We Are AI Comics  

The comic’s goal is to introduce readers to algorithmic terms, processes, and potential harms in human use. These comics show AI is not separate from people’s lives and to raise awareness about its implications. For the design of the comic, drawings and text are used to attract are larger audience. The examples illustrated are common enough to most people and are short enough to be read in the extra time the average person may have available. Out of the three texts assigned, the comic is the most accessible. The language used and how it is presented is not overly academic and is rolled out over time, so as not to overwhelm the reader. The platform of choice is digital, which is often the most accessible form. It can be shared via a link, or the entire pdf can be sent as a small file. The pitfalls of this approach include oversimplifying the technology’s scope and underestimating its potential harm. This comic is hosted on a portfolio website and not where one seeks comics, which decreases its discoverability. This approach would need to rely heavily on readers sharing to reach a broader audience. 

“Machine Bias.”    

This article exposes the harms of using predictive, data-driven algorithms in criminal sentencing. The article is intended to bring awareness and garner empathy around this issue with the public. It can also be a medium for which to hold institutions accountable for their use of problematic software. The article’s design is standard for modern journalism, with photography and data charts woven into the text. This article is accessible. The language is not overly complex, combining storytelling and information. You can read the article on both the publication’s website and news aggregator platforms. The format of articles has also been made to be easily sharable from their original platform and over social media. The discoverability is much higher than the comic and the paper. A pitfall for this approach is that the news platform could be seen as not central enough for certain portions of the population. Using personal narrative in the reporting could be seen as discrediting to some. Overall, the article is engaging, but is specific in the algorithmic harm it addresses, and doesn’t touch on other harms like the other examples this week.

“Accountability in an Algorithmic Society: Relationality, Responsibility, and Robustness in Machine Learning.”  

This paper’s purpose is for academic circulation. The paper seeks to reassess past scholarly statements on accountability in a computer-driven world and modernize theories for the algorithmic society of today. It is designed as a standard academic white paper, organized to make clear what is included in the paper and citations. When thinking about accessibility, this approach is narrow and targeted towards a specific audience. Language used in the paper is academic and the platform in which the paper can be accessed is one the average citizen will not be familiar with. The public’s discoverability would also be low. A pitfall here is its language being too academically inclined for some in the public, but as they are not the intended audience, it is not much of an issue. 

The role of data journalism is to give qualitative and quantitative reporting, empower the public, and hold institutions accountable. There is a negotiation and balancing of the relationship to power between journalists, institutions, and the public. In an ideal world, data journalism would be “the collection, protection, and interrogation of data as a source complementing traditional investigative reporting (witness, experts, and authorities),” in service of creating a healthier existence for humanity. This extended definition from Alex Howard’s lightning talk “Data Journalism in the Second Machine Age”, along with his declaration, “data plus journalism plus activism plus responsive institutions equals social change, establishes a way to look at the interconnected nodes in data journalism that require it keep central a power-based lens.

In Episode 1 of the Data & Society Podcast “Becoming Data: Data and Humanity,” Lam Thuy Vo discusses two ways of looking at data/datasets. One type of data is created naturally as people live and is collected by platforms, institutions, and individuals, while the other is intentionally made by individuals to shape their public self. Since this forming of data is contingent on the public, concerns, and frameworks for maintaining privacy, security, ethics, and transparency should be present. Data is not neutral; how it is collected, used, analyzed, and preserved indicates the relations that exist around it. In collection, we consider the “‘reality’ of what collections methods can uncover and the impact of these methods on the data collected, participants, and researchers” (Guyan, 61). The ‘reality’ and impact are present during each part of the data lifecycle. While the data itself is paramount to data journalism, institutions play just as great a role.

Institutions that do not embrace intersectionality, and that are built upon colonial, extractive practices, will not aid data journalism in its role to understand our world and make it more just. If institutions are not questioning accessibility, the financial interests present, the normative implications built into how the public interacts with them, the rigidity of how the public must identify, and so on, how can they be sure that the data they collect, and house is accurate to the ways in which the public wants to be represented? Dismantling present structures of inequality in institutions that data journalists use when not making their own datasets requires institutional rethinking of documentation practices. How is the data constructed, what is deemed as knowledge, and are we removing the context from the data?

Data journalist in the role of change agent (for the betterment of society) are tasked then with creating and maintaining relationships with the public they wish to analyze, and with holding institutions accountable to the public and creating pathways for the public to advocate for themselves. Data journalists and the field of data journalism must navigate the challenges and complexities to contribute to the greater good.

