Composition Forum 51, Spring 2023
http://compositionforum.com/issue/51/

Review of Estee Beck and Les Hutchinson Campos’ edited collection Privacy Matters: Conversations about Surveillance within and beyond the Classroom

Sidney Turner

Beck, Estee, and Les Hutchinson Campos, eds. Privacy Matters: Conversations about Surveillance within and beyond the Classroom. Utah State UP, 2021.

Estee Beck and Les Hutchinson Campos open their edited collection, Privacy Matters: Conversations about Surveillance within and beyond the Classroom, by reflecting on the 2013 events surrounding Edward Snowden’s public leaking and circulating of classified CIA documents. Snowden’s actions unveiled the truth of America as a surveillance state, sparking public discourse about citizen rights to data privacy and surveillance transparency (Beck and Hutchinson Campos 8). Privacy Matters acknowledges that the public participates in the surveillance state in exchange for convenience as people navigate the social and professional demands of everyday life. However, the editors emphasize the need to question how our digital footprints impact our lives in positive but potentially dangerous ways. Published during a wave of digital surveillance scholarship (Licastro and Miller; Reyman and Sparby), Privacy Matters serves as a resource for understanding the ways that surveillance practices inform and constrain composing practices in and outside of the classroom. As rhetoric and writing scholars, Beck and Hutchinson Campos argue “privacy matters precisely because everyone remains entrenched in a data-brokerage system that largely goes unchallenged or modified without active, collective resistance and protest” (8). The central argument made by the collection is that digital literacy needs to encompass an understanding of how the surveillance state lurks over, tracks, and influences practices of digital composing. Readers will walk away with strategies and activities for developing critical digital literacy in the classroom and a deep understanding of how our professional and private lives are intertwined with the surveillance state.

Privacy Matters is divided into three sections: Part I: Surveillance and Classrooms, Part II: Surveillance and Bodies, and Part III: Surveillance and Culture. There are of course gaps in the collection, and Beck and Hutchinson Campos are transparent about the fact they “had hoped to include chapters that consider surveillance’s effects on ability, gender, and sexual identity” (12). This acknowledgement can be read as encouragement for scholars to take up research on subjects that are not highlighted in the collection. For instance, one timely topic not addressed in the collection is that with the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2020, those who use menstrual cycle tracking apps continue to face fears of digital reproductive health tracking. Readers may find the collection’s organization disjointed across the three sections; Part I could stand alone as the only section that addresses student learning in a classroom setting, whereas the following two sections widen the scope of concern to that of institutional forces, recreational practices, and ways that identity is shaped by surveillance practices and technologies. Additionally, with the internal citing of fellow collection contributors teasing proceeding chapters, readers should not feel obliged to read the collection in chronological order. This collection compels readers to question surveillance’s pervasive hold on their lives, providing an entry point to further explore the topics raised by contributing authors and be inspired to conduct research and engage in conversation beyond the scope of the book.

Part I: Surveillance and Classrooms is geared toward writing instructors seeking tools and strategies to guide the development of student critical digital literacy skills. Colleen A. Reilly opens the collection with the chapter, Critical Digital Literacies and Online Surveillance. This chapter shares a pedagogical rationale, assignment instructions, and student outcomes for two research-based assignments that can be adapted for lower- and upper-level writing courses. These assignments utilize tools like Lightbeam and Ghostery that empower users to locate active surveillance tracking technology, increase awareness of digital surveillance, and mitigate data mining. Reilly argues that “[i]nstructors have a responsibility to arm students with critical digital literacies that facilitate that empowerment” (32). Reilly’s commitment to helping students recognize the “privacy paradox” underlying digital composing, speaks to her commitment to expand student digital literacies (33). Knowing that data collection tools are in a state of constant flux, Reilly emphasizes the importance of establishing digital literacy skills to develop critical awareness of the questions students, scholars, and the public should be asking to reveal how privacy is compromised.

