Interfacing the semiosis of affect and crowdsourced spatialities in the context of post-panoptic surveillance. A case study of Safecity app

ABSTRACT

The current study investigates the intersection between crowdsourcing apps and postdigital affective polarization of online communities as manifested in the mobile app Safecity. The main thesis is that the embodied, affective semiosis, as enacted by the app algorithmic agency and participants’ testimonials, produces a negative discourse of fear that may regulate the spatial actions of the putative app users. Safecity algorithms discursively frame, shape, and sort the app contents, contributing to the construction of new spatial repertoires. The resulting space is of a particular hybrid spatiality. First, it is divided down by being algorithmically entextualized as abstract de-territorialized space. Second, it is reassembled in different timescapes by different participants through a series of data flows. The ways in which sporadic incidents of harassment are recorded by past participants and then (re)interpreted by algorithmic rationality, the study concludes, should be treated as may be having consequences beyond warning other users, potentially altering larger spatial realities and instantiating ideologically-based spatial inequalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Affective spaces
• crowdsourcing apps
• DADS
• post-panopticism
• surveillance assemblage
• semiotics of affect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 To avoid confusion, the study uses the term “participants” to refer to human and non-human actors participating in producing the discourse of Safecity. For instance, it refers to the algorithm regulating the interface of the app and to the “humans”; those who participate in the crowdsourcing process by submitting online testimonials and mini-narrative about harassment experiences. Meanwhile, the word user(s) are deployed to refer to those who interact with the app for different reasons (e.g. getting information about a particular space, using or posting this information in different platforms … etc.).

2 Intra-action is a term by the postdigital scholar Barad (2007) which is meant to replace the term “interaction” and its implications of the involvement of two independent entities in a given course of action. Intra-action translates agency as a relational embodiment of dependent entities that come into being through intra-acting with each other, refuting the presence of pre-determined agencies that then participate in action with each other.

3 In Latour”s actor-network theory (ANT), the term “translation” is an ANTian metaphor which refers to the process through which social, natural, technological or cultural notions are represented, simplified, and transformed by an actant, whether human or non-human. That is, a single entity of networked interaction performs an agential role and speaks or acts on behalf of other actors/actants.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rania Magdi Fawzy

Rania Magdi Fawzy is an associate professor of applied linguistics. She is an editorial board member for Discourse Context & Media, Elsevier. Fawzy’s work in Linguistics cuts across and contributes to research and debates within wide range of interrelated disciplines including Sociology, Communication, Journalism, Political Science and Virtual Reality genres. Her areas of research interest include pragmatics, social semiotics and multimodality, with a present focus on understanding communication in a post-digital era and algorithmic governance.