Author: N/A
Publisher: Berkeley School of Information
Publication Year: 2019
Summary: The following article talks about how one student is using data science to better the world. Master of Information and Data Science student and 2019 recipient of the Paul Fasana LGBTQ Studies Fellowship, Christina Papadimitriou is using the fellowship for her research for LGBTQ equality and rights. She has done various works to order to improve visibility and treatment of the LGBTQ community. Now, she is hoping to use data science to help her cause. “The biggest obstacle in conducting LGBTQ research studies is the shortage of available data in the field,” Papadimitriou stated. She uses online data extraction and natural language processing techniques to generate data. This data can then be used to create reports about the issues that members of the LGBTQ community face globally. Her research aims to address 3 main questions: 1). Why does the LGBTQ community face more discrimination in some countries than others; 2). What makes societies “more” or “less” accepting; and 3). How can we use data to advocate against discriminatory laws? By collecting this data, she hopes to provide more accessible and transparent data regarding LGBTQ communities for future research. Though, there are many ethical considerations that need to be taken into account for data science, Christina Papadimitriou is taking a huge step in the direction of using data for good, to ethically uplift an often underrepresented community.