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Community, Identity, and Agency in the Age of Big Social Data: A Place-based Study on Literacies, Perceptions, and Responses of Digital Engagement

Hayman, Bernard Akeem
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1586602013429227

Abstract Details

2020, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Geography.
User-generated data are the key to access and engagement in the modern digital ecosystem, shaping not only the ways we interact with platforms and applications but increasingly how we move through the physical world as well. The scope and magnitude of what data enables is matched only by the diversity and complexity of ways that internet users can generate it. Thus, the data-driven shaping, coercion, and regulation of behaviors by the digital traces of individuals movements and actions is a key component of algorithmic governance, within which race acts as a determining factor of differentiation and intensity. To that end, examining how Black people are surveilled, coerced, and quantified within digital ecosystems prefigures how engagement is eventually shaped for all users, and in many cases serves as impetus to enroll non-Black individuals into regimes of control requires a reckoning with the foundational influence of anti-Blackness on the internet. It is not enough to look at the data and formulate hypotheses about what actions could have produced it, if we do not understand those behaviors as rooted in an individual’s awareness of their specific context and identity. The secretive, “black box” nature of these algorithms means that users know little, if anything, about how they function, their outputs, their priorities, or their inaccuracies. Yet how individuals perceive their own position within digital ecosystems, and conceive of what responses are available to them, are widely divergent. To discern how individuals perceive their ability to exert control over their data and privacy, it is necessary to first understand how user engagement with digital platforms relies on asymmetries in experience, knowledge, and access in order to facilitate the production and collection of user data.
Nancy Ettlinger (Advisor)
Madhumita Dutta (Committee Member)
Roselyn Lee-Won (Committee Member)
Treva Lindsey (Committee Member)
64 p.
Geography
algorithms; digital literacy; algorithmic awareness; race, anti-Blackness; data politics; datafication; inequality; digital divide; user studies; internet platforms; identity; digital inclusion; digital equity; intersectionality; Black geographies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Hayman, B. A. (2020). Community, Identity, and Agency in the Age of Big Social Data: A Place-based Study on Literacies, Perceptions, and Responses of Digital Engagement [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1586602013429227

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Hayman, Bernard. Community, Identity, and Agency in the Age of Big Social Data: A Place-based Study on Literacies, Perceptions, and Responses of Digital Engagement. 2020. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1586602013429227.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Hayman, Bernard. "Community, Identity, and Agency in the Age of Big Social Data: A Place-based Study on Literacies, Perceptions, and Responses of Digital Engagement." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1586602013429227

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1586602013429227
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.