Abstract
In this paper, we present the results of a study that examines the role of data in nonprofit advocacy work. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 individuals who play critical roles in the data work of 18 different advocacy organizations. Our analysis reveals five key stakeholders in advocacy data work-beneficiaries, policymakers, funding and partner organizations, gatekeepers, and local publics. It also contributes a framework of four functions of data work in nonprofit organizations-data as amplifier, activator, legitimizer, and incubator. We characterize the challenges in data work that exist, particularly in widespread attempts to reappropriate data work across functions. These challenges in reappropriation are often rooted in participants' effects to enact data feminist principles from the margins of the data economy. Finally, we discuss how nonprofit institutions operate outside of the dominant data work goals known as the three Ss (surveillance, selling, and science) and propose a fourth S, social good, that is working to challenge the norms of the data economy and should be considered in research regarding the data economy moving forward.
- Adriana Alvarado Garcia, Alyson L Young, and Lynn Dombrowski. 2017. On making data actionable: How activists use imperfect data to foster social change for human rights violations in Mexico. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 1, CSCW (2017), 1--19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3134654Google ScholarDigital Library
- Arjun Appadurai. 2006. Fear of small numbers. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, USA.Google Scholar
- Elliot Aronson and Shelley Patnoe. 2010. Cooperation in the classroom: The jigsaw method. Pinter & Martin, London, UK.Google Scholar
- Mariam Asad and Christopher A Le Dantec. 2019. This Is Shared Work:" Negotiating Boundaries in a Social Service Intermediary Organization. Media and Communication, Vol. 7, 3 (2019), 69--78.Google Scholar
- Jo Bates, Yu-Wei Lin, and Paula Goodale. 2016. Data journeys: Capturing the socio-material constitution of data objects and flows. Big Data & Society, Vol. 3, 2 (July--December 2016), 1--12. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716654502Google ScholarCross Ref
- Abigail Baum. 2015. Expanding Audience and Impact: Nonprofits Communicating Data to External Audiences. Urban Institute. http://urbn.is/2eiR2OjGoogle Scholar
- Lehn M Benjamin. 2008. Account space: How accountability requirements shape nonprofit practice. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Vol. 37, 2 (2008), 201--223.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Lehn M Benjamin. 2021. Bringing Beneficiaries More Centrally Into Nonprofit Management Education and Research. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Vol. 50, 1 (2021), 5--26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764020918662Google ScholarCross Ref
- Lehn M Benjamin and David C Campbell. 2014. Programs aren't everything. Stanford Social Innovation Review, Vol. 12, 2 (2014), 42--47. https://doi.org/10.48558/G0EC-AN20Google ScholarCross Ref
- Lehn M Benjamin, Amy Voida, and Chris Bopp. 2018. Policy fields, data systems, and the performance of nonprofit human service organizations. Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, Vol. 42, 2 (2018), 185--204. https://doi.org/10.1080/23303131.2017.1422072Google ScholarCross Ref
- Ruha Benjamin. 2019. Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new Jim Code. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK.Google Scholar
- Kati Tusinski Berg. 2009. Finding connections between lobbying, public relations and advocacy. Public Relations Journal, Vol. 3, 3 (2009), 19 pages. https://prjournal.instituteforpr.org/wp-content/uploads/Finding-Connections.pdfGoogle Scholar
- Chris Bopp. 2019. Doing "Good" with Data? Understanding and Working Around Data Doubles in Human Services Organizations. In Companion Publication of the 2019 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW '19). ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 33--37. https://doi.org/10.1145/3311957.3361850Google ScholarDigital Library
- Chris Bopp, Ellie Harmon, and Amy Voida. 2017. Disempowered by data: Nonprofits, social enterprises, and the consequences of data-driven work. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI '17). ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 3608--3619. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025694Google ScholarDigital Library
- GC Bowker and Lisa Gitelman. 2013. Raw Data" Is an Oxymoron.Google Scholar
