Advocacy in Technology and Society

a Living Syllabus Project

Introduction

2020 brought the inequality across society into sharper focus. COVID-19 spread across the world highlighting the inequities of disproportionate impact, response, and community preparedness. Starting in the United States, and echoed across the world, protests for racial justice and continued action for Black lives was newly galvanized across sectors of society. Economic strains and widespread unemployment raised awareness of widening wealth inequality in the US, adding new dimension to old debate about social protection and safety nets. Additionally, with most of the workforce working remotely from their homes, dependency on technology infrastructure emerged almost overnight, illuminating access disparity and the "digital divide". 2020 called for reflection and action at the intersections of social life, with technology playing a critical role in how information is consumed, produced, distributed, and controlled in the modern age.

This course is designed to build a critical foundation for understanding the role technology plays in social welfare and social change and the important role of advocates in this space. Beginning with a foundational history, this course will set the stage for the rapid technology development in the 21st century and prepares learners to actively interrogate, question, critique, and evaluate the emerging technologies.

This course considers technology and data-based systems in a social welfare context in the following ways:

How can advocates use technology and a data-based practice to further their advocacy efforts?
How are current and emergent technologies challenging the work, creating new barriers and harms, and how can social workers be more engaged advocates in the pursuit of better, fairer, and more just technology?

This course will provide an overview of the role that technology plays in civic engagement and social movements in the digital age, in the United States, and globally. Students will develop the ability to critically analyze technology tools in a social welfare context and make recommendations for fairer, more just tech. Students will contribute content and help build and shape an open knowledge platform through ‘a living syllabus’

Learning Objectives

Through this course, students will be able to :

Describe advocacy in a digital context
Identify the different stakeholders who affect and are affected by emerging technology
Articulate the role of advocates in technology development and technology in social welfare context
Identify current technology tools (apps, platforms, and movements) and the scope of their use
Analyze the social effects of emerging technologies (e.g. discriminatory algorithms, digital marginalization, access issues)
Evaluate a current tech of their choosing (ie. an app/platform/movement) from a social work framework, identifying the technology used, the challenges and social impact from the perspective of the different stakeholder groups, and identify how the technology might oppress or empower individuals or groups
Apply a critical analysis of power, oppression, racism, and privilege to emerging technologies
Contribute to open access, common knowledge platforms, build a ‘social workers in tech’ context


Module	Topic	Description
1	Digital landscape and Open Access
2	Who's Online? Imagining the next 30 years of the Internet	This module gives an overview of internet usage in the present day and discusses the immediate future of the internet and internet access.
3	Social Work + Technology	This module explores the advocacy social workers can do with technology in mind; creating new technology tools, advocating for vulnerable populations affected by technology, and how to create a more fair and just use of technology in the world.
4	Emerging Tech - Identifying the Stakeholders	This module prompts social workers to gain a deeper understanding of the extent to which emerging technologies are impacting individuals on a micro, mezzo, and macro level. This module explores how the process of identifying stakeholders can lead to a greater understanding of the impact of emerging technologies on the well-being of communities while highlighting the areas in which social workers can intervene.
5	Community Data and COVID-19	This module highlights community data initiatives that were used to illustrate the devastating impacts of COVID-19 on different communities, while challenging the lack of equity and intersectionality in how data is captured. This module also explores disinformation concerns during the pandemic, and how we can minimize the collection of personal data while managing public health.
6	Building Informed Critique	This module explores the risk of clicking through without consideration of how information is shared, stored, and sold.
7	Social Work Futures	This module focuses on the intersections of social work and technology in an innovative manner.
8	Design Justice + Creative Media	This module seeks to question society's norms, values, assumptions and how they are encoded in and reproduced through the design of sociotechnical data-driven systems The module will explore innovative community-based organizations that seek through technology to dismantle a matrix of domination (white supremacist heteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and settler colonialism) and bring marginalized communities to the forefront in technology.
9	Civic and GovTech, Regulation in the time of Big Tech	This module gives an analytic review of the relationship between people and government through the use of different techniques. This includes communication, service delivery, decision-making, and general politics. It also delves into how technology can be controlled in the time of big techs.
10	Social Media, VR + the metaverse
11	Tech and Data-based advocacy outside of the US context	This module solicits input from advocates who work outside of the United States context. Centered around two central questions, contributors provide insight from their experience on the following: What are the biggest opportunities you see for using technology to further your advocacy efforts? What are the biggest challenges and/or barriers you face in using technology to further your advocacy efforts?
	Resources

Course Content Development

The course content was developed by Jaclyn Sawyer and was taught synchronously at Columbia University, School of Social Work (Spring 2022).

Contributors

The students in this class contributed to each module by summarizing, synthesizing, critiquing, and adding their perspective to the material and building a "living syllabus".