In chapter two, Tinker, Teacher, Shaker, Spy: Negotiating Surveillance in Online Collaborative Writing Spaces, Jenae Cohn, Norah Fahim, and John Peterson share narratives of their classroom experiences fostering student agency through Google Docs-based assignments. The co-authors invite deep conversation about options for incorporating surveillance technology as collaborative learning tools. Cohn et al. are honest about when classroom assignments do not go as planned. For instance, Peterson reveals that his research ethos activity resulted in some students misinterpreting Google as a reliable search engine without questioning its limitations. The underlying message of chapters one and two draw on Stuart Selber’s critical digital literacy definition, reiterating the urgency to develop student digital literacy by providing “students a framework for negotiating the pitfalls of the contemporary digital landscape” (Cohn et al. 37). When reflecting on the thread of evaluating the political conditions of surveillance reliant teaching tools (Cohn et al. 38), the reader may wonder how the authors would expand on this chapter given the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on education. For instance, it would be interesting to explore how surveillance became more prevalent in classrooms given the mass shift to hybrid and online learning environments at the height of the pandemic.

Part I concludes with Gavin P. Johnson’s chapter, Grades as a Technology of Surveillance: Normalization, Control, and Big Data in the Teaching of Writing, which ambitiously extends the thread of evaluating pedagogical reliance on digital surveillance shifting focus to evaluating grading systems as a two-level surveillance technology. Johnson argues that “[t]his chapter, however, is not an attempt to offer advice on grading or soothe anxieties; instead, I address issues of power and control embedded in grading, as well as the methodologies that use grades to build and reify neoliberal educational infrastructures” (54-55). Instructors reading this chapter are encouraged to expand their own digital literacy, considering the surveillance that is embedded in their assessment and feedback practices of choice (56).

Part II: Surveillance and Bodies begins with Dustin Edwards’s chapter, Deep Circulation, that confronts the reader with the realities of how physical bodies are surveilled through our own circulation practices, even when our movements feel removed from digital spaces. Edwards sets the foundation for the remaining collection chapters by establishing how embodiment is a surveillance thread beyond traditional composing practices. Through the rhetorical analysis of Edwards’ own experience using Mywellness Cloud at his local YMCA, he introduces and frames the concept of “deep circulation,” which dually serves as an ethical and political lens contemplating the role of “deep citizenship” while accounting for how embodied circulation practices are tied to surveillance. Defining deep circulation as “the multiplicity of flows produced through acts of embodied composing,” Edwards emphasizes that circulation occurs simultaneously across multiple flows including affective, textual, and infrastructural flow (75-76). A lens of deep circulation reveals how “what once was a moving body on a treadmill has now been abstracted into a deep circulation, flows harnessed to build aggregated data profiles that will travel still farther to third-party intermediaries and on and on” (87).

In chapter five, Digital Literacy in an Age of Pervasive Surveillance: A Case of Wearable Technology, Jason Tham and Ann Hill Duin bring the reader back to the context of academic institutions and digital literacy by discussing pervasive technology and outlining an argument for the expansion of “digital literacies’ to encompass privacy, surveillance and pervasive computing” (Tham and Hill Duin 94). Tham and Hill Duin analyze a singular case study of pervasive data collection through wearable technology as they critique the Fitbit integration program at Oral Roberts University. Optimistically, the authors suggest that a participatory model for concerned parties, such as rhetoric scholars, to negotiate with institutions is a potential solution to combat the pervasive collection of student data. Tham and Hill Duin’s work is interesting to consider alongside scholars who write with a focus on the affective, embodied experiences influenced by surveillance infrastructures embedded in wearable technology (Kennedy, Wilson and Tschider; Hutchinson and Novonty).

In chapter six, entitled Gotta Watch ‘Em All: Privacy, Social Gameplay, and Writing in Augmented Reality Games, Stephanie Vie and Jennifer Roth Miller analyze the digital writing of Pokémon Go’s Terms of Service and community forum spaces. Pokémon Go is a socially networked alternative reality gaming app, and the authors use the game as an example for how surveillance, digital gaming, and reliance on user-generated data collide. Vie and Miller unpack how digital writing is a tool for corporations to constrain privacy through data collection and surveillance, and also for the public to resist and demand change of policies that infringe on privacy rights (123). This chapter asks readers to contemplate how the writing surrounding these games, be it the legal terms of service, the way that gamers interact with one another in game, or when personal data is breached, abuse individual rights and how to resist moments of such abuse. Moving across the contexts of personal fitness and health tracking to that of recreational game play, Part II brings attention to how reliance on surveillance technology for personal convenience, bettering health, joining community, and accessibility have embodied and legal ramifications. Readers should question how seemingly innocent technology can compromise data privacy as stakeholders of surveillance technology exploit users who potentially lack digital literacy or are dependent on the technology for personal or professional reasons.

