DRPC – Introductory Blog Post (Summer 2022)

Welcome to the Digital Rhetorical Privacy Collective (DRP Collective or DRPC)! The DRP Collective is an interactive, coalitional resource which features activities, assignments, lesson plans, and other resources for instructors who wish to incorporate digital privacy and surveillance in the classroom. 

The mission of the DRP Collective is to raise awareness of the injustices created by digital privacy and surveillance issues in our society. We emphasize an intersectional approach to understanding and incorporating concepts like justice, privacy, and surveillance in the classroom. The DRP Collective seeks to produce content which merges academic and public discourse and our approach is coalitional because we can not do this work alone.

Scholars from around the United States have joined the DRP Collective Advisory Board, including: Morgan Banville, ABD, Graduate Student at East Carolina University; Dr. Chen Chen, Assistant Professor of English at Utah State University (incoming fall 2022); Dr. Gavin P. Johnson, Assistant Professor of English at Christian Brothers University; Dr. Ceclia D. Shelton, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Maryland; Dr. Noah P. Wason, Visiting Instructor of Writing and Rhetoric at Colgate University; and Dr. Charles Woods, Teaching Assistant Professor of English at East Carolina University. 

The first time the entire DRP Collective Advisory Board met in the Winter of 2022, Charles asked the group: “When it comes to the DRP Collective, we know what we are doing and we know how we are doing it, but why are we doing it? We can get people to visit our project, but sustainability will require people understanding why we are doing this work.” So, why is this work important? 

Morgan: Though I narrowed my research agenda late in my PhD program, I came to realize that my interest in topics related to surveillance, privacy, and security have always fascinated me. Researchers often (if not always), have some component that is relatable/personal to their trajectory. For me, it was the act of lateral surveillance, peer-to-peer, that sparked my interest. I find myself gravitating towards activist work, which at this stage is mostly within the classroom space, where students and I talk through the ways in which we are surveilled in our daily lives and how this is normalized. My goal is to remind ourselves about the origins of surveillance, and how new technologies (not just digital) are implemented as a “necessity.” For example, one assignment in the classroom focuses on data mining. It’s not about what the trackers know, it is about what they do with what they know. One of the problems with surveillance capitalism is that we are paying for the privilege of other people selling our data.

Chen: On a personal level, it’s hard to navigate social media now, knowing more about the privacy and surveillance issues. It’s overwhelming to think about how to make decisions about what to do on these platforms when options are so limited and we don’t have a lot of agencies as “users.” As someone who navigates social media platforms transnationally, it’s also like living in multiple worlds with drastically different views and ideological designs where I’m subject to different kinds of surveillance and faced with different privacy challenges. In my own work, I want to emphasize the commonalities and differences across these “worlds,” highlighting the global nature of networked surveillance capitalism. I think I want this project to provide a space for people to think through some of these complex problems and also a space to make these issues more apparent for the public, in a manageable, non-clickbait-y article style way.

Gavin: Surveillance and privacy are topics that I’ve come to over time. While I certainly have held concerns about my own privacy as someone constantly engaging with social media and digital cultures for the majority of my life, I often dismissed or downplayed the need for me to think about these topics in my day-to-day life. Instead, my investment in critical examinations of surveillance and privacy have emerged from my teaching and the multidirectional surveillance that occurs in the classroom, in writing programs, in universities. But recently, I have shifted my view beyond the university because of the rising surveillance of queer and trans bodies. I want to think through the ways violations of privacy and bodily autonomy are embedded into the law but also want to develop resources for action. In sum, I want to work across public and private distinctions and build coalition.

Cecilia: My personal interest in notions of privacy and surveillance motivate my academic interests in many ways. As a Black woman, I have always wrestled with the hyper/(in)visibility of Black bodies and the implications of that reality for me socially and professionally. An example: What does it mean for me to post pictures of my kids on social media? For them as they grow up and make their own decisions about how present or absent they want to be online? For me, as I navigate white institutional spaces as a young(ish), Black, mother? I’m interested in the ways that I am both compelled and constrained in how I engage rhetorically by the distinct worlds within which I exist. 

When I think about these ideas as academic questions, I start to think in more collective and systemic ways that bring other questions to the fore: How does Black cultural production in digital spaces also open Black people up to a kind of surveillance at both the individual and cultural levels that can be exploitative at best and harmful at the worst? And what about people whose technology use is coerced by life circumstances (poverty for example) that heighten their exposure to violations of privacy or surveillance? That’s not usually the way we think about it, but I think we ought to more often. I really see this collective and the project we’re doing as an opportunity to ask these questions both within and outside the academy, to listen to those at the margins for answers, as their experiences are often a bellwether predicting what is coming to and for others, and to create content that intervenes in ways that advance just outcomes. 

Noah: The questions that keep coming up in my classes are “Why should I care?” and also “What can we do about this”? We have seen a profound shift in the way we communicate and circulate information, changes we have not been able to keep pace with. I think the problem is distributed across users, platforms, and legal entities, and focusing on each facet separately is unnecessarily limiting. I want to develop solutions which include working with others to figure out new ways to think about what the actual problems are and how we can address them from multiple angles. I think leaving it for users to figure out, allowing platforms to self-moderate, and trusting representatives to ask the wrong questions clearly isn’t working, and there is something we can contribute here. 

Charles: This is a personal project for me. It is a project that comes from my dissertation work, certainly. I want to build a coalition of people who are interested in digital privacy and surveillance. One of the most important aspects of this project, for me, is to do this work from an intersectional perspective. I am interested in technology, but I am also interested in privacy from a historical perspective and I think this is a critical part of our project, especially in framing.

Joining the DRPC Collective

As mentioned earlier, our approach is coalitional. On our website you will find various resources which address digital privacy and surveillance, but note that we are taking a grassroots approach: throughout the coming months and years, resources will expand as each member of the leadership team contributes to the project. 

But we want you to contribute, too. We want you to join the DRP Collective if you value this work, if you find it interesting or important then we need you. Please visit the Contact page on our website to join the collective or to submit activities, assignments, readings lists, or other resources to the DRP Collective. We hope to hear from you soon! 

Morgan, Chen, Gavin, Cecilia, Noah, and Charles

The DRP Collective