- Paul Brest. 2020. 16. The Outcomes Movement in Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Sector. In The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook 3rd ed.), Walter W. Powell and Patricia Bromley (Eds.). Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, USA, 381--408.Google Scholar
- Simone Browne. 2015. Dark Matters. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, USA.Google Scholar
- Sarah Carnochan, Mark Samples, Michael Myers, and Michael J Austin. 2014. Performance measurement challenges in nonprofit human service organizations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Vol. 43, 6 (2014), 1014--1032. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764013508009Google ScholarCross Ref
- Juliet Corbin and Anselm Strauss. 2015. Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory 4th ed.). Sage Publications, Los Angeles, CA, USA.Google Scholar
- Daniel Cressey. 2015. UK funders demand strong statistics for animal studies. Nature, Vol. 520 (2015), 271--272. https://doi.org/10.1038/520271aGoogle ScholarCross Ref
- Jones Deondre. 2019. National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities Classification Code. Urban Institute. https://nccs.urban.org/project/national-taxonomy-exempt-entities-ntee-codesGoogle Scholar
- Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein. 2020. Seven intersectional feminist principles for equitable and actionable COVID-19 data. Big data & society, Vol. 7, 2 (July--December 2020), 1--6. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951720942544Google ScholarCross Ref
- Catherine D'ignazio and Lauren F Klein. 2020. Data Feminism. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA.Google Scholar
- Lynn Dombrowski, Amy Voida, Gillian R Hayes, and Melissa Mazmanian. 2012. The labor practices of service mediation: a study of the work practices of food assistance outreach. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). ACM Press, Neew York, NY, USA, 1977--1986. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2208342Google ScholarDigital Library
- Rodriguez Dylan, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Robert Allen, Christine Ahn, Tiffany Lethabo King, Equare Osayande, Amara Perez, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Stephanie Guilloud, WIlliam Cordery, and et al. 2017. The revolution will not be funded beyond the non-profit industrial complex. Duke University Press.Google Scholar
- Ruth Edgett. 2002. Toward an ethical framework for advocacy in public relations. Journal of Public Relations Research, Vol. 14, 1 (2002), 1--26. https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532754XJPRR1401_1Google ScholarCross Ref
- Robert M Entman. 1993. Framing: Towards clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Commiunication, Vol. 43, 4 (Dec. 1993), 51--58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460--2466.1993.tb01304.xGoogle ScholarCross Ref
- Steven Epstein. 1998. Impure science: AIDS, activism, and the politics of knowledge. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, USA.Google Scholar
- Sheena Erete, Emily Ryou, Geoff Smith, Khristina Marie Fassett, and Sarah Duda. 2016. Storytelling with data: Examining the use of data by non-profit organizations. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM conference on Computer-Supported cooperative work & social computing (CSCW '16). ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 1273--1283. https://doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2820068Google ScholarDigital Library
- Peter Frumkin. 2009. On Being Nonprofit. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA.Google Scholar
- Brent Goldfarb. 2008. The effect of government contracting on academic research: Does the source of funding affect scientific output? Research Policy, Vol. 37, 1 (2008), 41--58.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Lauren Guggenheim, S Mo Jang, Soo Young Bae, and W Russell Neuman. 2015. The dynamics of issue frame competition in traditional and social media. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 659, 1 (2015), 207--224. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716215570549Google ScholarCross Ref
- Chao Guo and Gregory D Saxton. 2014. Tweeting social change: How social media are changing nonprofit advocacy. Nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, Vol. 43, 1 (2014), 57--79. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764012471585Google ScholarCross Ref
- Ron Haskins and Jon Baron. 2011. Building the Connection between Policy and Evidence: The Obama Evidence-Based Initiatives. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/research/building-the-connection-between-policy-and-evidence-the-obama-evidence-based-initiatives/Google Scholar
