A Deep-Dive on Digital Self-Determination
Rory Torres shares her experience as part of Berkman Klein’s latest global research sprint
In an increasingly digital world, our experiences online are shaped by data gathered and wielded to tailor experiences. But what control do users have over that data, where it goes, and how it is used?
Questions of control over personal data were a cross-cutting theme throughout a Research Sprint co-hosted by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and Digital Asia Hub. The Sprint also examined other important dimensions of self-determination in the digitally networked world, for instance, self-expression and participation in civic life and the digital economy, or relationship-building and well-being, to name just a few application areas.
The three-month program for graduate students focused on digital self-determination spanning a range of geographies, backgrounds, and contexts. The cohort, who came from 21 countries across the globe, convened regularly to participate in critical discussions and create accessible educational resources — including a Wikipedia page and a Wikiversity Living Syllabus — on the topic.
One participant, Mary Rhauline “Rory” Torres, Harvard Law LL.M. ’21, joined the sprint from Mangaldan, Pangasinan, in the Philippines. We spoke with Torres about her experience in the program, what she learned, and how it informed her work.
What motivated you to join the Research Sprint and explore digital self-determination?
I learned about the Research Sprint when Professor Urs Gasser posted it in his Comparative Digital Privacy course. The call to participate resonated with me because there was a huge surge of new Internet participants in South East Asia when the pandemic hit. That’s 40 million new users of the Internet who are basically opening up their lives to the digital world. It’s an exciting place, but also has threats and harms. Even those of us who have been connected for a while are still scrambling to find our place in the digital space. I thought learning about digital self-determination can help all of us make sense of our role in the Internet as individuals and as a community, and thrive in it.
How has your understanding of the concept changed or evolved over the past few months?
Prior to the Research Sprint, my understanding of digital self-determination was limited to empowering an individual to participate in a digital environment and being equipped to do so responsibly, much like digital citizenship. I didn’t realize how digital self-determination is a labyrinth until we started to talk about it with related concepts like digital rights, digital colonialism, informational self-determination; to situate it in various contexts like digital health, digital economy, digital information; and to ground it in principles that would realize self-determination, such as trustworthy data spaces. It’s all very interesting and complex!
The Research Sprint is interdisciplinary and international by design. What was that experience like working with graduate students around the world to explore digital self-determination?
The Sprint is composed of an amazing group of people from all over the world with so many diverse backgrounds. There are students studying psychology, communication, political science, social science, and culture. The diversity of language, culture, and studies makes the task of understanding digital self-determination challenging because we all have different contexts. But there’s also beauty in it because it allows us to find connections, confront ourselves with different, sometimes opposing perspectives, and accept and respect that.
Your cohort is coming together to create a Wikipedia entry on digital self-determination. Could you explain the processes behind that task, and what you hope the impact is of the entry?
We started with gathering a bibliography of articles that relate to digital self-determination. Building on that bibliography, the group created an outline in a shared Google document. We’ve since then expanded that outline by communicating through Slack, gathered volunteers to write sections that are of interest to them, and some have met through Zoom or smaller chat groups to get feedback, do peer review, and make changes.
The Wikipedia entry is divided into three parts: first, an overview of the history of self-determination in philosophy, psychology, and its legal adaptations, and defining self-determination in the digital sphere; second, identifying practical elements that support the realization of digital self-determination, such as digital infrastructure, equal access, privacy protections; and third, current issues relevant to digital self-determination, including a discussion on regulation and legal frameworks, which I am contributing to.
Having a Wiki entry on digital self-determination is a big first step to bringing the principle out into the digital space, making it more accessible and understandable, and keeping in mind that the concept is a work in progress.
What was the most interesting topic you explored during the program?
The session on Information Diet was extremely interesting because it relates so well to our daily lives: living at a place and time where information seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. One of the first things I do in the morning is open my phone, read the “recommended stories” of the New York Times on my account, open the Telegram information group on the situation of COVID-19 in the Philippines, check my emails and I’m bombarded by the newsletters that I’ve subscribed to, and then there’s Facebook. There’s just so much information, so there’s this burden of having no excuse not to know about an important issue. And there’s so much disinformation, that filtering out reliable from unreliable content has become so overwhelming.
So I really loved Professor Sarah Genner’s presentation on Information Diet and what it means to be in the driver’s seat in the digital age and not the other way around and having an overview of how to disconnect, do a digital detox, and avoid digital distractions. While studying for my exams, I used the Pomodoro Technique and the amount of studying I was able to clock in was almost cathartic.
Was there a particular speaker that stood out to you, or sparked a new interest?
I was fascinated by Professor Nishant Shah’s talk on the formation of our identities in the digital age. He provoked a lot of questions on how an individual defines one’s identity through digital artifacts — that one may or may not have created or uploaded for oneself; how digital spaces may constrain our definition of ourselves in and out of cyberspace; and how do we preserve these identities — or do we even want to?
You host a blog about parenting. From your perspective, how should adults address digital self-determination with children?
In the same talk, Professor Shah’s example of his nephew’s thousands of photos in the cloud uploaded for him by his relatives resonated with me as a parent. As a mother of a four-year-old, it’s so difficult to restrain me from uploading pictures of my child — what Professor Leah Plunkett calls “Sharenthood.” Parents create digital footprints of our children and so much of their private moments are in the digital space already. But beyond the dangers of violating the privacy of children, the creation of this catalog of children’s lives online may limit their ability to define who they are, to reflect on their experiences, to associate objects to their memories, because so much has already been documented for them.
So when is digitization too much that it harms children’s self-determination — is a topic I want to explore further. It goes hand-in-hand with other parenting issues in the digital era, like safety. Parents should educate themselves about technology and how our children interact with it because it’s not going away and it plays a large role in how they define themselves and their realities. I personally recommend Professor Urs Gasser’s book “The Connected Parent” as a starting point.
How did your studies as an LL.M. student at Harvard Law School — and your interests in tech and the law — inform or shape your perception of the program?
When we talk about law and technology, there’s always a discussion of seemingly competing but often interacting concepts: the individual and the collective, the private and the public, the offline and the online. As an LL.M. student, what I have realized in studying these concepts as they relate to technology is that technology is highly contextual and it is fast-changing, such that, as a student of the law, it is difficult to create a single universal approach to encourage innovation that would provide a positive impact to the world or to address the harms or threats that technology can bring. This is the attitude that I have brought with me to the Research Sprint, and it has helped me broaden my perspective and try to see self-determination from the lens of participants and speakers with various backgrounds and expertise.
How did participating in the Research Sprint inform your time at HLS and your future trajectory?
Finding my trajectory after HLS is an exercise of self-determination! At HLS, I curated my law and technology courses for business and technology, and Internet and society, because there’s always that tension between commercial interests and social issues. The Research Sprint in particular expanded my thinking beyond legal frameworks and allowed me to explore the field of social science and the Internet, and was especially inspired by Professor Lokman Tsui’s work on free expression, digital rights, and Internet policy in Asia. In relation to that, I’m also keen on exploring Privacy-by-Design and studying how to integrate digital self-determination into its principles, beyond respect for user privacy, and experimenting with startups on how to integrate Privacy-by-Design and digital self-determination as they develop their platforms.
