My dissertation concerns the constraints and possibilities of agency, its discursive production in different spheres and the ways of cultivating agency in the digital network society. The research outlines possibilities for critical technology education. I am interested in how digitisation of communication and media technology as well as sociocultural meanings of mobile devices are understood and interpreted on different levels of society and what kind of alternative, potentially competing models of agency are constructed.
My theoretical framework is built on cultural media studies, critical technology research, software studies and theories of media education and supplemented with discussions on the topic from the fields of geography and law. In the four case studies, published as articles, the topics are as follows: ideal citizens in Digital Agenda for Europe, the interpellations of user-consumers in news that domesticate Google Glass, negotiating Facebook as a space for agency by users and non-users, and last, ideal agency in public discussion on coding as a new civics. The concluding reflections on critical technology education summarise the results of the different case studies and bring together different aspects of what has been written on the ways of learning agency as well as open directions for further research.
I have done my doctoral research as part of the project Network Society as a Paradigm for Legal and Societal Thinking (Academy of Finland), with a grant from Finnish Cultural Foundation (Pirkanmaa) and working as doctoral researcher at the School of Communication, Media and Theatre.
Minna Saariketo
doctoral researcher
School of Communication, Media and Theatre
University of Tampere
minna.saariketo(a)uta.fi