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Evans, Ben; Frumkin, Lara; Coopamootoo, Kovila; Jesus, Vitor and Little, Sabine (2022). Digital technologies, power and control: A review of how organisations can empower individuals and communities to develop trust, uphold their privacy and curate their identity in a secure digital environment. University of Manchester.
URL: https://spritehub.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/D...
Abstract
This document brings together a range of disparate and relational paradigms, raising awareness about how power asymmetries between individuals, communities and organisations can be configured during digitally-mediated interaction. The starting point for this work is a definition for individuals as moral beings who must retain power necessary to make personal choices. These choices are the result of personally-held assumptions, expectations, beliefs, aspirations, thoughts, judgments, and feelings.
Accepting that societal communication is increasingly digitally-mediated, if individuals do not have access to digital technology, they become ‘information poor’ and thereafter, socially excluded from developing and communicating personal choices. To explore these digitally-mediated power and control polemics, definitions for the TIPS agenda (trust, identity, privacy and security) are introduced. A theoretical review of power and control, based on theories of social capital, personal/local/cultural forces and the role of resources, is also presented. To substantiate discussions around power, control and TIPS, findings from research carried out by The Digital Technologies, Power and Control Working Group (DTPCWG) is presented. These findings raise acute concerns around:
● a community’s propensity to trust in digital environments;
● the urgent need to develop digital identity solutions which provide users with choices about what data to self-assert and when;
● acute privacy invasions such as the use of patients’ phone cameras during online medical appointments;
● the lack of transparency around how organisations collect, interpret and share personal data;
● the necessity for individuals to enter into a privacy trade-off with organisations simply to access products and services;
● the extent to which organisations intentionally make privacy policies difficult to access and understand;
● the use of centralised data management strategies as opposed to adopting a peer-to-peer, encrypted blockchain technology to maintain data security.
Responding to these DTPCWG findings, part three of this document undertakes a comprehensive, literature-based review to propose how organisations can help communities retain better control over their digital resources. This is first achieved by investigating how to engender consumer trust in digital settings. This is accompanied by a discussion about how community awareness and organisation-led strategies can help individuals retain the power to control their privacy in online environments.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
