Charles Woods here. When I first wrote about the DRPC in my dissertation, I outlined a coalitional approach to researching and understanding privacy and surveillance in the field of rhetoric, composition, and technical communication. Mission accomplished! The DRPC Advisory Board includes a diverse arrangement of scholars who each approach privacy and surveillance as an aspect of their research. We are an ambitious group of collaborators, certainly, and I would not have it any other way. 

But, the DRPC must be more than a coalition of researchers. The DRPC must include action, which, for me, means becoming the research. In Spring 2023, I asked my university’s Writing Program Administrator, Dr. Gavin Johnson (who is also a DRPC Advisory Board member) if I could develop a presentation about privacy, writing, and data collection for Texas A&M University-Commerce (TAMUC) Writing Program orientation. Luckily, Gavin agreed! During my presentation, I delivered the first iteration of, “Surveillance and Respecting Student Privacy,” wherein we talked about catalysts for discussions of privacy and surveillance with students: things like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and changing state laws in Texas. Making this local connection seemed particularly critical. 

Additionally, we made connections to the A&M-Commerce Writing Program curriculum by positioning privacy policies as a genre for rhetorical analysis, as a way for students to localize analysis and think about data collection (and aggregation and use), and as a path to discuss things like literacy and ethics. We talked about Educational Technologies (EdTech) that we use on our campus, including TopHat, D2L and Adobe Creative Suite. How do we discuss with our students the implications of asking them to use these technologies, to consent to provide their data? We discussed this and began working towards other important questions related to responsibility and accountability. 

Perhaps most importantly, we talked about why rhetoric, composition, and technical communication are well positioned to take on issues of privacy and surveillance, including values like justice, equity, and difference; innovative methods and methodologies; and inherent interdisciplinarity. We also discussed this topic in relation to what rhetoric does, things like testing ideas, assisting advocacy, distributing power, discovering facts, shaping knowledge, and building community. With this in mind, then, rhetoric, composition, and technical communication should be at the forefront of discussion about digital privacy and surveillance; we need to understand privacy as tactical and establish what ethical surveillance looks like.

Talking to the A&M-Commerce Writing Program is the first step towards a larger goal that comes from my dissertation project. Ultimately, I hope to take this work to new spaces—particularly to new student orientations at the university level. WPA’s, graduate teaching assistants, and First-Year Composition (FYC) instructors are well-positioned to make the jump to engaging in these conversations because their classes are filled with incoming students and ethical FYC class sizes often create an atmosphere of trust among students and instructors (they don’t always receive from instructors across the disciplines) where these complex conversations can occur. Additionally, as rhetoricians, our attention to things like audience and context allows us to craft and deliver meaningful arguments based on our expertise on this critical topic across contexts and audiences.

We need to talk to students about the Terms of Service documents governing their actions, and new student orientation is the perfect time and place. These innovative conversations are ethically responsible and necessary. Additionally, I would be excited to engage in dialogue and brainstorm how these conversations about privacy and surveillance might show up in other courses, like literature courses or languages courses. For example, how are scholars approaching privacy and surveillance in a special topics course on the novel? Reach out to me, and the DRPC, if you would like to chat about incorporating these workshops into your own writing program, graduate teaching assistant training, or a program specific to your university.

So, here we are, moving the DRPC from coalition to action, one writing program at a time. Here I am, becoming the research.