Other Activities

2019 - Invited talk co-presented with Yaso Córdova Date: Monday, February 4, 2019, 3:00pm to 4:00pm Location: 1 Brattle, Suite 470, Cambridge, MA. A conversation with digital HKS senior fellow, Yasodara Córdova, and Brazilian scholar and Ph.D. candidate, Sérgio Barbosa, on lessons learned from the use of WhatsApp during the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections. Before being used to share misinformation, WhatsApp, a tool that evokes trust and intimacy among Brazilian users, was used for civic engagement in the biggest strike Brazil has ever seen. What can we learn from these two very different use cases of WhatsApp? The "fake news" phenomenon poisoned the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections, following a worldwide trend. In Brazil, the misinformation campaigns took place mainly on WhatsApp, a tool that evokes trust and intimacy among users. Before being weaponized, the chat app was used for civic engagement in the biggest strike Brazil ever saw - and other occasions of collective resistance. What can we learn from the disparity between the episodes? How the tool can be explored as an asset for privacy-enabled conversations, and at the same time protect users from misinformation campaigns? What possibilities are being leveraged?

2019 - Invited talk: Whatsapp for activism and social mobilization Talk to Chat App Group Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University (January)

2019 - Voluntary Job - Data for Black Lives is a group of activists, organizers, and mathematicians committed to the mission of using data science to create concrete and measurable change in the lives of Black people. Since the advent of computing, big data and algorithms have penetrated virtually every aspect of our social and economic lives. These new data systems have tremendous potential to empower communities of color. Tools like statistical modeling, data visualization, and crowd-sourcing, in the right hands, are powerful instruments for fighting bias, building progressive movements, and promoting civic engagement. But history tells a different story, one in which data is too often wielded as an instrument of oppression, reinforcing inequality and perpetuating injustice. Redlining was a data-driven enterprise that resulted in the systematic exclusion of Black communities from key financial services. More recent trends like predictive policing, risk-based sentencing, and predatory lending are troubling variations on the same theme. Today, discrimination is a high-tech enterprise.

2018 - Guest participant - Digitalization and social life: Theories, concepts, methods Program for workshop in Trondheim, 13-14 December 2018 Workshop themes The focus for the workshop is the new wave of digitalization and how it challenges established theories and concepts and requires methodological and theoretical rethinking in the social sciences. The goal of the workshop is primarily to bring together researchers locally at NTNU and "nearby surroundings" interested in the topic of the interplay between digitalization and social life, share and exchange thoughts and research interests, and build a hub and a network for future activities and publications. Thursday will mainly be devoted to methodological questions while Friday will be devoted to theoretical questions and empirical case studies. Presentation: The WhatsAppers' turn: new challenges of digital life

2018 - Guest Participant - Social Theory and Methodology (STAM group): The STAM group is a joint forum for regular seminars and discussion related to social theory and methodology at ISS. It represents a venue for exchange, in which students and staff can become better informed about issues related to social and political theory, applied theory, and diverse methodological issues (concerning e.g., causation, ontology, and epistemology). As the research frontier unfolds across a future that is sure to include more and better data, not to mention new research questions and social challenges that we are today unable to imagine (let alone predict), there should be little doubt about the need to develop stronger deductive skills and the capacity for greater methodological reflection in our student body. Our ambition is that the STAM group can spotlight these shortcomings in a way that will allow us better equip the next generation of sociologists and political scientists with the appropriate epistemological tools. The STAM group is also the home of ongoing research projects with a more generic interest in theory and methodology development. This include Leiulfsrud and Sohlbergs NFR- project "Sociological Theory and Practice Revisited" (STPR) and Moses´ and colleagues project on "Big Data". To achieve the goals of a joint venue strengthening social theory and methodology, we envision the need for a plethora of instruments, including regular meetings, seminars, guest lectures and even new courses. Toward that end, we invite all willing hands-whether students or staff, female or male, young or old, sociologist, political scientist or sport scientist-to help in this development.

