10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17516
This contribution aims to summarize and highlight the main themes emerged during the panel “Surveillance infrastructures or open platforms? Aid and control of vulnerable populations through digital data” that took place at the VIII STS Italia Conference. The panel invited to reflect upon the ambivalence and ambiguity of digital platforms and data infrastructures for population management as well as on the highly diversified functions and users they support and attract. More precisely, presenters were encouraged to enquire how platforms and data infrastructures affect vulnerable populations and reconfigure the boundaries between the private and public domains: how do they allow empowering and innovative communication and resistance strategies? How, on the contrary, do they produce novel or exacerbate already existing vulnerabilities? How is the modern distinction between government, business, and civil society de facto reshuffled as a consequence? Although panel’s presentations discussed remarkably different types of platforms – from online maps and social networks to public health databases and migration technologies – they overall emphasized that only a careful, situated analysis of the multiple socio-technical factors shaping users’ engagement might help to understand how – and why – those technologies become tools for control and surveillance or empowerment resources.
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2038-3460
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Annalisa Pelizza
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
data infrastructures
The Ambivalence of Platforms. Between Surveillance and Resistance in the Management of Vulnerable Populations
Text.Serial.Journal
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Conference Reflections
2022-03-26
2023-06-28
2022-03-26
2023-10-23
99-106
TS
Annalisa Pelizza
2021
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17516
99
University of Bologna
2038-3460
2
data infrastructures
en
106
The Ambivalence of Platforms. Between Surveillance and Resistance in the Management of Vulnerable Populations
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17516/16360
12
                                                             Conference Reflections
                                                                                       99




The Ambivalence of Platforms
Between Surveillance and Resistance in the
Management of Vulnerable Populations

        Lorenzo Olivieri                                   Annalisa Pelizza
             University of Bologna                          University of Bologna



     Abstract: This contribution aims to summarize and highlight the main
     themes emerged during the panel “Surveillance infrastructures or open
     platforms? Aid and control of vulnerable populations through digital data”
     that took place at the VIII STS Italia Conference. The panel invited to reflect
     upon the ambivalence and ambiguity of digital platforms and data infrastruc-
     tures for population management as well as on the highly diversified func-
     tions and users they support and attract. More precisely, presenters were
     encouraged to enquire how platforms and data infrastructures affect vul-
     nerable populations and reconfigure the boundaries between the private
     and public domains: how do they allow empowering and innovative com-
     munication and resistance strategies? How, on the contrary, do they pro-
     duce novel or exacerbate already existing vulnerabilities? How is the mod-
     ern distinction between government, business, and civil society de facto
     reshuffled as a consequence? Although panel’s presentations discussed re-
     markably different types of platforms – from online maps and social net-
     works to public health databases and migration technologies – they overall
     emphasized that only a careful, situated analysis of the multiple socio-tech-
     nical factors shaping users’ engagement might help to understand how –
     and why – those technologies become tools for control and surveillance
     or empowerment resources.

     Keywords: platforms; surveillance; resistance; vulnerable populations;
     data infrastructures.

     Submitted: November 22, 2021 – Accepted: January 31, 2022

     Corresponding author: Lorenzo Olivieri, Dipartimento di Filosofia e
     Comunicazione, Via Azzo Gardino 23, Bologna, Italy. Email: lorenzo.
     olivieri3@unibo.it.




TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies
12 (2) pp. 99-106 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net                                2021
100                                                          Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)

