Imagining possible futures in Jyväskylä

The three-day conference (17th-19th of June) Imagining possible futures 2024: Multidisciplinary engagements with access, agency and participation at Jyväskylä went fast and left us with many things to think about. The conference was organized by the University of Jyväskylä and included a multidisciplinary program with theoretical, empirical and practical contributions. The underlying theme was the idea that the future is not fixed and that many futures are created at micro and macro levels. Issues about multiliteracies, data literacies, datafication, communication, media, culture and human-computer interaction were discussed from a critical perspective that questioned who has the right and power to imagine and forge their futures and how to shake structures to create space for hope.

Kaarina Nikunen (professor at Tampere University, Finland) and Luci Pangrazio (research fellow at Deakin University, Australia) gave inspiring keynote speeches resonating with the issues explored at Critical DataLit. Kaarina’s presentation on Matters of Solidarity: Trials, errors, and re-imaginations of public good tackled the question of how to imagine social justice in the current world of uncertainties. She elaborated on this question through examples based on her own research, connecting her insights to broader issues on democracy in technological systems. Luci’s keynote on (Re)imagining different data futures discussed emerging issues with datafied systems, showcasing how visual art can be a powerful strategy to defamiliarize, problematize and reimagine our relationship to digital technologies. She argued the importance of fostering data literacies using a critical perspective to address issues of data justice and privacy, algorithmic bias, dataveillance, and disinformation. In her closing arguments, she called for adopting a literacies approach to digital technologies, looking at them as texts that can be deconstructed, critically evaluated and, most importantly, reimagined. It was a pleasure to listen and discuss with Luci face-to-face. Hopefully, these conversations can be continued online since Luci is part of the amazing group of Critical DataLit collaborators!

The conference also gave us the opportunity to share Critical DataLit work and discuss it with the academic community. At the workshop Futures Thinking Meets Computational Empowerment: Imagining Data Empowerment, Najme Babai presented her doctoral research and invited participants to envision how empowerment would look like in the context of datafied systems.

Critical DataLit was also present at the symposium Connecting the dots towards possible futures: Exploring levels of data literacy. The session was organized by Lauri Palsa and Pekka Mertala and included presentations from several projects led by researchers from the University of Jyväskylä, University of Oulu and University of Helsinki focusing on data literacy from various perspectives (MODALITY, CriticalDataLit and DataLit). Big thanks to Lauri Palsa, Pekka Mertala, Janne Fagerlund and Karoliina Snell for the insightful discussion!