TY - GEN
T1 - Whose side are ethics codes on? Power, responsibility and the social good
AU - Washington, Anne L.
AU - Kuo, Rachel
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to the Association for Computing Machinery.
PY - 2020/1/27
Y1 - 2020/1/27
N2 - The moral authority of ethics codes stems from an assumption that they serve a unified society, yet this ignores the political aspects of any shared resource. The sociologist Howard S. Becker challenged researchers to clarify their power and responsibility in the classic essay: Whose Side Are We On. Building on Becker's hierarchy of credibility, we report on a critical discourse analysis of data ethics codes and emerging conceptualizations of beneficence, or the “social good”, of data technology. The analysis revealed that ethics codes from corporations and professional associations conflated consumers with society and were largely silent on agency. Interviews with community organizers about social change in the digital era supplement the analysis, surfacing the limits of technical solutions to concerns of marginalized communities. Given evidence that highlights the gulf between the documents and lived experiences, we argue that ethics codes that elevate consumers may simultaneously subordinate the needs of vulnerable populations. Understanding contested digital resources is central to the emerging field of public interest technology. We introduce the concept of digital differential vulnerability to explain disproportionate exposures to harm within data technology and suggest recommendations for future ethics codes..
AB - The moral authority of ethics codes stems from an assumption that they serve a unified society, yet this ignores the political aspects of any shared resource. The sociologist Howard S. Becker challenged researchers to clarify their power and responsibility in the classic essay: Whose Side Are We On. Building on Becker's hierarchy of credibility, we report on a critical discourse analysis of data ethics codes and emerging conceptualizations of beneficence, or the “social good”, of data technology. The analysis revealed that ethics codes from corporations and professional associations conflated consumers with society and were largely silent on agency. Interviews with community organizers about social change in the digital era supplement the analysis, surfacing the limits of technical solutions to concerns of marginalized communities. Given evidence that highlights the gulf between the documents and lived experiences, we argue that ethics codes that elevate consumers may simultaneously subordinate the needs of vulnerable populations. Understanding contested digital resources is central to the emerging field of public interest technology. We introduce the concept of digital differential vulnerability to explain disproportionate exposures to harm within data technology and suggest recommendations for future ethics codes..
KW - Data science
KW - Digital differential vulnerability
KW - Digital vulnerability
KW - Ethics codes
KW - Public interest technology
KW - Social movements
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85079649012&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85079649012&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3351095.3372844
DO - 10.1145/3351095.3372844
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85079649012
T3 - FAT* 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
SP - 230
EP - 240
BT - FAT* 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 3rd ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, FAT* 2020
Y2 - 27 January 2020 through 30 January 2020
ER -