The refugee support ecosystem in the U.S.-Mexico Borderplex is resource-scarce, dynamic, and transitional, requiring intensive information work. To address coordination challenges among the cross-sector sociotechnical community working at one of the largest ports of entry for asylum seekers, the county government of El Paso, TX, USA, has proposed a centralized information system for use by all refugee-serving organizations on the U.S. side of the border. However, stakeholder responses have varied, with some organizations approving, and others resisting the proposal. This research investigates the nuanced dynamics of information infrastructures among stakeholders from different refugee-serving organizations working in the Borderplex, explaining how they navigate pressures to centralize their information infrastructures amid myriad concerns while considering the costs of not doing so, particularly for the refugees. Through a combination of ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and thematic analysis, we explore why some of the organizations in the Borderplex are choosing to silo their data—in support of financial freedom, mission malleability, and maintaining privacy in a liminal context—as a form of infrastructural activism. Our findings contribute to discussions of non-use and deliberate disconnection, highlighting the complex political and practical dimensions of technology (non-)adoption.

This work-in-progress (research-to-practice) paper describes the Allyship program that has been implemented at Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) to build student support structures, particularly for women and non-binary students. As technology permeates through all aspects of our world, broadening participation in computer science education is critical to securing sustainable national technology and economic development. Unfortunately, women, especially ethnic and racial minority women, have been underrepresented in computing fields for decades. The trends in the number of bachelor's degrees in computing awarded to Latina students have not improved over the past twenty years, consistently accounting for less than 2% of the total number of undergraduate degrees awarded in computing. Most programmatic practices generally feature broader STEM disciplines, are not discipline-specific, and do not specifically support women and non-binary students in computing, which is the least diverse STEM field. Furthermore, most studies of mentoring programs rely primarily on graduate students, faculty, and professional mentorship. To fill the gap in practices and knowledge about the role of near-peer mentoring, explicitly focusing on women and non-binary students in computing fields at Hispanic-Serving Institutions, the Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI) an NSF Eddie Bernice Johnson INCLUDES, and BPC Alliance piloted the Allyship program at two HSIs. This paper describes how CAHSI implemented this program in a way that aligns with the theory of community cultural wealth. The Allyship program builds relationships among first- and second-year Latinx students with upper-division Latinx students in computing to build an inclusive community and supportive departmental environment. The goal of the Allyship program is to increase departmental engagement, retention, and persistence in the major. Preliminary assessment results from a participant survey show that following participation, students reported higher scores of sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and interest in computing compared to the beginning of the semester. The findings provide insight into using a strengths-based approach in peer support programs that allows women and non-binary students at HSIs to leverage their cultural knowledge and assets. This peer support program would be particularly impactful at low-resourced HSIs, which have high Hispanic enrollment but lack sufficient institutional resources, as the institutions can make significant changes with relatively low costs to implement sustained peer-to-peer support programs.

In this paper, we present the results of a study that examines the role of data in nonprofit advocacy work. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 individuals who play critical roles in the data work of 18 different advocacy organizations. Our analysis reveals five key stakeholders in advocacy data work-beneficiaries, policymakers, funding and partner organizations, gatekeepers, and local publics. It also contributes a framework of four functions of data work in nonprofit organizations-data as amplifier, activator, legitimizer, and incubator. We characterize the challenges in data work that exist, particularly in widespread attempts to reappropriate data work across functions. These challenges in reappropriation are often rooted in participants' effects to enact data feminist principles from the margins of the data economy. Finally, we discuss how nonprofit institutions operate outside of the dominant data work goals known as the three Ss (surveillance, selling, and science) and propose a fourth S, social good, that is working to challenge the norms of the data economy and should be considered in research regarding the data economy moving forward.

Data are wielded to shape public opinion, particularly in electoral contexts where the role and veracity of information is questioned. This post-truth era is characterized by world events in which facts too often are obfuscated and evidential standards are abandoned. To study how data are used to influence pressing and divisive contemporary issues, this paper explores the rhetorical work that quantitative data are doing through the blogging practices of advocacy organizations during the highly-polarized month preceding the 2016 United States elections. We present results of a qualitative content analysis of the quantitative data used in 337 blog posts published by five pairs of conservative and liberal advocacy organizations over the course of the month leading up to the 2016 US elections. We identify key data rhetoric practices along partisan lines and contribute an analytic framework-evaluating ethos, pathos, and logos- that can be used to analyze the rhetorical use of data in other contexts. We then characterize two different imaginaries that come into conflict in this research: 1) the political imaginaries being promoted through organizational blogging and 2) the sociotechnical imaginary of the data economy, foregrounding differences in the epistemic value of data in each. We conclude by outlining research challenges and trajectories for future research within each of the two imaginaries of data.