Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
Ariane Ollier-Malaterre1, Blayne Haggart2, Alice Marwick3, Aram Sinnreich4, Natasha Tusikov5
1University of Quebec In Montreal, Canada; 2Brock University, Canada; 3University of North Carolina, USA; 4American University, USA; 5York University, Canada
This roundtable is an interdisciplinary exchange on four forthcoming monographs examining datafication, privacy, and surveillance. The authors will present their core arguments and identify common threads and important research avenues; Natasha Tusikov will moderate the session.
Natasha Tusikov and Blayne Haggart’s The New Knowledge. From the global geopolitical arena to the smart city, control over data and intellectual property have become a key political and economic priority, leading to a redistribution of power, including from individuals to companies and states. It explores how control over knowledge affects economic growth, creative expression, personal freedom and privacy, and offers suggestions for a humane path forward.
Alice Marwick’s The Private is Political. Networked privacy violations disproportionately affect members of marginalized communities. Drawing from 125 interviews, the book argues that Americans care deeply about privacy and engage in extensive “privacy work” to protect it—but are stymied by a focus on individual, rather than collective, solutions.
Ariane Ollier-Malaterre’s Living with Digital Surveillance in China. Digital surveillance is a daily reality of life in China. Drawing from 58 qualitative interviews and observations in China, the book situates participants’ accounts of digital surveillance within the Chinese socio-political system. It sheds light on the cohesive system of anguishing and redeeming narratives that cast digital surveillance as indispensable in China, and depicts the mental and emotional weight carried by those exposed to all-encompassing surveillance.
Aram Sinnreich’s The Secret Life of Data. Based on interviews with 29 domain experts and hundreds of case studies, the book demonstrates the downstream consequences of ubiquitous data surveillance and algorithms in major social institutions. It aims to give casual readers a sense of the second-order effects of networked technology in their lives, and to empower people who are typically excluded from these conversations to shape the future of policy and technological innovation.