- Sun-ha Hong. 2020. Fuck Your Feelings: The Affective Weaponisation of Facts and Reason. In Affective Politics of Digital Media: Propaganda by Other Means, Megan Boler and Elizabeth Davis (Eds.). Routledge, New York, NY, USA, 86--100. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003052272Google ScholarCross Ref
- INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. 2017. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, USA.Google Scholar
- S Mo Jang and P Sol Hart. 2015. Polarized frames on climate change" and global warming" across countries and states: Evidence from Twitter big data. Global Environmental Change, Vol. 32 (2015), 11--17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.02.010Google ScholarCross Ref
- Naveena Karusala, Jennifer Wilson, Phebe Vayanos, and Eric Rice. 2019. Street-Level Realities of Data Practices in Homeless Services Provision. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, CSCW, Article 184 (2019), 23 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359286Google ScholarDigital Library
- Charles Kenny and Tanvi Jaluka. 2018. Assessing the gender gap at nonprofits in global development. Center For Global Development. https://www.cgdev.org/blog/assessing-gender-gap-nonprofits-global-developmentGoogle Scholar
- Vera Khovanskaya and Phoebe Sengers. 2019. Data Rhetoric and Uneasy Alliances: Data Advocacy in US Labor History. In Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '19). ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 1391--1403. https://doi.org/10.1145/3322276.3323691Google ScholarDigital Library
- Andrei P Kirilenko and Svetlana O Stepchenkova. 2014. Public microblogging on climate change: One year of Twitter worldwide. Global environmental change, Vol. 26 (2014), 171--182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.02.008Google ScholarCross Ref
- Klaus Krippendorff. 2018. Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology 4th ed.). Sage Publications, Los Angeles, CA, USA.Google Scholar
- Christopher A Le Dantec and W Keith Edwards. 2010. Across boundaries of influence and accountability: The multiple scales of public sector information systems. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10). ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 113--122. https://doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753345Google ScholarDigital Library
- Marion Lean. 2021. Materialising Data Feminism -- How Textile Designers Are Using Materials to Explore Data Experience. Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice, Vol. 9, 2 (2021), 184--209. https://doi.org/10.1080/20511787.2021.1928987Google ScholarCross Ref
- Susan Leavy, Barry O'Sullivan, and Eugenia Siapera. 2020. Data, Power and Bias in Artificial Intelligence. arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.07341 (2020).Google Scholar
- Yvonna S Lincoln and Egon G Guba. 1985. Naturalistic Inquiry. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, USA.Google Scholar
- Dyana P Mason. 2015. Advocacy in nonprofit organizations: A leadership perspective. Nonprofit Policy Forum, Vol. 6, 3 (2015), 297--324. https://doi.org/10.1515/npf-2014-0036Google ScholarCross Ref
- Dyana P Mason. 2017. Yes, You Can--and Should! Nonprofit Advocacy as a Core Competency. Nonprofit Quarterly (Nov. 2017). https://nonprofitquarterly.org/yes-can-nonprofit-advocacy-core-competency/Google Scholar
- Nan L Maxwell, Dana Rotz, and Christina Garcia. 2016. Data and decision making: Same organization, different perceptions; different organizations, different perceptions. American Journal of Evaluation, Vol. 37, 4 (2016), 463--485. https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214015623634Google ScholarCross Ref
- Cecelia Merkel, Umer Farooq, Lu Xiao, Craig Ganoe, Mary Beth Rosson, and John M Carroll. 2007. Managing technology use and learning in nonprofit community organizations: Methodological challenges and opportunities. In Proceedings of the 2007 Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for the Management of Information Technology (CHIMIT '07). ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 8--es. https://doi.org/10.1145/1234772.1234783Google ScholarDigital Library
- C Thi Nguyen. 2020. Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Episteme, Vol. 17, 2 (2020), 141--161. https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2018.32Google ScholarCross Ref
- Jonathan A Obar, Paul Zube, and Clifford Lampe. 2012. Advocacy 2.0: An analysis of how advocacy groups in the United States perceive and use social media as tools for facilitating civic engagement and collective action. Journal of Information Policy, Vol. 2 (2012), 1--25. https://doi.org/10.5325/jinfopoli.2.2012.0001Google ScholarCross Ref
