Pedagogic encounters with algorithmic system controversies: a toolkit for democratising technology

ABSTRACT

There is a broad impetus across policy and institutional domains to expand public engagement and involvement with emerging technology research and innovation. Yet innovative theory, methods, and practices to critically explore algorithmic system controversies and democratic possibilities are still in nascent form. In this paper, we bring together thinking about public pedagogy, infrastructuring, and democratic design to introduce a novel pedagogic encounters toolkit, where pedagogic encounters are defined as: opportunities for learning together about the emergence, relationality, and uncertainty of algorithmic system controversies. A framework with accompanying practices and examples is outlined for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to creatively and critically explore these pedagogic encounters within specific contexts. We conclude with implications for future investigations attentive to making democratic designs in a datafied society. In doing so, this paper informs theoretical and methodological innovation to the study of algorithmic system controversies and democratising technology.

KEYWORDS:

• Datafication
• algorithmic system controversies
• infrastructuring
• democratic design
• pedagogic encounters toolkit

Acknowledgements

A version of this paper was presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) conference in 2021 and at a Technical Democracy Collective Workshop hosted at University of Sydney in 2022, and we thank participants for their feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In 2019, InLinkUK went into bankruptcy and the network of 494 kiosks at the time was taken over by British Telecom who rebranded the kiosks ‘digital street hubs’.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the Australian Research Council and the University of Sydney.