Research and Publications - School of Library and Information Studies

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Browsing Research and Publications - School of Library and Information Studies by Author "Sweeney, Miriam E."

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    Caring is Connecting: AI Digital Assistants and the Surveillance of Elderly and Disabled Family Members in the Home
    (Routledge, 2023) Sweeney, Miriam E.
    This chapter provides an overview of AI digital assistants as surveillant data-gathering devices in the home that are marketed as ideal caregivers for modern home management. Using Alexa Together as one example, this chapter considers how the frame of caregiving may be leveraged to “smooth” people’s concerns about privacy and data gathering, while justifying intensified surveillance for elder adults and disabled family members as a function of market segmentation. The framing of surveillant technologies as caregivers both reflects and reproduces the extractive logics of algorithmic culture that transforms social relationships into opportunities for data gathering. This chapter argues that a key feature of AI urbanism is the access to intimate and personal data in the home as a resource that that can be commoditized and integrated into urban governance and planning. These concepts are critical for theorizing the role of AI digital assistants within broader autonomous processes of urban living and governance associated with AI urbanism.
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    Designing the “Good Citizen” through Latina Identity in USCIS’s Virtual Assistant “Emma”
    (Taylor & Francis, 2019-07-25) Sweeney, Miriam E.; Villa-Nicholas, Melissa; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    Virtual assistants are increasingly integrated as ‘user-friendly’ interfaces for e-government services. This research investigates the case study of the virtual assistant, ‘Emma,’ that is integrated into the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website. We conduct an interface analysis of Emma, along with the USCIS website, and related promotional materials, to explore the cultural affordances of Latina identity as a strategic design for this virtual assistant. We argue that the Emma interface makes normative claims about citizenship and inclusion in an attempt to ‘hail’ Latinx users as ideal citizens. We find that the ‘ideal’ citizen is defined through the Emma interface as an assimilated citizen-consumer that engages with digital technologies in ways that produce them as informationally ‘legible’ to the state.
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    Digital Assistants
    (2019) Sweeney, Miriam E.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    In machine learning, "uncertainty" describes the margin of error of a given measurement as a range of values most likely to contain the "true" data value. A critical cultural approach to digital assistants reframes uncertainty into a strategy of inquiry that foregrounds the range of cultural values embedded in digital assistants. This is particularly useful for exposing what sorts of ideological "truths" are enclosed and/or foreclosed as part and parcel of the design, implementation, and use of these technologies. Exploring the anthropomorphic design of digital assistants through feminist and critical race lenses requires us to confront how dominant ideologies about race, gender and technology forma a kind of cultural infrastructure that undergirds technology design and practice. From this perspective, uncertainties emerge about the "common sense" of anthropomorphic design of digital assistants, particularly surrounding how this design strategy is employed in ways that target vulnerable communities at the behest of state, corporate, and commercial interests.
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    Educating for Social Justice: Perspectives from Library and Information Science and Collaboration with K-12 Social Studies Educators
    (2015) Naidoo, Jamie Campbell; Sweeney, Miriam E.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
    Library and Information Science (LIS) as a discipline is guided by core values that emphasize equal access to information, freedom of expression, democracy, and education. Importantly, diversity and social responsibility are specifically called out as foundations of the profession (American Library Association, 2004). Following from this, there has been a focus in LIS on educating librarians from a social justice perspective. In this essay we will discuss some of the strategies we use for training librarians to practice librarianship using a social justice framework as a way to help social studies teachers and other educators critically think through their role in educating for social justice in their classrooms. Some areas of particular transference from LIS to K-12 educators that we focus on include locating classroom technologies as sites of power and privilege, prioritizing print and digital materials representative of culturally diverse populations and relevant contexts, and expanding the notion of literacy to include multiple literacies. These strategies lay a foundation for a critically-oriented classroom as a step towards teaching for social justice, and provide opportunities for collaboration between social studies educators and librarians.
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    Segregated Libraries, Then and Now
    Sweeney, Miriam E.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa