How has digital technology - from social media to algorithmic targeting - shaped democratic outcomes?
In this opening event, artist and human rights researcher Caroline Sinders is joined by educator and researcher David Carroll and journalist, artist and filmmaker Kari Paul to examine the intended and unintended consequences of digital campaigning and the role of technology in global elections.
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tlxy.io
The Last X Years
Between 2021-2024, artist Jay Bernard travelled around the UK interviewing people of all ages and backgrounds, asking what they remember about the 2016 EU referendum. Participants shared a range of perspectives and reflected on how they and the country changed during this turbulent time. The resulting artwork can be accessed online at tlxy.io. Find out more about the artwork here.
During the 2016 Brexit Referendum, the Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed the use of harvested data and algorithmic profiling to influence voter behaviour. A decade on, data-driven campaigning plays an even greater role in democracies worldwide.
Paul has worked in journalism for over ten years, covering platform power and digital culture for outlets including The Guardian, BBC, and VICE. Her work examines surveillance capitalism and personal data vulnerability. After a career in commercial digital media, Carroll moved into academia and later brought a landmark legal challenge against Cambridge Analytica in the UK over mass data abuse linked to the 2016 US Presidential Election.
Using 2016 as a case study, the conversation explores the growing entanglement of democracy and technology, and what it means for our political future.
David Carroll is a design and technology educator and researcher exploring the intersections of advertising, media, data, surveillance, privacy, platforms, interfaces, democracy, and cultures. Carroll’s legal challenge of the Cambridge Analytica companies under UK data protection law is documented in The Great Hack (Netflix 2019) and Trumping Democracy (Spicee 2018). Since 2023, Carroll has co-directed the Parsons MFA Design & Technology program. He is the recipient of Law and Philosophical Society prizes from Trinity College, Dublin. Carroll is on the board of Check My Ads Institute and administers federate.social in service to the field. He posts as @davidcarroll.org on Bluesky.
Image credit: New School
Kari Paul is a journalist, artist, and filmmaker based in Paris, France whose work explores memory and the archive through the lens of social media, materializing digital ephemera through textile practices. Drawing on a career covering platform power and digital culture for outlets including The Guardian, BBC, and VICE her work examines surveillance capitalism and personal data vulnerability. She is currently completing her MFA in Transdisciplinary New Media at Paris College of Art.
Caroline Sinders is an award winning critical designer, researcher, and artist. They’re the co-founder and executive director of the human rights research and technology lab, Convocation Research + Design. For over the past decade, they have been examining the intersections of human rights, artificial intelligence, intersectional justice, harmful design, and systems in technology and digital platforms. They’ve worked with the Tate Exchange at the Tate Modern, the United Nations, the UK’s Information Commissioner's Office, the European Commission, Ars Electronica, the Harvard Kennedy School and others. Caroline is currently based between London, UK and New Orleans, USA.
Image credit: Sarah Wang