The role of activism in ICT for Sustainability

Weds 8th October, 2:00pm

This paper describes an analysis of responses to the question "do you consider yourself to be an activist?" and applies the learnings from that to computing for sustainability.   At a panel "CHI at the barricades: the role of activism in HCI" (CHI 2013), Ben Shneiderman argued that "We have an enormous opportunity to make a difference…the very nature of Human Computer Interaction is an activist agenda”.  This paper explores the potential of that principle.  The research is informed by a qualitative content analysis of practitioners (n=50) from varying fields who we asked "do you consider yourself to be an activist?".  The term activism was chosen as it is often considered to be "loaded" and whether or no people described themselves as activists does not really matter, it is the explanation of that response that follows the short answer that carries the value for considering the value of activism in computing.

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