This paper thus aims to contribute to media, communication, and digital technology studies by proposing a more systematic conceptualization of digital resistance. While the notion of resistance in relation to technology is often connoted negatively and associated the rejection of innovation of change, our approach to digital resistance takes here a new meaning: political and critical. Indeed, the notion of digital resistance is often used in academia and public discourse to describe practices of using, subverting, and creating technologies, usually in a progressive and anti-oppressive perspective (Russell, 2005).

However, the term is still relatively undefined, and many practices could be categorized as digital resistance if the term was better defined. We propose in this paper a preliminary but formal conceptualization of digital resistance. Our theorization takes place in the context of a research project on the cartography of digital resistance. Different data collection and analysis activities will be implemented to have a wide and panoramic empirical view of the phenomenon of digital resistance. In this project, the cartographic approach takes on a dual meaning, namely a broad and systematic description of a phenomenon, and the implementation of an original digital device allowing its visualization and potentially participatory enrichment. Our preliminary empirical mapping identified six dimensions to analyze digital resistance that we will present in this paper.

Over the last two decades quantitative data representation has moved from a specialization of the sciences, economics, and statistics, to becoming commonplace in settings of democratic governance and community decision making. The dominant norms of those fields of origin are not connected to the governance and activism settings data is now used in, where practices emphasize empowerment, efficacy, and engagement. This has created ongoing harms and exclusion in a variety of well-documented settings. In this paper I critique the singular way of knowing embodied and charts and graphs, and apply the theories of epistemological pluralism and extended epistemology to argue for a larger toolbox of data representation. Through three concrete case studies of data representations created by activists I argue that social justice movements can embrace a broader set of approaches, practicing creative data representation as epistemological resistance. Through learning from these ongoing examples the fields of data literacy, open data, and data visualization can help create a broader toolbox for data representation. This is necessary to create a pluralistic practice of bringing people together around data in social justice settings.

Amidst calls for public accountability over large data-driven systems, feminist and indigenous scholars have developed refusal as a practice that challenges the authority of data collectors. However, because data affects so many aspects of daily life, it can be hard to see seemingly different refusal strategies as part of the same repertoire. Furthermore, conversations about refusal often happen from the standpoint of designers and policymakers rather than the people and communities most affected by data collection. In this paper, we introduce a framework for data refusal from below—writing from the standpoint of people who refuse, rather than the institutions that seek their compliance. We characterize refusal strategies across four constituent facets common to all refusal, whatever tactics are used: autonomy, or how refusal accounts for individual and collective interests; time, or whether refusal reacts to past harm or proactively prevents future harm; power, or the extent to which refusal makes change possible; and cost, or whether or not refusal can reduce or redistribute penalties experienced by refusers. We illustrate each facet by drawing on cases of people and collectives that have refused data systems. Together, the four facets of our framework are designed to help scholars and activists describe, evaluate, and imagine new forms of refusal.

The essay brings together Black feminist theory, critical disability studies, and feminist science and technology studies together through the concept of technological practices of refusal. The concept of technological practices of refusal describes how disabled people engage in everyday, often communal technological practices as means to challenge normative logics and engage in collective world-making practices toward collective liberation and societal transformation. Technological practices of refusal extends Schalk & Kim’s (2020) feminist-of-color disability studies and Campt's (2017) practices of refusal to highlight the interrelations between ableism and white supremacy and the ways in which systems of domination operate to dehumanize individuals based on deviations from white supremacist configurations of race, class, gender and ability. The concept therefore not only underscores how disabled people reimagine and enact new social formations despite the foreclosure of subjectivity and futurity, but maps out new points of affinity for solidarity and collective action.