Information Access of the Oppressed: A Problem-Posing Framework for Envisioning Emancipatory Information Access Platforms

TL;DR

This paper proposes a Freirean-inspired framework for designing online information access platforms that empower marginalized communities and resist authoritarian control, emphasizing co-creation and structural exposure.

Contribution

It introduces Freirean Design (FD), a novel approach for participatory platform development that challenges technologist-user dichotomies and promotes emancipatory outcomes.

Findings

Develops a problem-posing method for envisioning emancipatory IA platforms

Critiques current sociotechnical fairness frameworks from a Freirean perspective

Proposes structural exposure and co-construction as key design principles

Abstract

Online information access (IA) platforms are targets of authoritarian capture. We explore the question of how to safeguard our platforms while ensuring emancipatory outcomes through the lens of Paulo Freire's theories of emancipatory pedagogy. Freire's theories provide a radically different lens for exploring IA's sociotechnical concerns relative to the current dominating frames of fairness, accountability, confidentiality, transparency, and safety. We make explicit, with the intention to challenge, the technologist-user dichotomy in IA platform development that mirrors the teacher-student relationship in Freire's analysis. By extending Freire's analysis to IA, we challenge the technologists-as-liberator frame where it is the burden of (altruistic) technologists to mitigate the risks of emerging technologies for marginalized communities. Instead, we advocate for Freirean Design (FD) whose goal is to structurally expose the platform for co-option and co-construction by community members in aid of their emancipatory struggles. Further, we employ Freire's problem-posing approach within this framework to develop a method to envision future emancipatory IA platforms.