Mobilizing Data for Justice: A Guide to Activism in the Digital Age by Chris Hurl, Elena Rowan, Marius Senneville, and Kevin Walby (Between the Lines, 2025)
Mobilizing Data for Justice: A Guide to Activism in the Digital Age provides an in-depth analysis from Chris Hurl, Elena Rowan, Marius Senneville, and Kevin Walby, a group of advocates and organizers, on how the masses can utilize data. Drawing on their experiences, they provide a framework that allows people to control their data and offer considerations activists must account for when engaging in data activism.
What is data?
For the authors, data is information that people and communities can use in social struggle. This includes data in its analog form. In a world often concerned about digital data, it is crucial to remember that data in its analog form is immensely valuable. Stories from different communities, both in oral and written form, can’t be ignored by activists in favour of digital information; the two should work in tandem. This knowledge provides key insights for communities clinging to the past and hoping to maintain their future.
Striking a balance between analog and digital alleviates concerns of people who are not technologically savvy, yet understand the threat from a world where data once held in common is increasingly being privatized and extracted by the cabal of Silicon Valley billionaires working in tandem with the State. It can be as simple as taking a stroll on the street with neighbours and noting the ways the State monitors the population, or as complex and dire as creating archives for Palestinians who are at risk of having their archives destroyed amidst a genocide.
Moving away from gatekeepers and extraction
Although data sources are everywhere, control over data is not open to all. Akin to the enclosure of the commons that Marx identified as the inception of capitalism, the corporatization of online platforms by the likes of Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, and Altman has resulted in people’s data being extracted. This practice is understood as data colonialism. Not only does this allow corporations to benefit from data collected by users on various platforms, but it also takes control from people. This leaves workers vulnerable to the vagaries of the self-appointed gatekeepers.
A notable consequence of this, as noted in the book, is the way that data is expropriated by national surveillance infrastructures, through partnerships between these data brokers and governments. With these partnerships, like the one between Palantir and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) we see that the company’s apt namesake allowed it to be a key cog in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids against workers in Mississippi and New York. The result: approximately seven hundred people detained, both with and without warrants; families forever changed, all because of an odious regime, and Palantir’s access to information through its FALCON Tipline. Fighting against these colonial practices requires a more community-oriented model for evaluating data.
Data decolonization: working against the epistemic framework discussed above focuses on using data and organizing for both the majority of people and those groups most victimized by colonialism. This framework is steeped in an understanding that data is present and not necessarily owned by any person because it belongs to everyone. This doesn’t mean that data in all its forms is a tabula rasa; certain stories will belong to those communities that have spoken the words. Focusing on campaigns undergirded by community empowerment, like the Indigenous Data Governance campaign,
The cost of accessing data
The issues discussed throughout the book reflect broader tendencies within capitalism: the depletion of access, the neo-liberalization of resources, and monopolization. Confronting existing infrastructures, while also addressing challenges arising out of increased digitization, simultaneously creates problems and solutions. Questions surrounding the cost — both financial and social — are a key focus. The authors speak to a variety of tactics used to answer these questions: from hacking (labelled hacktivism) to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
Some costs associated with using FOI requests to gather information are apparent; organizations incur expenses with every additional request. Other costs are opaque and not evenly felt. Although both Canada and the United States of America pride themselves on the principles of liberal democracy, it is not the case. The oxymoron that is an FOI request speaks to this reality: if the information is free to access, there is no need for a request, let alone one with a dollar value. These barriers function as a fence blocking citizens from accessing information that, if not for the intent of keeping it veiled, would be available. Activists must brace for the reality that FOI requests use resources, and the benefit might be blunted because files might remain redacted despite many requests.
Another concern lies in the purpose of making a request; they are public. There is little to no anonymity in making an FOI request. On its surface, an FOI request is innocuous, but people with immense power are now aware that someone is digging for information they would like to remain unsurfaced. Yes, FOIs carry less risk than hacking, but the risk it does carry — as the authors outline in one harrowing example — should not be taken for granted.
Movement-relative theory
Mobilizing Data for Justice delves into ways in which activists can empower communities through data, highlighting approaches rooted in community and nourished by care. Care is a core tenet of data activism: providing an alternative to existing infrastructures and creating community tools, such as archives, empowering them to cast aside those of the masters.
This book is itself a tool, exemplifying movement-relevant theory by providing usable examples of different struggles. Any activist will be better off having this in their tool belt.
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