Title: Local Data Activism: How Community-Based Organizations Produce Data for Social Action
 

Date: Tuesday, April 7th, 2026
 

Time: 9am-noon, EST

Location: Technology Square Research Building (TSRB), IC Cafe

Microsoft Teams meeting

Join: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/22925172823884?p=FwSEhPoQaJGiF04X7O

Meeting ID: 229 251 728 238 84

Passcode: MB6LK7Jo

Ashley Boone

Human Centered Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology

Committee:

1. Dr. Christopher A. Le Dantec (Advisor), Northeastern University
2. Dr. Carl DiSalvo (Co-advisor), Georgia Institute of Technology
3. Dr. Amy Bruckman, Georgia Institute of Technology
4. Dr. Lynn Dombrowski, Georgia Institute of Technology
5. Dr. Yanni Loukissas, Georgia Institute of Technology
6. Dr. Sarah Fox, Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract:

Recent transformations in civics have pushed for datafication and open data at all levels, shifting how decisions are negotiated and how civic leaders come to understand issues ranging from housing to the environment. A datafied civics creates new opportunities and challenges for civic participation and political action that we do not yet fully understand. Within that context, community-based organizations face increasing pressure to engage with data, shifting project goals and transforming modes of work. Building on perspectives from human-computer interaction, design, computer supported cooperative work, and critical data studies, my research examines data activism as an emerging activist practice. By investigating how community-based organizations engage with data and how their data work affects a broader ecosystem of civic data, I aim to promote and support political participation in a datafying world. 

To understand how data is utilized by activists, my current work focuses on Atlanta community-based organizations (CBOs) that produce data with social or political goals. My dissertation research examines data production in CBOs as a form of proactive data activism. I have partnered with three CBOs with differing organizational structures and approaches to social change: a municipal agency distributing resources in immigrant communities, an environmental monitoring program advocating for bird conservation policy, and a nonprofit using community science to pursue environmental justice. By tracing how community members, city government, and nonprofits interact around data across these three sites, I contribute (1) detailed accounts of civic data work, (2) alternative approaches to civic participation through data, and (3) an evaluation of proactive data activism as a tool for social change at the local level. Through these contributions, I illustrate an approach to civic data that embraces relationality, storytelling, and local knowledge. This perspective raises a new set of challenges for Local Data Activism beyond data quantity, quality, and accessibility, and highlights key tensions between the epistemological and instrumental goals of data production. Ultimately, I argue that Local Data Activism tends towards incremental change and not radical transformation of systems of p