Scholars Award: Technological Innovation and Networked Movements

University Of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

A major focus of Science and Technology Studies (STS) has been the interplay between the design of technological systems and the sociopolitical conditions they reflect and influence, with particular attention to Western democracies. This project looks at the struggle over the use and design of technologies in non-democratic contexts. Today, digital technologies are central to how pro-democracy movements build strength and how authoritarian regimes respond. The dynamic of mobilization and repression has been transformed by the use of new media and other technologies and, as this project demonstrates, is also affected by their continuous and contested reshaping. The analysis unpacks the practices of technological innovation that are not limited to Western industries, the role of IT talent in pro-democracy activism, and the impossibility of conducting sustained activist work in contemporary settings without attention to the design of technologies. The analysis has implications for a wide range of societies and political systems. The findings will be disseminated through high-impact scholarly publications and public-facing media. Using in-depth case study analysis, this project considers what technologies emerge as central for mobilization and repression – and how their use and design have been reshaped, under what conditions, by whom, and with what goals and effects. This research uses qualitative, inductive, grounded theory-based analysis of chronologically organized media data to reconstruct the struggles over the use and design of critical technologies between pro-democracy mobilization and the forces that aim to repress it. The analysis will contribute to new media studies, STS, and related fields, by documenting the contested and ongoing reshaping of technologies as part of the broader struggle and by offering an in-depth case study analysis of the situated practices of the reshaping of technological use and design. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.