Did you know that the algorithms that fuel AI and Search engines like Google aren’t neutral, benign, or objective? Quite the contrary! Algorithms have biases and often reinforce existing systemic biases and social inequalities. For example, Search is a commercial enterprise built on the same cultural practices and information systems that promote racism and sexism. In this course, we will analyze the impact of algorithmic bias on historically marginalized populations. 

We will also examine how digital technologies reconfigure and mediate everyday global geographies and how they can be used to make sense of them. We will consider the implication of digital technologies in exclusion, surveillance, and dispossession processes. We will pay special attention to how counter-technologies are used by Black communities across the world in the service of social justice. Specifically, how social media can be used to build social movements (#BlackLivesMatter, #Ferguson, #ICantBreath) and how digital technologies are harnessed towards radical ends, including but not limited to counter-mapping, GIS, immersive virtual reality, sousveillance digital projects, hacking, and forms of insurgent digital curation. 

We will explore these topics by engaging in hands-on activities, and reading, watching, and listening to relevant literature, videos, and podcasts/guest speakers.

This course is team-taught by a group of instructors, including:

https://aes.washington.edu/people/lashawnda-pittman

https://geography.washington.edu/people/chrystel-oloukoi

https://soc.washington.edu/people/jelani-ince