Emerging Technology and Social Work for Marginalized Voices: Potential Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Directions

The convergence of social work and technology holds significant potential to transform global service delivery and enhance accessibility. For example, through innovations like digital mental health platforms.improve access such as the Digital Mental Health Platform Yet, unequal resource access shaped by social and structural factors raises concerns about whether this rapid advancement will promote equity or deepen existing disparities? This roundtable will explore Social Work’s role in advancing ethical, inclusive technologies for marginalized. Framed as a reflection circle, the discussion emphasizes technology as an emerging area of specialization that can enhance access for vulnerable communities through ethical design, community-driven data practices, integration of Indigenous knowledge, and interdisciplinary collaboration.it highlights technology as a growing specialization that promotes access for vulnerable communities through ethical design, community-led data, indigenous knowledge, and interdisciplinary approaches.

The reflection circle will open with Dr. Mathiyazhagan sharing insights from his work on field practice, emerging technologies, and the rise of Tech Social Workers. By collaborating with engineers, data scientists, and other transdisciplinary experts, social workers can contribute contextual knowledge and community-grounded perspectives that help minimize harm and bias in emerging technologies and key challenges. Dr. Mathiyazhagan will share real-world social work experiments with algorithmic social interventions in India & the US.

Dr. Rai will focus on how digital technologies can be leveraged to enhance social work education, practice, and intervention strategies among marginalized communities locally and globally. From tele-mental health platforms to data-informed case management systems, technology offers unprecedented opportunities to expand access and efficiency. The discussion will highlight examples such as usingthe use of virtual reality to integrate the cultural nuances of ethnic communities using cutting-edge technology, artificial intelligence and wearables. Specifically, she will highlight the salience of co-creating these programs, both using technological innovations and the use of community-based participatory research.

Dr. Sinha will explore emerging data types beyond traditional qualitative and quantitative forms, such as text, images, videos, and timestamps, reshaping social work research and practice. These data sources are becoming critical, especially at the time when traditional methods may fail to capture the complexity of human behavior or when direct access to individuals is limited. Dr. Sinha will focus on the growing importance of semi-structured and unstructured data, including multimedia, in understanding human behavior and the challenges posed by massive, real-time data volumes, including locational, geospatial, and high dimensional data. Dr. Sinha will reflect on the ethical implications of these new forms of data and their potential to improve client outcomes and inform social work policy and practice.

Dr. Tripathi’s discussion will offer a critical reflection on the strategic deployment of technology to address pressing challenges confronting women in the Global South. Key areas of discussion will include the potential of digital tools, data science, and AI to improve women's access to healthcare, education, and economic opportunities.

The roundtable will highlight the need for transdisciplinary collaboration and capacity-building and conclude with a call for collective action to promote equitable and inclusive tech social work model to amplify marginalized voices in the digital innovations.