2018 - Selected participant - Workshop 'Big Data from the South: Towards a Research Agenda', Amsterdam, December 4-5 The workshop builds on the work of DATACTIVE and the Data Justice Lab in thinking the relation between data, citizenship and participation, but goes beyond engaging with a much needed debate at the intersection of feminist theory, critical theory, and decolonial thinking, which, 'thinking in radical exteriority' (Vallega, 2015, p. x), interrogates the coloniality of power. It intends to contribute also to the ongoing epistemological repositioning of the humanities and the social sciences in light of the raising inequality. We depart from the observation that, 'while the majority of the world's population resides outside the West, we continue to frame key debates on democracy and surveillance-and the associated demands for alternative models and practices-by means of Western concerns, contexts, user behavior patterns, and theories' (Milan and Treré, 2017) . If on the one hand, 'we need concerted and sustained scholarship on the role and impact of big data on the Global South' (Arora, 2015, p. 1693), on the other 'new' theory and 'new' understandings are key, as 'if the injustices of the past continue into the present and are in need of repair (and reparation), that reparative work must also be extended to the disciplinary structure that obscure as much as illuminate the path ahead' (Bhambra & De Sousa Santos, 2017, p. 9). Thus, this event will be a stepping stone towards rethinking the sociotechnical dynamics of datafication in light of 'the historical processes of dispossession, enslavement, appropriation and extraction […] central to the emergence of the modern world' (Ibid).But what South are we referring to? First, our definition of 'South' is a flexible and expansive one, inspired to the writings of globalization sociologist Boaventura De Sousa Santos (2014) who is at the forefront of the reflection on the emergence and the urgency of epistemologies from the South against the 'epistemicide' of neoliberalism. Including but also going beyond the geographical South and emphasising the plurality of the South(s), our South is a place for and a metaphor of resistance, subversion, and creativity . Secondly, our notion emerges in dialectic interaction with the continuous critical interrogating and situating of our privilege as Western academics vs. the imperative to do 'nothing about them without them' (see Milan and Treré, 2017).

2017 - Selected participant - The DANDELION workshop was held on 31st of October, 2017 in Lisbon, as a side event of the Net4Society conference "Democracy and Europe. Our Common Future?". The workshop brought together 28 SSH researchers, research managers and dissemination/impact managers from all over Europe. All participants engaged in active discussions in order to generate insights for the everyday practice of SSH research, and help demonstrate and enhance its unique value. In the first session the participants shared experiences from their work/projects about dissemination, communication, and transfer activities that have created or have the potential to create impact. During the second session the shared examples were assessed according to their ripeness or readiness to deliver impact using the Impact Readiness Level flow model. The plenary session aggregated the results of the previous discussions held in tables. The main takeaways from the workshop are: Early involvement of stakeholders, e.g. already in the problem defining stage and throughout the project is crucial for achieving higher readiness to deliver impact. Lower stages of readiness to deliver impact are perceived in projects where the activities are limited only to the target group or countries involved in the project. In order to aspire for higher stages (5 and 6 of the IRL Model), there would need to be a replicable model, that could also be used by other organisations/countries/target groups. Sometimes impact may arise unexpectedly. Accidental impacts, similarly with the innovation process, might happen and this indicates that impact does not have to be intended and carefully planned all the time. However, in most cases planning from the early stages is useful, in order to elucidate the specific Value Chain of the project and which stakeholders, at which stage, and what are they important for. Important for impact achievement is sound awareness of the set goal of each research activity. If the conscious objective of the project is to achieve specific impacts, e.g. around the stages 3 or 4, then it should be evaluated according to those set objectives.

2014 - Award: Honorable Mention at the 20th Scientific Initiation Congress of UNB and 11th Congress of Scientific Initiation of the DF (2014), Deanery of Research and Graduate Studies at the University of Brasilia.

2012 - 2013 - Supported activities in the process of studies and research, such as research planning, scope determination, identification of the most appropriate methodology and target public for the traditional people and communities.

2011 - 2012 - Supported in bilingual articulations, translated official documents, reports, and produced assembly and crafts related to the administration of Justice Ministry