5 Questions on Data and Civil Rights with Mariana Valente
By Catherine D’Ignazio with editing by Isabel Carter
Mariana Valente is one of the directors of InternetLab, an independent research center based in São Paulo, Brazil, that focuses on the intersection of law and technology in online spaces. She holds a PhD in Sociology of Law from the University of São Paulo and is a researcher at the Center for Law and Democracy at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP). Valente has also written and edited several books on human rights and Internet policies, copyright and access to culture, knowledge, and education, and gender and women’s rights and technologies.
In Data Feminism, Lauren Klein and I draw on Valente’s work at the InternetLab developing anti-hate speech practices for the Internet age in “The Numbers Don’t Speak for Themselves.” In that chapter, we discuss the Desmond Patton’s work in which young Black men’s language on social media being improperly categorized as violent when, in reality, they are simply quoting lyrics. Valente has encountered many such examples in her own work, leading her to conclude that context is crucial for understanding social media conversations. I spoke with Valente about InternetLab in 2019. What follows is a transcript of that conversation. It has been edited for clarity.
