top of page

Guest Lecture by Gabriel Grill: The Politics of Protest and Labor Strike Prediction Technologies


Event location

Oslo Metropolitan University

Pilestredet Campus

Pilestredet 35, Ellen Gleditschs hus, 2nd floor, Oslo


Date/Time

22 August 2022

15:00 to 17:00


Please, register here


The Politics of Protest and Labor Strike Prediction Technologies in Supply Chain Management and Beyond


The availability of online publicly accessible data sources, such as social media, news articles, and other sensor data, has motivated governments, corporations, and other organizations to invest in algorithmic risk assessment tools to detect and anticipate unrest such as protests and labor strikes. Their stated goal is to more effectively minimize possible negative impacts and disruptions due to unrest activity. These systems raise serious concerns for human rights, surveillance, and the future of democratic participation and labor organizing.


In this talk, Grill discuss affordances and promises of such civil unrest risk assessment and prediction technologies by conducting a socio-technical analysis of discourse, methods, and different types of data in this area with a focus on supply chain risk management. The analysis draws on data science research papers and other relevant public materials detailing different aspects of such systems. His analysis ultimately highlights a need for resistance and regulation centered on global worker rights across supply chains.


***

Gabriel Grill is a PhD candidate in Information at the University of Michigan with a focus on science and technology studies and affiliated with the Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing (ESC), the Infrastructure Lab, and the Tech.Culture.Matters. research collective. His research interests revolve around the social study of algorithms and performance measures in supply chain management, risk assessment, and platform governance. He has published articles examining social and political aspects of algorithmic systems such as on protest and labor strike risk assessment, content moderation, unemployed profiling in public welfare, and emotion recognition on social media. His work has been cited in policy documents in the EU, by NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and CoWorker.org, and referenced by media outlets in Austria, Australia, Germany, and the UK. He uses qualitative methods informed by sensibilities from feminist science and technology studies and infrastructure studies combined with technical expertise in computer science gained from his prior studies at the Vienna University of Technology.


This lecture is a part of the research project Digital Prism and the Nordic Model of Workplace Democracy under Pressure (DigiWORK), wich is financed by The Research Council of Norway.



Comments


bottom of page