Purple Code
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://www.weizenbaum-library.de/handle/id/959
Purple Code. Intersectional feminist perspectives on digital societies
Systems of oppression are relevant in the development of digital technologies, in their application, and in the research about them. This podcast aims towards hearing the scientific findings, subjective views, and personal experiences of women and gender dissidents who engage with digital technologies. It is hosted by three female, migrant researchers who analyze the social implications of digital technologies at the Berlin based Weizenbaum-Institute for the Networked Society.
Each episode focuses on an invited woman or gender dissident, their work, experience, and views on relevant socio-political issues. The interviewees are for example researchers, artists, activists, and journalists. The podcast is a way to listen to voices that are often silenced, and to highlight various forms of oppression, for example sexist, racist, colonial, and other – in order to see technology and society differently.
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Item Purple Code – With Elisa Lindinger(Weizenbaum Institute, 2025-03-08) Ahmad, Sana; Herlo, Bianca; Ulbricht, Lena; Lindinger, ElisaElisa is co-founder of SUPERRR, a lab for feminist futures that Elisa founded together with Julia Kloiber. SUPERRR deals with traditional questions of digital rights and understands feminism as inherent intersectional feminism. Our guest Elisa works to create a base where different expertise can come together and have fruitful conversations about digital, but also social justice issues. In this episode, she talks about how to practice and establish a “thinking about the future” that helps policy makers shape visions and laws that do not harm those who are already disadvantaged, but benefit us all. Elisa and her colleagues provide methods on how to address digital rights issues in a world of massive inequalities. She asks: How can we bring in our own narratives and define our own playing field? For Elisa, digital policy must be framed as social policy, and this is a crucial factor.Item Purple Code – With Clara Herrmann(Weizenbaum Institute, 2024-10-14) Ahmad, Sana; Herlo, Bianca; Ulbricht, Lena; Herrmann, ClaraAfter a long summer break, we are back with a new exiting guest: Clara Herrmann. Since 2019, Clara has headed the JUNGE AKADEMIE, the international artist-in-residence program of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. For JUNGE AKADEMIE she developed the program HUMAN MACHINE and initiated and curated the project AI ANARCHIES with a fellowship program and an autumn school co-curated by Nora N. Khan and Maya Indira Ganesh and a final exhibition and event in 2024: The Anarchy of the Soul. Clara was co-founder and coordinator of the Digital Solitude program at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, where she developed and curated the project Web Residencies. In this episode, Clara guides us through her work as a curator, the specific challenges of her projects and the undertakings to open up art while leaving it with complete autonomy in times of great politicization.Item Purple Code – With Martina Di Tullio(Weizenbaum Institute, 2024-12-20) Ahmad, Sana; Herlo, Bianca; Ulbricht, Lena; Di Tullio, MartinaMartina researches the use of digital technologies in rural indigenous communities in the Puna of Jujuy, Northwest Argentina. The Jujuy Puna is part of the so-called Lithium Triangle, a high-altitude desert area where lithium – one of the most important minerals for the production of digital technologies – is mined and processed, leading to the pollution of scarce water resources. In addition, the rural and indigenous population, who have always lived in this region, are excluded from the products of this exploitation. In this episode, Martina talks to us about the political meanings and consequences of these processes for everyday life in the Puna villages, about issues of digital sovereignty and the struggles of the communities. She argues that the spread of algorithmic digital media represents a new dimension of a centuries-old structure of coloniality for indigenous peoples in Latin America.Item Purple Code – With Basma Mostafa(Weizenbaum Institute, 2024-03-05) Ahmad, Sana; Herlo, Bianca; Ulbricht, Lena; Mostafa, BasmaIn this episode, we speak with Basma Mostafa, a journalist from Egypt living in exile in Germany. We speak about the role of journalism and the use of digital technologies including social media during and following the Egyptian revolution. We learn about the increasing threats to press freedom and military violence against journalists, lawyers and activists in the country, and hopes of fighting the Egyptian regime from exile. Basma’s story is reflective of the struggles faced by exiled diaspora in Germany and what it means to miss ‘home’ when the home of one’s memory and imagination no longer exists. We ask Basma about what different movements can learn from the Egyptian revolution that started more than 13 years ago and if there is potential in building international diasporic movements in Germany.Item Purple Code – With Aida Eyvazzadeh and Sakine M. Bozorg(Weizenbaum Institute, 2024-06-17) Ahmad, Sana; Herlo, Bianca; Ulbricht, Lena; Eyvazzadeh, Aida; Bozorg, Sakine M.Aida Eyvazzadeh and Sakine M. Bozorg are former content moderators in Berlin who worked for a global social media platform. The are both from Iran and in this episode, they talk about why and how migrant workers in Germany constitute as a crucial labor supply to the global platform economy. They explain what content moderation is, how it is labor intensive work and requires several skills. Instead of being valued, content moderators face high control on their work and even repression, a kind of corporate authoritarianism that reminds them of the authoritarian regime in Iran. They go on to recount their experiences of challenging