# Information Access of the Oppressed: Freirean Design for Emancipatory Information Access

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.09600 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09600/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 166 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Power to the People? Opportunities and Challenges for Participatory AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.07572/) (2022)
- [Participation is not a Design Fix for Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02423/) (2020)
- [Decolonial AI: Decolonial Theory as Sociotechnical Foresight in Artificial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.04068/) (2020)
- [A Mechanism-Based Approach to Mitigating Harms from Persuasive Generative AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15058/) (2024)
- [Artificial Influence: An Analysis Of AI-Driven Persuasion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08721/) (2023)
- [Stakeholder Participation in AI: Beyond "Add Diverse Stakeholders and Stir"](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.01122/) (2021)
- [Recommenders with a mission: assessing diversity in newsrecommendations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.10185/) (2020)
- [Human-Computer Insurrection: Notes on an Anarchist HCI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06167/) (2019)
- [Sociotechnical Implications of Generative Artificial Intelligence for Information Access](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11612/) (2024)
- [Search and Society: Reimagining Information Access for Radical Futures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17901/) (2024)
- [Recommending With, Not For: Co-Designing Recommender Systems for Social Good](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.03792/) (2025)
- [Towards an Abolitionist AI: the role of Historically Black Colleges and Universities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.02011/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Online information access (IA) platforms are targets of authoritarian capture. We explore the question of how to safeguard our platforms and ensure 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, and transparency. We make explicit, with the intention to challenge, the technologist-user dichotomy in IA platform development that mirrors the teacher-student relation in Freire's analysis. By extending Freire's analysis to IA, we critique 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 whose goal is to structurally expose the platform for co-option and co-construction by community members in aid of their emancipatory struggles.