated to understanding and reshaping the civic dimensions of digital technologies in contemporary life. The initiative brings together scholars, educators, activists, technologists, and artists whose work engages questions of technology and education, labor and automation, governance and public institutions, surveillance and data justice, environmental sustainability, community organizing, and human-centered approaches to machine learning and artificial intelligence.