Developing a Case for Long Term Partnerships Between New Media Makers and Social Justice Practitioners
NIKKI ZEICHNER (New York University, Polytechnic School of Engineering)
There is a long history of new media artists using technology to expose ways that dominant power structures marginalize particular communities. However, there is a limit to how they can do this without expertise from those in the field. Likewise, mainstream social change organizations now incorporate technology (“gamification,” “hackathons”) into their campaigns but these efforts are often superficial. I’d like to make the case that more meaningful, long-term relationships between issue experts and new media technologists will in the end produce the most compelling support for interests of marginalized communities. I am proposing to present my experience developing the Parole Hearing Data Project to discuss the process of relationship building in this context and my plans for its future in order to demonstrate how legal practitioners and technologists can partner to tell new, deeper narratives about marginalized social issues.