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Dissertation
"Ain't nobody saving us except us": an analysis of digital surveillance & vigilantism on personal safety platforms
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
May 2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00011030
Abstract
This dissertation analyzes digital personal safety apps (specifically, Citizen and WatchOutPhilly) as social instruments of user-implemented discourses that performatively construct and regulate perceptions of crime and safety in both online and offline contexts. Critical Discourse Analysis and content analysis are employed to investigate the use of lateral surveillance and digital vigilantism on social media platforms, which are often touted as alternative methods to the traditional criminal justice system. The findings reveal that user comments put forward rhetorics of individual responsibility and personal safety; engage in discursive policing; construct the problematic of presumed guilt; and bolster the uses of digital surveillance and vigilantism. Nations that rely on the notion of fair trial, and the assumption that the accused are innocent until proven guilty, are currently relying on citizen technologies that obliterate these notions and replace them with the hypervisibility of user-created surveillance and commentary that occurs prior to any institutional intervention. The private aspects of punishment, including the prison and court systems, have once again become more public with the use of popular social media applications that are accessible by anyone armed with a smartphone.
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Details
- Title
- "Ain't nobody saving us except us"
- Creators
- Janna Marie MacPherson
- Contributors
- Rachel R. Reynolds (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- v, 144 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- College of Arts and Sciences; Communication, Culture, and Media; Communication; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991022058735904721