Sociotechnical imaginaries of safety and reporting technologies in US higher education

Thesis

This dissertation thesis titled “Sociotechnical imaginaries of safety and reporting technologies in US higher education” examines how reporting technologies reconfigure the ecosystem of campus safety in US higher education. Reporting technologies refer to case management systems for incident reporting developed by third-party vendors and implemented by campus administrators for use by students. In this thesis, I apply Jasanoff and Kim’s (2015) concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to argue that product vendors, campus administrators, and students’ sociotechnical imaginaries of safety mediate how they articulate and experience campus safety. The central contention of this thesis is that ideas about sexual violence and technology mutually shape sociotechnical imaginaries of safety that mediate how vendors, campus administrators, and students perceive and experience campus safety.

This thesis is organized as follows: (1) a brief cultural, sociopolitical, and legal backdrop of campus safety policies and practices through which ideas about sexual violence and technology co-produce safety imaginaries; (2) two case studies of reporting technologies—LiveSafe and Callisto—that trace the sociotechnical imaginaries that mediate the design process; and (3) ethnographically informed examination of how each reporting system operates on campus grounds to mediate the relationship between campus authorities and students. The concluding chapter considers directions in gender and sexuality studies, human-computer interaction (HCI), and science and technology studies (STS) for future scholarship.

Authors: Sim, KJ

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-nymmzy6xe
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: sociotechnical imaginaries; title IX; sexual assault; case management system; higher education; information and communication technology; reporting
• Subjects: Media and communication; Gender and sexuality