Cristina Vélez

Cristina Vélez Vieira (b. Medellín, Colombia) is a digital social researcher. Her work lies at the intersection of platform research and social movements in Latin America, building the field through the design of tools and methodologies. She has co-founded and led pioneering initiatives in the region, such as Linterna Verde and the Lupas Project at Puentes, which support civil society organizations and journalists with social listening tools, insights, and training. Her new initiative, Las Escuchadoras, brings together a network of female digital researchers working in 6 countries at the crossroads of gender and data equity. Read full bio. 

Cristina’s Project: Transnational Data Collaboratives through the EU Digital Service Act (DSA): Advancing Platform Research for Latin American Feminist Organizations

The Latin American feminist movement, which has mobilized millions through Twitter campaigns like the pro-choice Green Wave, is confronting new restrictions on social media data, posing challenges for digital association and media manipulation risks identification. In contrast, conservative movements and marketing agencies can afford social listening software, while the EU Digital Services Act provides European civil groups with unique opportunities for platform research. My project, a Data Collaborative for Transnational Feminist Platform Research, aims to: 1) Enable EU nonprofits to share EU DSA data access with LatAm feminist organizations; 2) Explore schemes for third-party social media data donation/dataraising; and 3) Develop a Latin American data hub, a trusted intermediary, that will responsibly manage these repositories while promoting its use through training and user-friendly tools for a community of over 1,216 female digital researchers and activists.