A Blueprint for Data Justice
Working toward a research-backed framework for inclusive, open, and respectful online spaces that prioritizes human rights and media pluralism over speculative profit.
1. Epistemic Justice
Decolonizing research and theory to include the Global Majority World’s knowledge. Research must move beyond Eurocentric biases to value diverse social and cultural perspectives (Nieminen, 2024).
2. Meaningful Transparency
Moving beyond corporate transparency reports to provide granular, auditable data access for independent researchers and civil society organizations (Radsch, 2023a).
3. Public Sovereignty
Building public data infrastructures and resources to reduce dependence on Big Tech's proprietary layers, especially in the Global Majority World.
4. Fair AI Labor
Addressing “workforce extractivism” and protecting the rights of low-wage ghost workers involved in training and labeling AI models (Fendji, 2024).
5. Radical Resistance
Treating data governance as a lever for restructuring markets and tackling concentrations of wealth that jeopardize international solidarity and democratic stability.
6. Sustained Pluralism
Decoupling journalism from platform dependency by securing long-term, independent financing for a viable public service media industry globally.
7. Algorithmic Auditing
Establishing inclusive, multi-stakeholder processes to monitor the whole lifecycle of AI development and deployment for discriminatory biases.
8. Collective Interests
Shifting from individualistic privacy claims toward the protection of population-level social informational harms and common goods.
Case Study: The Failure of Self-Regulation
In January 2025, Meta (Mark Zuckerberg) announced a shift toward less intervention, abandoning independent content fact-checking in the name of “promoting debate.” This policy shift highlights the inherent flaw in self-regulatory models: they remain prone to corporate arbitrary changes that weaken the integrity of information whenever profit or political pressure dictates (Chow, 2025).
The Path Forward
"Addressing exploitative datafication depends on protecting collective interests in democracy. This means treating data governance as a lever for restructuring markets and tackling concentrations of wealth that jeopardize international solidarity."
— Strategic Vision (Mansell et al., 2025)