1. Introduction

    In his seminal article, Gillespie (2010) stressed how the semantic rich-
ness and ambiguity of the term “platform” allowed firms to attract users,
clients and advertisers by promising an open, neutral and egalitarian space.
The term, he suggested, could be connected to four semantic territories –
computational, architecture, figurative and political – which overall “point
to a common set of connotations: a ‘raised level surface’ designed to facili-
tate some activity that will subsequently take place” (Gillespie 2010, 350).
Through this semantic and discursive escamotage, firms attempt to obscure
and alleviate the tensions between “user-generated and commercially-pro-
duced content, between cultivating community and serving up advertising,
between intervening in the delivery of content and remaining neutral” (Gil-
lespie 2010, 348).
    One decade later, digital platforms have become even more ubiquitous
and increasingly able to attract multiple, heterogenous types of users, who
gather around their services in order to accomplish a continuously expand-
ing set of actions. In this respect, our panel “Surveillance infrastructures or
open platforms? Aid and control of vulnerable populations through digital
data” aimed to shed light on some of the tensions which were not ad-
dressed by Gillespie’s analysis. First, we decided to focus on a specific ty-
pology of users – vulnerable people and vulnerable populations – and on a
specific type of data – sensitive and personal data. Second, but strongly con-
nected to the previous point, we asked to reflect upon the dialectic between
power and resistance, between aid and surveillance, which shapes the use of
online platforms.
    In proposing a discussion about this two-fold tension crossing the mul-
tiple uses and appropriations of platforms, we suggested to broaden the
scope of the analysis in order to include data infrastructures which are not
usually considered in the ranks of platforms, such as those for migration
management. This move, we think, is needed in order to question and
problematize what is usually perceived as a ‘division of labor’ between the
biopolitical traits and purposes associated to institutional data infrastruc-
tures and the emancipatory, self-empowering features usually connected to
digital platforms. This rigid distinction does not seem satisfactory: on the
one hand, data infrastructures for population management provide access
to healthcare and shelter; on the other hand, digital platforms and their
data have increasingly become new sources of surveillance and control
(Manokha 2018; Wood and Monahan 2019).


2. The Role of Digital Infrastructures in the Control and
Empowerment of Vulnerable Subjects

   The contributions to our panel addressed these issues along three main
topics. First, the hybrid and open nature of online maps and social media
Olivieri and Pelizza                                                    101
was analyzed in terms of resistance and surveillance in the contributions by
Federico Montanari (University of Modena-Reggio Emilia) and Lorenzo
Olivieri (University of Bologna). Second, Roxana Varvara Boboc (Univer-
sity of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and Laetitia Della Torre (University
of Technology of Compi gne) highlighted the blurred boundaries between
digital, private platforms and public services during the Covid pandemic
and between health data stored in medical platforms and the possible risk
of co-optation of those data for control and surveillance purposes. In a
third set of presentations, Annalisa Pelizza (University of Bologna), Alice
Fill (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy) and Wouter Van Rossem (Univer-
sity of Twente, The Netherlands) explicitly addressed data infrastructures
for migration management by analyzing the ‘scripts of alterity’ through
which migrants are enacted by the European information systems, by
showing how the principle of non-refoulment is jeopardized by the datafi-
cation and digitalization of European borders, and by focusing on the is-
sues of data quality and data frictions between migrants’ identities and the
standards and interfaces available in information systems.
    Montanari’s talk addressed the ambivalent nature of online platforms
by focusing on maps and mapping. As a matter of fact, maps, and especially
online maps, add a further level of complexity, as they are simultaneously
interfaces, representations, and tools. As pointed out by authors like
Mitchell (2002), Latour (1990) and Farinelli (2009), maps have historically
been vectors of cognitive, perceptive and social transformation. It is thus
their highly hybrid nature that makes maps powerful tools allowing for
both surveillance and control, and for solidarity, aid and cooperation. To-
day, maps and mapping constitute the basic elements of infrastructures and
social media, and, as a consequence, they have also emerged as pillars of
contemporary surveillance capitalism. Drawing on these insights, Mon-
tanari’s contribution enquired how the polymorphous nature of maps al-
lowed to provide and support aid, solidarity and resistance. More specifi-
cally, his work has investigated how maps allow the representation of the
so-called ‘Balkan route’ as a site in which multiple types of solidarity and
struggle have stratified over the years.
    Olivieri’s presentation discussed how border-crossers’ smartphones,
and the data stored in them, have become new means of surveillance. His
work drew upon interviews collected at Greek Hotpsots as well as on a
recent body of literature (Latonero and Kift 2018; Bolhuis and van Wijk
2020) which have shown how the vetting of smartphones and social media
is an increasingly common practice during both registration and identifica-
tion procedures conducted at the Hotspots, and the asylum process. These
security checks allow extracting different types of data from smartphones
and laptops in order to assess migrants’ stories and identities through
102                                                         Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)

