Visiting Researcher at the Brandenburg University Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (BTU).

Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fluminense Federal University, Campos dos Goytacazes Campus/RJ (UFF-Campos), Brazil.

PhD in Information Science from the Postgraduate Program of the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (PPGCI-IBICT/UFRJ).

Completed his qualification on the regime and information policy on refugees in Brazil.

Today we live in an era in which digital data has become a central element in the organization of social life. In Brazil, this process of digital transformation has not only been a race for technological efficiency, but also a field where disputes over power, visibility and control are taking place. When one looks closely, one notices that there is something deeper happening beneath the surface of digital platforms and government information systems: a new form of governance that operates through algorithms, invisible classifications and automated decisions. What increases the complexity in the use of these technologies is the reality of Brazilian society itself, rooted in its colonial slave-owning past, and based on economic models that concentrate income and power, in which the old oligarchies of the interior are aligned with part of the state bureaucratic elite, with the financial elite located mainly on Avenida Faria Lima, in the city of São Paulo, and with the new social classes that have risen economically in recent decades.

In these terms, Critical Data Science (CDS) is emerging as a powerful lens for understanding this scenario. It is not limited to the technical analysis of data, but rather questions the power structures that produce it and the social consequences that arise from it. The starting point is simple but revolutionary: data is not neutral. It is produced within cultural, social, political, economic and historical contexts that shape its purposes and effects. In Brazil, where structural inequalities already define access to rights and opportunities, digitalization without critical care tends to deepen these fissures. Several contemporary analyses have drawn attention to the advancement of invasive technologies in public security, such as facial recognition cameras and predictive policing algorithms. These tools, although marketed as neutral and effective, often operate based on biased data, reproducing and legitimizing practices of structural racism. In urban peripheries, black and poor people are repeatedly framed as suspects, in a cycle of criminalization that intensifies with the silent support of technology.

In Brazil, this situation create "spaces of informational invisibility" overlap with historical legacies such as slavery, land concentration and gentrification processes. The question is not only how to use technology responsibly, but how the information regimes themselves are constructed and with what effects. This approach, through the field of "Informationethics", forces us to question the normative frameworks that guide technological development and the way in which data are interpreted, stored and socially activated. In this context, Critical Data Science invites us to imagine other possible futures for technology – futures that take into account social justice, inclusion, and respect for diversity. In Brazil, where the promises of digital transformation coexist with the reality of millions of people excluded from access to the internet, digital education and the most basic rights, thinking critically about data is more than a theoretical exercise. It is a political gesture. It is affirming that no society will be democratic if it is not also democratic in the way it produces, uses and governs its data.

References

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Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Breuer, A., & Welp, Y. (Eds.). (2014).Digital Technologies for Democratic Governance in Latin America: Opportunities and Risks.Routledge.

Canclini, N. G. (2019). Ciudadanos reemplazados por algoritmos. Editorial Ariel.

Capurro, R. (2008). Information Ethics. In: Foundations of Information Ethics, p. 103–120.

Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the Societies of Control . October, Vol. 59, p. 3–7.

Eubanks, V. (2018). Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. New York: St. Martins’s Press.

Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison . Vintage Books.

Observatory of Metropolises. (2016). Dossier on Mega-Events and Human Rights Violations in Brazil .

Sassen, S. (2014). Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in tge Global Economy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing. (2016). Report on Forced Evictions Related to Mega-events in Brazil.