Part III: Surveillance and Culture broadens the scope of surveillance inquiry to community activism, considering the colonial roots of surveillance strategies and ways that digital composing can reshape the identity of individuals and communities. In chapter seven, The Perils of The Public Professoriate: On Surveillance, Social Media, and Identity-Avoidant Frameworks, Christina Cedillo “[argues] that surveillance’s reliance on datafication and dataveillance bolsters social regulation targeting members of vulnerable populations through identity avoidance, the deliberate erasure of identity in social interactions” (131). Digital data is never neutral, Cedillo argues, with surveillance efforts influencing how people regulate their digital composing practices, surveil the digital habits of others, and partake in the parasitic relationship between surveillance and media design. Through “identity-avoidant frameworks,” Cedillo shares real-world case studies of scholars Steven Salaita, Saida Grundy, and Daniel Brewster whose Twitter engagement resulted in identity-based attacks, cyber-harassment, identity erasure, and negative impacts on their careers. These examples illustrate how “surveillance technologies naturalize the dominant perspective’s authority to use identity markers to organize the physical and digital worlds” (Cedillo 143). Cedillo encourages scholars to continue researching how colonial and oppressive designs inform the cultivation and interpretation of digital data.

Santos F. Ramos concludes this section with chapter eight, Cultural Political Organizing: Rewriting the Latinx ‘Criminal/Immigrant’ Narrative of Surveillance. Going a step further than Cedillo, Ramos traces the colonial roots of surveillance to Pedro de Mendoza, a Spanish conquistador of the early sixteenth century who surveilled Indigenous communities by recording customs of P’urhépecha people as research for future conquest. However, the core focus of the chapter is how surveillance is being counteracted through cultural political organizing, as Latinx communities counter the criminal/immigrant narratives perpetrated and perpetuated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation actions and social media rhetoric (Ramos 156). Ultimately, “surveillance of Latinx (whether digital or not) is also a rhetorical struggle over identity” (162), and Ramos shares that to understand this identity formation “space must also be made for interpreting the technologies from that community’s cultural perspective” (152). A compelling element of this chapter is how Ramos’ highlighting of Latinx communities actively engaging in digital countersurveillance is a source of inspiration and a potential model for individuals and other communities to enact resistance against surveillance violence.

Closing out the collection, Dànielle Nicole DeVoss, in Epilogue: Writing in a Culture of Surveillance, Datafication, and Datafictions, articulates that a core takeaway of the collection is that “privacy impacts identity.” DeVoss contributes a list of questions inspired by the preceding chapters that can function as guided reading questions or as a starting point to inspire deep discussion about data surveillance in undergraduate and graduate courses. The collection begins with and ends with a call to action, speaking directly to scholars of rhetoric and writing, encouraging readers to recognize their ability to understand the depths of their participation in digital surveillance networks. Beck and Hutchinson Campos ask readers to pause and consider the ways that the technology we rely so heavily for research, recreation, and building community shape identities, influence embodied experiences, and inform development of digital literacy in and outside of classroom contexts. Ultimately, the chapters assembled reflect a compelling argument for why writing scholars should prioritize data collection, privacy, and surveillance as sites of inquiry, conversation, and social action from the positions of instructors, citizens, community members, and individuals.

Works Cited

Hutchinson, Les, and Maria Novonty. Teaching a Critical Digital Literacy of Wearables: A Feminist Surveillance as Care Pedagogy. Computers and Composition, vol. 50, 2018, pp. 105-120.

Kennedy, Krista, Noah Wilson, Charlotte Tschider. Balancing the Halo: Data Surveillance Disclosure and Algorithmic Opacity in Smart Hearing Aids. Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, vol. 4, no. 1, 2021.

Licastro, Amanda, and Benjamin Miller, eds. Composition and Big Data. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021.

Reyman, Jessica, and Erika Sparby, eds. Digital Ethics: Rhetoric and Responsibility in Online Aggression. Routledge, 2019.

Selber, Stuart. Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2004.