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Careful Data Tinkering

Abstract:

In this paper, we describe and analyze the data practices of an activist non-profit, the Housing Justice League. We focus on their Tenant Power Hotline, a community outreach tool for tenants facing eviction and seeking organizing support. This research contributes to existing scholarship that examines data practices and the use of information and communication technologies in non-profit and grassroots organizations. To this existing scholarship, we share the structure of a counter-institution: An organization that strives to operate outside the non-profit industrial complex. We then interpret the work of Housing Justice League through the lens of care, identifying homebrewed databases and data fragmentations as negotiations between care and efficiency. We argue that care is enacted through the assemblage of the technical systems, and present tinkering as an alternative approach to developing data practices.?.