ERIC Number: ED653704
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2024
Pages: 318
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: 979-8-3823-3033-4
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Unraveling Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Data Power: Assemblages and Narratives of a Smart Campus through an 'IoT' Pole Case Study
Elma Hajric
ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Arizona State University
Smart cities surveil through ubiquitous and intrusive data collection via networked sensors. Smart city efforts are also frequently imagined as primarily top-down and male visions of the future in service of economic benefit. The smart campus presents a new dimension of smart city urbanism as an identified gap in literature. In the following dissertation, I trace sociotechnical imaginaries of a large R1 research university as a smart campus, using an Internet of Things (IoT) pole deployment as a case study. My primary research questions consider the localized co-production and imagining of the smart campus and its implications, explored through four research approaches: (1) interviews with designers, (2) archival review (3) qualitative analysis of visual case study artifacts, and (4) student interviews supported with observational study. Key findings include parallels to existing research on smart city imaginaries based in technosolutionistic, male-dominated, science fiction visions of the future. There is a reproduction of Big Data narratives of efficiency, and top-down implementation of visions extended to the smart campus. I also identify tensions in narratives of purpose, between privacy and surveillance, and digital citizenship dynamics. I employ an intersectional feminist technoscience lens rooted in Science and Technology Studies (STS), as well as notions of data justice and data power, from Critical Data Studies (CDS), and narrative inquiry methods to examine the stabilization and legitimization of these smart campus narratives. I also incorporate analysis of gender, power, and racialized surveillance relevant to carceral imaginaries in the smart campus. With support from narrative inquiry methods, I explore rhetoric underpinning the smart campus imaginary, specifically around promises of democracy, egalitarianism, and technoutopias, tracing influences in national geopolitics, science fiction, and Silicon Valley ideology. This work contributes to existing knowledge on sociotechnical imaginaries of the smart city, documenting a genealogy as it is embedded into the urban space of the smart campus, and presenting an empirically grounded study of smart cities. This work also contributes to understandings of data as power, data assemblages, and data narratives, and to feminist technoscience literature on smart cities and the smart campus in the fields of CDS and STS. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]
Descriptors: Research Universities, Campuses, Information Technology, Design, Attitudes, Data, Privacy, Citizenship, Sex, Race, Power Structure, Technology Uses in Education, College Students, Student Attitudes, Internet
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Publication Type: Dissertations/Theses - Doctoral Dissertations; Tests/Questionnaires
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: 1828010
Author Affiliations: N/A