[2601.09600] Information Access of the Oppressed: A Problem-Posing Framework for Envisioning Emancipatory Information Access Platforms

Computer Science > Computers and Society arXiv:2601.09600 (cs) [Submitted on 14 Jan 2026 (v1), last revised 26 Mar 2026 (this version, v2)] Title:Information Access of the Oppressed: A Problem-Posing Framework for Envisioning Emancipatory Information Access Platforms Authors:Bhaskar Mitra, Nicola Neophytou, Sireesh Gururaja View a PDF of the paper titled Information Access of the Oppressed: A Problem-Posing Framework for Envisioning Emancipatory Information Access Platforms, by Bhaskar Mitra and 1 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Online information access (IA) platforms are targets of authoritarian capture. We explore the question of how to safeguard our platforms while ensuring emancipatory outcomes through the lens of Paulo Freire's theories of emancipatory pedagogy. Freire's theories provide a radically different lens for exploring IA's sociotechnical concerns relative to the current dominating frames of fairness, accountability, confidentiality, transparency, and safety. We make explicit, with the intention to challenge, the technologist-user dichotomy in IA platform development that mirrors the teacher-student relationship in Freire's analysis. By extending Freire's analysis to IA, we challenge the technologists-as-liberator frame where it is the burden of (altruistic) technologists to mitigate the risks of emerging technologies for marginalized communities. Instead, we advocate for Freirean Design (FD) whose goal is to structurally expose the platf...