these power asymmetries through the German institutional resources and trade unions, and the difficulties they have faced in doing so. Talking about these experiences, they suggest ways for unions to reflect and make certain changes. Beyond these institutions, they also find hope in networking with different communities in Berlin and internationally for sharing resources and finding possibilities to organize. Aida currently works in the civil society sector and Sakine is an independent researcher and essayist. She is also part of the Data Workers Inquiry project (https://data-workers.org/) that is supported by the Distributed AI Research Institute and the Weizenbaum Institute and is launching on the 8th of July this year.Item Purple Code – With Rosa Wevers(Weizenbaum Institute, 2025-08-01) Ahmad, Sana; Herlo, Bianca; Ulbricht, Lena; Wevers, RosaIn this episode, we sit down with Rosa Wevers, Dutch researcher, curator, and critical thinker at the intersection of gender studies, digital technology, and the arts. Rosa shares her journey into exploring how systems of oppression are entangled with technological development, especially AI. Together, we ask: How can art challenge dominant narratives about tech? How is technology shaping society and culture? As we navigate an era of shifting power structures and deepening crises, Rosa offers sharp insights into why critical engagement with technology has never been more urgent — and how art can help us imagine otherwise.Item Purple Code – With Armaghan Naghipour(Weizenbaum Institute, 2023-12-21) Ahmad, Sana; Herlo, Bianca; Ulbricht, Lena; Naghipour, ArmaghanOur guest Armaghan Naghipour is a lawyer specializing in migration and anti-discrimination law and the deputy chairwoman of DeutschPlus (https://www.deutsch-plus.de). Most recently, she was State Secretary for Science, Research and Equality in the State of Berlin. Prior to that, she held various advisory positions in Berlin state politics, including helping to draft Berlin’s state anti-discrimination law. In the wonderful atmosphere of the Grüner Salon at the Volksbühne Berlin, we talk about Armaghan’s experiences as a political advisor and State Secretary, about what it is like to take on responsibility as State Secretary and to shape society in these specific political structures, but also about the hesitation and the feeling of being an impostor, and what it is like to jump in at the deep end. We talk about the responsibility that comes with such an appointment, about discrimination characteristics of AI from a legal perspective and how legal frameworks shape our everyday lives. We touch upon the anti-discrimination law in Germany and specifically the Berlin anti-discrimination law, upon how Armaghan’s parents fled Iran in the 1980s when she was 1 year old, and how the topic of migration is a recurring theme in her professional work as well as in this podcast. Last but not least, we talk about the power that comes from these kinds of conversations.Item Purple Code – With Milagros Miceli(Weizenbaum Institute, 2023-10-24) Ahmad, Sana; Herlo, Bianca; Ulbricht, Lena; Miceli, MilagrosWhat is participatory research, and how hard is it to navigate disciplines like sociology and computer science at the same time? Dr. Milagros Miceli – a sociologist and a computer scientist – is from Argentina and currently based in Berlin. Her research on data work is widely known to provide rich empirical evidence on the abysmal working conditions of click workers and content moderators in Germany, Argentina, Syria, Kenya and Bulgaria. Milagros leads the research group ‘Data, Algorithmic Systems, and Ethics’ at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society. She is also a research fellow at the DAIR Institute, where she is currently investigating ways to engage communities of data workers in AI research. This episode with Milagros takes us on a journey of her love for her work, but also the struggles that it brings along. She goes on to talk about issues like credibility, acceptance and recognition as a pioneering researcher in a field that is finally getting the attention it deserves, but at the cost of balancing it as a woman, migrant, and mother of two.Item Purple Code – With Helena Mihaljević(Weizenbaum Institute, 2023-08-11) Ahmad, Sana; Herlo, Bianca; Ulbricht, Lena; Mihaljević, HelenaOur summer break episode is a special one: Helena Mihaljević, mathematician and professor for computer science, talks about her fascination for math, chess and boxing; about her migration history; about training data that are so deeply rooted in our culture and history. Helena elaborates why math is not neutral, how she experiences improvements in the tech industry, and her involvement in an ongoing study of the gender gap in different sciences and regions. Listen to our conversation on how to empower young women to be confident in tech jobs, and how we should have tech companies and technology audits that are contextual and participative, carried out together with advocacy organizations and researchers.Item Purple Code – With Renata Ávila(Weizenbaum Institute, 2023-04-26) Ahmad, Sana; Herlo, Bianca; Ulbricht, Lena; Ávila, RenataWe talk about Renata’s experiences as a human rights lawyer and her work with regards to massive human rights violations of indigenous people in Latin America. She elaborates on the potentials of technology when in the hands of people and how she dealt with testimony material and archives, with hours and hours of testimonies. The impermanence of the human rights internet and the lack of support of archives when we discuss human rights violations is one central moment in this episode: many of the websites are gone, many of the documentation about human rights abuses and the battle for accountability vanished. Renata elaborates on the accessibility of relevant material for the public interest and the anachronic copyright laws and restrictions due to geo-location and geographic restrictions.