The research that I conduct takes on very different shapes across the range of areas I work in. As a cultural theorist of technology, Articulation names my theory and method. My work on games and media sticks closer to the text of the artifacts I examine, but recognizes the imbricated nature of both culture and technology, as well. Apropos of British cultural studies, interdisciplinary methods, including a variety of quantitative and qualitative approaches, appeal to me.
My interests run through these areas in the fields of communication and computing:
The Problematic of Privacy in the Namespace
In the twenty-first century, the issue of privacy—particularly the privacy of individuals with regard to their personal information, effects, and domains—has become highly contested terrain, producing a crisis that affects both national and global social formations. This crisis, or problematic, characterizes a particular historical conjuncture I term the namespace...
Using cultural studies and the theory of articulation, I map the emergent ways that the namespace articulates economic, juridical, political, cultural, and technological forces, materials, practices and protocols. The cohesive articulation of the namespace requires that privacy be reframed in ways that make its diminution seem natural and inevitable. In the popular media, privacy is often depicted as the price we pay as citizens and consumers for security and convenience, respectively. This discursive ideological shift supports and underwrites the interests of state and corporate actors who leverage the ubiquitous network of digitally connected devices to engender a new regime of informational surveillance, or 'dataveillance'. The widespread practice of dataveillance represents a strengthening of the hegemonic relations between these actors—each shares an interest in promoting an emerging surveillance society, a burgeoning security politics, and a growing information economy that further empowers them to capture and store the personal information of citizens and consumers. In characterizing these shifts and the resulting crisis, I also identify points of articulation vulnerable to rearticulation and suggest strategies for transforming the namespace in ways that might empower stronger protections for privacy and related civil rights.