ABSTRACT
This chapter explores grassroots data activism that is emerging with the growing centrality of social media platforms and electronically mediated finance in everyday life. It explores new opportunities that the data practices from the margins offer for collaborative and sustainable data governance. While the era of Big Data and machine learning brings along fundamental changes in how knowledge is produced and governance enacted, the increasingly opaque data use by corporate and state actors can undermine accountability and civil liberties. These inequalities are particularly pronounced in the Global South. The chapter suggests a focus on grassroots practices of data activism and the ways that they affect knowledge-making processes around data rights, data commons, and data privacy. Drawing on empirical examples from Africa, Latin America, and disadvantaged communities in the United States, the chapter offers pluriversal perspectives into the study of grassroots data activism and its role in polycentric data governance.
