Abstract

Every day, people use a range of information discovery and access systems to locate, collate, and understand information. These tools in turn shape their users’ understanding of the information space, and through it the world and society they inhabit. Information discovery has profound possibilities for connecting people with information, products, culture, and people they wouldn’t encounter in other ways, but can also reproduce a range of harms including discrimination, negative or unnecessary stereotypes, information silos, and more. I am concerned with ensuring these systems and their effects are beneficial: that their benefits are available to everyone, they are built on and with principles upholding human rights and dignity, and they are accountable to the people they will impact.

In this talk, I will discuss efforts to map the landscape of social impacts and harms and to achieve the positive promise of effective and equitable information access and discovery, with a particular emphasis on developing constructs and measurements to assess the extent to which information access systems advance or impede efforts to build inclusive, equitable, and democratic societies.