00164 Digital Surveillance and Digitally-disadvantaged Language Communities

Reference Article

Zaugg, Isabelle. (2019, December 4). Digital Surveillance and Digitally-disadvantaged Language Communities. UNESCO International Conference Language Technologies for All (LT4All): Enabling Linguistic Diversity and Multilingualism Worldwide, Paris, France. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5272640

Abstract

The issue of digital surveillance often falls outside urgent discussions regarding the need to build digital supports for under- resourced languages. While the benefits of these supports for digitally-disadvantaged language communities are clear, the reality is that standardized script use, standardized spelling, and NLP systems in particular increase a language community’s legibility for digital surveillance. As we build digital supports for Indigenous and minority language communities, we must consider how these tools might be used against them through digital surveillance, and how to combat these risks.