Some data journalism projects that I particularly enjoy are pieces from The Pudding. The Pudding’s approach is partially influenced by community submissions and is experimental. One piece that I found impactful was, This is how rare it is for a hit song to be credited to an all-women songwriting team. The project skillfully blends dynamic visuals with data on the gender composition of song writers from top Billboard Hot 100 songs in recent years.

The project employs the usual vertical scroll method to move readers through the story. One of my favorite ways they expand on this feature is using background and foreground. They use it to highlight how male dominated commercially successful song writing is.

As the project unfolds, a running tally can be seen at the lower left that demonstrates that the further back, starting in 2021, we go in years, the wider the disparity.  

The latter half of the project details the rarity of hit songs where a woman is the sole writer of a song for a man. And specifically calls out barriers that women have faced in getting recognition in the song writing space, and the music industry at large. This quote was shocking to me:

“From a nameless male author in 1860 being disturbed by women having to straddle a cello in order to play it to composer Gustave Kerker expressing his distaste for how certain instruments distorted female faces to critic George Upton writing in his book Woman in Music that women’s emotions made them great song interpreters (i.e., vocalists) but not great songwriters, men have continually tried to define what is appropriate for women to do in music.”

The level of interactivity of this project makes it especially engaging for narrating the story. While it is largely a linear experience, the final sections allow users to search all the data compiled. The creators share a breakdown of methodology and a link to the data sheet containing all the data.

I appreciate that, while the focus of this project is on lack of female representation in songwriting, non-binary identities were also included. It calls to mind themes presented in some of the readings on how one data set can highlight other facts or narratives within the data they you may not have been seeking. The creators of the piece took care to acknowledge that to the best of their abilities and with the data available, they aimed to accurately represent those who identify as non-binary. Pronoun specifications were not always present in the data available for song writer credits; so, they relied on how that writer seemed to identify themself in publications and platforms.

Like La Nacion, The Pudding works less like traditional news organizations. The lack of immediate urgency lends to the ability to create interesting pieces that can touch on data that may not seem as important in a current news cycle.

“The public” refers to a collective that can be grouped based on size, separations in region or borders, and by which institutions represent them. One can be “public” to a particular area, but maybe not to another. And those in these collectives are not all equally affected by the actions of individuals in the collective, but affected none the less. Cooperation and interaction are needed for survival in these collectives. In the modern world, this idea of “the public” includes online and virtual spaces.  

Of equal concern to my definition is that it provides acknowledgement to those existing in “the public” and being excluded from it. Common groups to think about are marginalized communities along the lines of race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. These are folks who are visibly in the public, but often not considered for a nuanced look at the question — “is this good for the public?” The notion of visibility and invisibly in “the public” extends beyond historically understood marginalization. “The public”, but also outside it: the poor, those limited in access to technology, those with disabilities or impairments, criminals, and may more. What role do visibility and invisibility play when discussing “the public”?  

“the public” shouldn’t separate who lives now and who will exist in the future. Those who follow inherit our resources (whatever is left) and the existing systems, such that they should be included in any discussion of “the public”.  

“the commons” is a tragedy, a solution, and a site for political and social contest. The tragedy and solution are linked in how my thoughts emerge on this topic. Fundamental difficulties in scaling the measures we know to work in maintaining commons rarely fit the needs of our modern world. They are applied in conditions with either private or public choices, inadequate regulations, and excessive reliance on technology, which can cause new problems. Dewey notes in The Public and Its Problems, “We have inherited, in short, local town-meeting practices and ideas. But we live and act and have our being in a continental national state.” (113) and “consequences of technology employed so as to facilitate the rapid and easy circulation of opinions and information, and so as to generate constant and intricate interaction far beyond the limits of face-to-face communities. Political and legal forms have only piece-meal and haltingly, with great lag, accommodated themselves to the industrial transformation. (114) This becomes more complex where resources are shared globally and, especially, where deciding on best practices is predicated on collective ability to understand the scale of an issue, detailed in Revisiting the Commons, “Management of these resources depends on the cooperation of appropriate international institutions and national, regional, and local institutions. Resources that are intrinsically difficult to measure or that require measurement with advanced technology, such as stocks of ocean fishes or petroleum reserves, are difficult to manage no matter what the scale of the resource.” ( Elinor Ostrom et al, 214).  

“the commons” as a site for political and social contest seems inextricably linked to ideals and actions proposed in The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. “The coalition unites us in the recognition that we must change things or die. All of us.” (10). What “the commons” looks like without political and social contest? This is difficult to imagine for someone born in the US, in the modern times. We are watching in real time what failing to allow space for “radical” and uncomfortable discussion in public forums has done to the planet and our societies. Embracing messy and unconventional methods for tacking our problems is worth it. Understanding the Undercommons and perspectives like it help to envision commons that are less prone to tragedy.