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Community organizers build grassroots power and collective voice in communities that are structurally marginalized in representative democracy, particularly in minoritized communities. Our project explores how self-identified community organizers use the narrative potentials of data to navigate the promises of data activism and the simultaneous risks posed to working-class communities of color by data-intensive technologies. Our nine respondents consistently named the material, financial, intellectual, and affective demands of data work, as well as the provisional, tenuous possibility of accomplishing movement work via narratives bolstered by data. Our early results identified two important factors in community organizers’ assessment of the efficacy and political potential of narratives built with data: audience and legitimacy.
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This content will become publicly available on November 11, 2025
"For Me, Data is Ammunition": Metaphors and Community Organizers' Data Imaginaries
This article bridges theories and insights from critical data scholarship by asking how community organizers from minoritized communities conceptualize data. Prior research has defined these socially and culturally constructed definitions about what data are and what data do as “data imaginaries.” This study draws on 40 qualitative interviews with community organizers involved in issues like immigration, reproductive justice, education, and policing. Our study takes metaphors given to us by community organizers (i.e., ammunition, teeth, receipts, compass) to reveal their data imaginaries. Particularly, their data imaginaries define what data means to them and what purpose it serves in their organizing. We find that community organizers also shared critiques of the ways data has been used to oppress minoritized groups. Given these findings, we conclude by encouraging future work that explores how community organizers experience and articulate epistemic burdens.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2047255
- PAR ID:
- 10589919
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 9798400711145
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 376 to 381
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- San Jose Costa Rica
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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