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Opening Keynote: Safiya Noble

Opening Keynote: Safiya Noble

Toward an Ethic of Social Justice in Information

The landscape of information is rapidly shifting as new imperatives and demands push to the fore increasing investment in digital technologies. Yet, critical information scholars continue to demonstrate how digital technology and its narratives are shaped by and infused with values that are not impartial, disembodied, or lacking positionality. Technologies consist of a set of social practices, situated within the dynamics of race, gender, class, and politics, and in the service of something — a position, a profit motive, a means to an end. In this talk, Safiya Umoja Noble will discuss the importance of the academic-activist library community to offer models of intervention and resistance through research, practice and teaching. Her research examines the linkages to power struggles over representation on the web and in the digital library, and the consequences of marginalization and misrepresentation in commercial information platforms like Google search.