research overview
- Broadly, my research is interested in information literacy, surveillance, and digital culture. In the wake of ubiquitous surveillance, it seems that people are always discursively engaged, and our conceptions of “privacy” are becoming less clear. Cameras take and publicize our image. Our online activities are tracked and commodified as we use a variety of free services. Social media platforms collect data on our engagements (clicks, likes, views, etc.) to craft customized newsfeeds, which shape our perception of the world. So, short of retreating into the wilderness, it seems difficult to not participate in digital publics. In our current information landscape, what is the value of privacy? What are the stakes for constantly being watched? Intersecting queer theories of embodiment, circulation theory, and classical rhetorical theory, I study the ways in which humans and bodies are mediated by surveillance technologies, where bodies non-autonomously participate in a variety of publics without their awareness or consent. This work illustrates how simply being in the presence of technologies—like smart phones, cameras, smart speakers, wearable technologies etc.—effectively collapse commonly held distinctions between public and private spaces. As a teacher of writing and rhetoric, I am particularly interested in discovering ways students can improve their digital information literacy, ethically leverage networked tools for rhetorical ends, and even recognize and challenge the ethics of their own participation within these everyday systems.