- Kathleen H Pine and Max Liboiron. 2015. The politics of measurement and action. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 3147--3156. https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702298Google ScholarDigital Library
- Theodore M Porter. 2020. Trust in Numbers. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA.Google Scholar
- Aruna Ranganathan and Alan Benson. 2020. A numbers game: Quantification of work, auto-gamification, and worker productivity. American Sociological Review, Vol. 85, 4 (2020), 573--609. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122420936665Google ScholarCross Ref
- David O Renz. 2016. The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, USA.Google Scholar
- Jennifer Ceema Samimi. 2010. Funding America's nonprofits: The nonprofit industrial complex's hold on social justice. (2010).Google Scholar
- James D Savage. 2000. Funding science in America: Congress, universities, and the politics of the academic pork barrel. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
- Dietram A Scheufele. 1999. Framing as a theory of media effects. Journal of communication, Vol. 49, 1 (1999), 103--122. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460--2466.1999.tb02784.xGoogle ScholarCross Ref
- Jonathon P Schuldt, Sara H Konrath, and Norbert Schwarz. 2011. Global warming" or climate change" Whether the planet is warming depends on question wording. Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 75, 1 (2011), 115--124. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfq073Google ScholarCross Ref
- Alana Conner Snibbe. 2006. Drowning in data. Stanford Social Innovation Review, Vol. 4, 3 (2006), 39--45. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/drowning_in_dataGoogle Scholar
- Finnborg S Steinþórsdóttir, Þorgerður Einarsdóttir, Gyða M Pétursdóttir, and Susan Himmelweit. 2020. Gendered inequalities in competitive grant funding: An overlooked dimension of gendered power relations in academia. Higher Education Research & Development, Vol. 39, 2 (2020), 362--375.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Nitya Verma and Amy Voida. 2016. On Being Actionable: Mythologies of Business Intelligence and Disconnects in Drill Downs. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP '16). ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 325--334. https://doi.org/10.1145/2957276.2957283Google ScholarDigital Library
- Amy Voida. 2011. Shapeshifters in the voluntary sector: exploring the human-centered-computing challenges of nonprofit organizations. interactions, Vol. 18, 6 (2011), 27--31.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Amy Voida, Ellie Harmon, and Ban Al-Ani. 2011. Homebrew databases: Complexities of everyday information management in nonprofit organizations. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11). ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 915--924. https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1979078Google ScholarDigital Library
- Amy Voida, Ellie Harmon, Willa Weller, Aubrey Thornsbury, Ariana Casale, Samuel Vance, Forrest Adams, Zach Hoffman, Alex Schmidt, Kevin Grimley, et al. 2017. Competing currencies: Designing for politics in units of measurement. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CHI '17). ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 847--860. https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998209Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Enacting Data Feminism in Advocacy Data Work
Recommendations
Competing Imaginaries and Partisan Divides in the Data Rhetoric of Advocacy Organizations
CSCWData are wielded to shape public opinion, particularly in electoral contexts where the role and veracity of information is questioned. This post-truth era is characterized by world events in which facts too often are obfuscated and evidential standards ...
Triadic Advocacy Work
Scholars of street-level bureaucracy and institutional research focus primarily on the relationships between advocates and their larger bureaucratic and social systems, assuming that advocates have little need to satisfy their beneficiaries. We find ...
Accountability Work: Examining the Values, Technologies and Work Practices that Facilitate Transparency in Charities
CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsCharities are subject to stringent transparency and accountability requirements from government and funders to ensure that they are conducting work and spending money appropriately. Charities are increasingly important to civic life and have unique ...
Comments