Black feminist information equity: Understanding and addressing barriers to Black women and femmes’ information access and use

Abstract: Information Science has historically examined information (in)equity from the perspective of how individual or societal conditions produce behaviors that impact physical or cognitive access to information. While this perspective is important and necessary, I argue that it is also important to attend to inequities that manifest in how information is both produced and algorithmically distributed, and the cultural and value judgments embedded in this process. In this talk, I will discuss how the need for this approach to studying information (in)equity has shown up in my work with Black and women of color communities. Specifically, I will illustrate how various fault lines along the pipeline from information production to its distribution through digital platforms can present barriers to information equity for Black women and femme communites, but also how this perspective presents new insights into how these communities access and utilize information for social, political, and personal empowerment; and how information science scholars can help support these efforts.

Bio: Chelsea Peterson-Salahuddin (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information. Dr. Peterson-Salahuddin’s research focuses on the culturally specific ways marginalized communities, most often Black women, femmes, and queer folks, engage with mass and digital communications technologies to seek information, produce knowledge, and build community, and how the infrastructure of these technologies helps these communities to overcome or continue to replicate systemic barriers to equity. Her research has been published in several high-ranking peer-reviewed journals, including but not limited to Critical Studies in Media Communication, New Media and Society, Social Media + Society, Information, Communication & Society, and Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. Her research has received scholarly recognition from the International Communications Association and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and her research has received funding support from the Russell Sage Foundation. Currently, Dr. Peterson-Salahuddin is working on a book project on how liberatory ideology gets reconstituted through popular media through the lens of Black feminism. Dr. Peterson-Salahuddin received her MA and Ph.D. in Media, Technology, and Society from Northwestern University and her BA in Political Science and Media Studies from Vassar College.

Before pursuing a career in academia, Dr. Peterson-Salahuddin worked at CBS This Morning as an Editorial Producer. During her tenure at CBS, she received a Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi award, which recognizes exceptional professional journalism, for her role in the network’s coverage of pharmaceutical companies’ price hikes on EpiPens.

This seminar is both online and in-person: Zoom Link