Ethics in Data Science: Digital Manipulation and Domination

Join us as Shanon Brick, Georgetown University, gives a talk on whether concerns about digital manipulation are often concerns about our vulnerability to domination.

Abstract

This talk considers whether concerns about digital manipulation are often concerns about our vulnerability to domination. It has two main parts. The first part motivates the claim that, when responding to concerns about digital manipulation, we should avoid centering potential harms to personal autonomy. The second part considers whether republican political theory can provide a suitable alternative for illuminating, and substantiating, concerns about digital manipulation. It’s argued that to the extent that they focus on targeted advertising, existing attempts to use republicanism to answer normative questions about digital manipulation face serious limits. Nonetheless, republicanism might still be able illuminate problems with digital manipulation, so long as one focuses on features of the data economy that extend beyond targeted ads. The fan of republicanism—at least the brand of republicanism associated with Philip Pettit—can and should argue that autonomy-preserving digital manipulation is a form of influence that reveals the extent to which we are vulnerable to individualized coercive powers that are dominating.

Shannon Brick is a philosopher working primarily on issues at the intersection of ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of technology and art. She is assistant teaching professor of Communications, Culture and Technology at Georgetown University.