TY - JOUR
T1 - Mapping Civil Society in the Digital Age
T2 - Critical Reflections From a Project Based in the Global South
AU - LePere-Schloop, Megan
AU - Appe, Susan
AU - Adjei-Bamfo, Peter
AU - Zook, Sandy
AU - Bawole, Justice N.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2022/6
Y1 - 2022/6
N2 - Initiatives to map nonprofit organizations encompass efforts to define the boundaries of the sector and understand its scope and scale. As new technologies make it possible to digitize and analyze information in new ways, further questions about mapping civil society emerge. We integrate nonprofit scholarship, critical work on computational methods, and reflection on our experiences using machine learning to map nongovernmental organizations in Ghana, to develop a critical framework for mapping civil society in the digital age. The issues we raise about computational methods are embedded within greater concerns about the taken-for-granted assumptions in mapping civil society, and mapping as a tool to control, manage, and manipulate civil society. We are particularly attentive to the power within mapping as a mode of knowledge production.
AB - Initiatives to map nonprofit organizations encompass efforts to define the boundaries of the sector and understand its scope and scale. As new technologies make it possible to digitize and analyze information in new ways, further questions about mapping civil society emerge. We integrate nonprofit scholarship, critical work on computational methods, and reflection on our experiences using machine learning to map nongovernmental organizations in Ghana, to develop a critical framework for mapping civil society in the digital age. The issues we raise about computational methods are embedded within greater concerns about the taken-for-granted assumptions in mapping civil society, and mapping as a tool to control, manage, and manipulate civil society. We are particularly attentive to the power within mapping as a mode of knowledge production.
KW - Global South
KW - bias
KW - critical theory
KW - machine learning
KW - mapping civil society
KW - statecraft
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85121363740&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/08997640211057401
DO - 10.1177/08997640211057401
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85121363740
SN - 0899-7640
VL - 51
SP - 587
EP - 605
JO - Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
JF - Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
IS - 3
ER -