content that is generated in non-securitarian and non-institutional con-
texts. The novelty represented by this modality of surveillance is that it
seems to contrast with ‘the epistemic suspicion towards the story’ which
characterizes biometric technology (Ajana 2013). By taking into account
content produced by migrants in non-institutional contexts, smartphone
and social media surveillance seem, at first glance, to be able to recover and
foreground their stories and narrations. Yet, the vetting of smartphone and
social media ends up reproducing and enhancing power relations: the con-
tent extracted and analyzed is always partial, deleted content can be re-
trieved without consent, the interpretation of data is done by officers. As a
consequence, rather than filling the gap between identity and identifica-
tion, social media surveillance and digital forensic technologies ultimately
produce a proliferation of spokespersons (Pelizza 2021) which enact bor-
der-crossers in different, contrasting and unjust ways.
    In Varvara Boboc’s contribution, the implementation of apps and ser-
vices for digital contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic repre-
sented a precious opportunity to explore the relational frictions and the co-
productive processes at stake in the collaboration of private and public ser-
vices. In April 2020, Google and Apple joined their forces to develop an
Exposure Notification System (GAEN) which replaced the EU’s previ-
ously developed options and enabled interoperability between Android
and iOS devices using apps from public health authorities. These circum-
stances made particularly visible the co-production of power-relations. On
the one hand, private platforms are considered reliable and invisible, pro-
vide public services on their own and, unlike public institutions, have the
ability to transform a risk or crisis situation in a commercial opportunity.
On the other hand, public institutions are both regulators and users of
those platforms, while simultaneously being concerned with the organiza-
tion of trust. The reciprocal dependency of public and private sectors be-
came even more relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic, when digital,
private platforms emerged as the main resilient actors, to the extent that
essential public services became dependent on them. Yet, private compa-
nies still need to operate within a set of rules stipulated by institutional
actors: privacy, interoperability, data management and lawful implementa-
tion then become the core issues to be clarified and implemented within a
coherent regulatory structure. In this regard, one of the main obstacles
highlighted by the contact-tracing case was policy-makers’ struggle to pro-
duce consistent guidelines and propose feasible alternatives to private com-
panies. However, Boboc argues, public and private bodies’ need to access
a large volume of high-quality data, as well as the urgency to determine the
governance of data collection, make difficult to achieve a balance between
individual rights and public health. Overall, the experience with apps for
Olivieri and Pelizza                                                        103
digital contact-tracing leaves with more questions than answers: how can
public and private actors earn citizens’ trust? Is the private going public
or, vice versa, is the public going private? Can secondary usage such as
surveillance be prevented?
    The problems of health data – or, more precisely, of the access to such
data – was also addressed by Della Torre’s contribution. Her presentation
focused on refugees’ medical records and on the risks of instrumentaliza-
tion and misuse of such data. It relied on interviews conducted with doc-
tors and social workers working in French health structures, such as the
“Permanances d’access aux Soins de Santè” (PASS), providing access to
care and medication to people living in the streets, people without social
security and migrants. The research revealed, first of all, that the digitaliza-
tion, data collection and exchange of patient medical records is signifi-
cantly underdeveloped and poorly harmonized, leading to inefficient situ-
ations. However, most of the interviewees did not express any specific con-
cerns about the possible misuse of medical records and felt to be in control
over the data collected. This perception, according to Della Torre, might
be due to the major role played by secrecy and confidentiality for profes-
sionals like doctors and social workers. A second element which might ex-
plain the perception of low risk is the logic of care associated to the PASS,
which, despite not being an autonomous structure, is thought to work re-
gardless any possible issues linked to migratory flows. However, these ele-
ments are not, per se, sufficient to exclude the possible, future misuse of
medical data for purposes of migration management and control, especially
in the light of the relationship between the Ministry of Interior and the
Ministry of Health. To mitigate these risks, Della Torre suggested a few
strategies, such as the minimization of data collection and the use of paper
medical records, as they are generally perceived as more secure.
    Pelizza’s presentation discussed how the categories and modalities of
classification utilized in European data systems for information manage-
ment enact different typologies of people on the move. Crucial in her ar-
gument is the shift from a representational understanding of identity to one
based on the performativity of practices, doings and actions. This shift sug-
gests paying particular attention to the mediums, or chain of translations,
through which identities are built, which are especially important when it
comes to the technologically mediated management of populations. Draw-
ing on empirical analysis of the data models implemented in information
systems used at the European borders, Pelizza identified four typologies of
intended border-crossers, four ‘scripts of alterity’ which show how in-
tended people, with their own skills, goals, limitations and capabilities, are
inscribed into databases for migration management. First, the several func-
tions (administration, security, health care, family reunification, etc.)
104                                                         Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)

