Jason Young

Jason Young is a Senior Research Scientist and Affiliate Assistant Professor at the Information School, with affiliations to the Technology & Social Change Group (TASCHA), the Center for an Informed Public (CIP), and the Jackson School of International Studies. Jason’s work explores the politics that shape what forms of knowledge come to matter within different socio-cultural contexts. His research asks, for example, how the use of information & communication technologies (ICTs) are reshaping colonial hierarchies that exist between Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge systems, and how socio-cultural and emotional dynamics produce vulnerabilities and attachments to misinformation. Jason’s projects strongly emphasize community-based, participatory approaches with applied goals, but are also inspired by and draw from a broad range of critical social theory. He is particularly interested in collaborations, and in working with students, in areas related to the following active projects:

Co-Designing for Trust – This NSF-funded project is a collaboration between academic and community researchers, librarians, educators, and other partners working to design community-oriented solutions to misinformation. The project seeks to create locally-contextualized digital literacy resources that holistically address the ways that misinformation exploits our minds, emotions, and social circumstances.

Exploring the Benefits and Challenges of Community-Powered Connectivity in the New Arctic – This NSF-funded planning grant explores the potential role of community networks – or, telecommunications infrastructure designed, implemented, and managed by communities – in addressing existing digital divides for Arctic Indigenous communities.

Innovations for Community-Held Infrastructure – This project, funded by the NSF Smart and Connected Community program, is co-developing new technologies (e.g., edge services, wireless sensors) that make community networks more useful and empowering for urban BIPOC communities.

Co-Designing Civic Education in the Circumpolar North – This NSF-funded planning grant supports an international set of collaborators to develop a research agenda for designing and implementing civic education approaches contextualized to the Arctic.

Advancing Library Visibility in Africa (ALVA) – This project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, develops tools to support public library systems across the African continent as they engage in locally-relevant sustainable development efforts.

Indigenous Connectivity – This project seeks to design and implement community networks for and with Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon. It explores the ways in which digital technologies produce new opportunities for Indigenous communities to engage in collective environmental politics and cultural regeneration, while simultaneously reproducing epistemic and colonial hierarchies within those politics.