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Harms of digital capital: Social harm analysis of online public resistance and information pollution

Harms of digital capital: Social harm analysis of online public resistance and information pollution
Harms of digital capital: Social harm analysis of online public resistance and information pollution
Criminological studies of social harms extensively document intersections of power and the production of harm, revealing how the actions of the powerful in the public and private sectors expose (typically) less powerful groups to harm, often with impunity. Whilst this scholarship provides much needed insight into the often minimised or dismissed harms of the powerful, attention must also be paid to the agency of the victimised and the outcomes of their active efforts to resist such harms, especially in a digital context where concepts such as ‘power’ and ‘capital’ might take a different meaning. To this end, this paper expands existing criminological scholarship on social harms by providing new insights on how the dynamics of resistance by ordinary citizens, that is, people not generally considered part of the powerful capitalist elite, can nevertheless produce secondary social harms. The paper uses the example of online resistance to the COVID-19 digital tracing ‘track and trace’ app in England and Wales to unravel how ordinary citizens utilise their agency to resist the perceived harms of powerful actors whilst at the same time producing the secondary social harm of information pollution.
2398-2764
249–269
Lavorgna, Anita
6e34317e-2dda-42b9-8244-14747695598c
Ugwudike, Pamela
2faf9318-093b-4396-9ba1-2291c8991bac
Sanchez, Yadira
d36375c5-6d9e-4723-a0f9-b47ed58661a8
Lavorgna, Anita
6e34317e-2dda-42b9-8244-14747695598c
Ugwudike, Pamela
2faf9318-093b-4396-9ba1-2291c8991bac
Sanchez, Yadira
d36375c5-6d9e-4723-a0f9-b47ed58661a8

Lavorgna, Anita, Ugwudike, Pamela and Sanchez, Yadira (2022) Harms of digital capital: Social harm analysis of online public resistance and information pollution. Justice, Power and Resistance, 5 (3), 249–269. (doi:10.1332/NIDD5240).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Criminological studies of social harms extensively document intersections of power and the production of harm, revealing how the actions of the powerful in the public and private sectors expose (typically) less powerful groups to harm, often with impunity. Whilst this scholarship provides much needed insight into the often minimised or dismissed harms of the powerful, attention must also be paid to the agency of the victimised and the outcomes of their active efforts to resist such harms, especially in a digital context where concepts such as ‘power’ and ‘capital’ might take a different meaning. To this end, this paper expands existing criminological scholarship on social harms by providing new insights on how the dynamics of resistance by ordinary citizens, that is, people not generally considered part of the powerful capitalist elite, can nevertheless produce secondary social harms. The paper uses the example of online resistance to the COVID-19 digital tracing ‘track and trace’ app in England and Wales to unravel how ordinary citizens utilise their agency to resist the perceived harms of powerful actors whilst at the same time producing the secondary social harm of information pollution.

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Harms of digital capital - Accepted Manuscript
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Accepted/In Press date: 6 October 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 15 November 2022
Published date: 15 November 2022

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 471285
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/471285
ISSN: 2398-2764
PURE UUID: 50726237-155d-47e0-bfa4-2437b76ddc94
ORCID for Anita Lavorgna: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-8484-1613
ORCID for Pamela Ugwudike: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1084-7796
ORCID for Yadira Sanchez: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-0998-3325

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Date deposited: 02 Nov 2022 17:37
Last modified: 05 Oct 2024 02:06

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