allowed by the data collected in the Greek register of foreigners are seeing
and enacting people on the move as long term foreigners, eligible for inte-
gration. On the other hand, Eurodac – the European database storing asy-
lum seekers’ fingerprints – contains significantly fewer data. The scarcity
of data collected suggests that Eurodac tends to enact people on the move
as irregular migrants who are expected to cheat and to remain in Europe
for a short period. Along similar lines, by collecting only information about
possible aliases, physical features and episodes of violent conduct, SIS II
(the European Schengen Information System) enacts people as potential
criminals. Lastly, the categories contained in the European Visa Infor-
mation System (VIS), the database used to process third-country nationals’
Visa applications, enact people simultaneously as travellers and settled indi-
viduals. Yet, this paradox is only apparent: the type of intended individual
inscribed in the VIS is in fact the settled non-Western traveller.
    Fill’s contribution addressed the tensions and contradictions of the Eu-
ropean system of international protection by focusing on the principle of
non-refoulment. According to it, Member States are forbidden from re-
turning asylum seekers to countries in which they might be in danger or
subjected to persecution. Yet, as Fill showed, this principle is systemati-
cally violated by European countries through three different modalities of
rejections: pushback, pullback and back-scattering. Pushbacks occur at the
external borders of Europe and they are the most documented and violent
violation of the principle of non-refoulment. Pullbacks depend on the in-
creasing involvement of third-countries authorities which allow externaliz-
ing border control through strategies of non-arrival, remote control and
deterrence. Lastly, the implementation of smart borders made possible
what Fill defined as ‘back-scatterings’, a term used, in physics, to describe
the reflection of waves, particles, or signals back to the direction from
which they came. Through a network of interconnected biometric data-
bases and through the aggregation of data which allows identifying who is
suspect and to develop risk analysis, smart borders in fact operate a dis-
tinction between trusted and untrusted travellers, configuring a regime of
‘border apartheid’ which digitally exclude people from accessing the Eu-
ropean territory. Smart borders then reproduce a systematic and discrimi-
natory bias towards migrants, creating a ‘data banned population’ (Bigo
2014) based on categories and identification processes implemented in bu-
reaucratic and algorithmic systems. Particularly interesting, in this regard,
is the Eurosur project, a system of systems which supports European mem-
ber States in the monitoring of the Mediterranean Sea and of the European
external borders. By visualizing maps as operational areas and by expand-
ing the capabilities to operate in those pre-frontier areas, Eurosur justifies
preventive actions based on the analysis of potential migratory flows.
Olivieri and Pelizza                                                             105
    Whereas Fill’s presentation foregrounded the functions of surveillance
characterizing migration technologies, Van Rossem’s contribution focused
on issues of data quality in the infrastructures for migration management.
Crucially, problems with data quality and data frictions might significantly
hamper the respect of people’s fundamental rights. As highlighted by the
Fundamental Right Agency (FRA 2018), European Information Systems
often contain inaccurate alphanumeric, biographic and biometric data.
This situation negatively affects people’s possibilities to exert their rights
and might eventually lead to accuse them of something they never did. This
might occur, for instance, when an issue of low data quality is misrepre-
sented, by authorities, as one of identity fraud. One of the major reasons
for which the information might be incorrect or incomplete is that mi-
grants’ identities data do not always fit neatly in information systems’ cate-
gories. Personal data, in fact, might be inputted in two different systems
with slight but relevant differences, leading to what policy-makers define
as ‘blind-spots’. Such blind-spots could be solved through interoperability,
which would allow to detect inconsistencies in the records. Van Rossem’s
presentation discussed the ‘smart search and match’ technology used in
migration and border control in order to overcome data frictions and to
match biographical data.


3. Conclusions

   As this short summary demonstrates, despite the heterogeneity of plat-
forms taken into considerations, the seven contributions to the panel have
engaged with the ambiguity of platforms. An ambiguity that suggests the
need to look for the sociotechnical conditions under which a platform can
be used either for control purposes, or for empowering goals. When do
mobile social networks stop supporting self-empowerment and become
surveillance tools? What uses can turn institutional data infrastructures for
population management into resources of care? As the STS tradition re-
minds us, only situated, performative and inclusive research can help to
answer these questions.


Acknowledgements
    The authors desire to thank the participants to the panel for their precious con-
tributions. The panel was organized in the context of the “Processing Citizenship”
project (2017–2022), which has received funding from the European Research
Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation
program (grant agreement No 714463).
106                                                                 Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
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