Serendipitous Journeys: From Activism to Academia
A new CITAP story series; technology, privacy, and disability disclosure; and political stanning.
Trailblazing in Transgender Studies: Embracing Serendipity
Yesterday, we launched a new Instagram series: “Affiliates of CITAP”; the series will give insight into the research and stories of our affiliate community that you otherwise may not have a chance to hear.
We will feature some of these stories here in our newsletter, but to make sure you don’t miss any of them, follow our Instagram: @unccitap.
The first Affiliate of CITAP is TJ Billard, an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. Check out their story👇👇👇
“My career has been marked by serendipity in a lot of ways. I didn’t set out to become an academic; academia kind of happened to me. When I was an undergraduate student, I was a transgender rights activist in Washington, DC and, as a very single-minded activist, I made every course assignment I could focus on transgender topics. This was before “transgender studies” was a field in the way it is now, and a lot of the issues I was writing about weren’t yet being discussed in the mainstream of communication research. So, my professors saw in my writing something new and exciting, and I happened to be good at research, so they encouraged me to pursue a doctorate. When I then arrived at grad school, I found myself pursuing research on transgender politics at time in which it just so happened that dominant society was beginning to pay attention to and care about trans issues. So, while I often received comments early on in grad school that I was potentially limiting my career prospects by focusing so “narrowly” on transgender politics, by time I was doing my dissertation the same people who once said that to me were now exclaiming how wonderful it was that I was a trailblazer in the area. Even my access to the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), at which I conducted the ethnographic research that became my dissertation and eventually my first book, was made possible because my best friend from high school—which I attended in the Czech Republic—had been friends at college with NCTE’s communications manager and introduced us to one another. It is never lost on me just how much everything I am doing now and everything I’ve achieved as an academic has been shaped by this kind of serendipity. I happened to find professors who saw something in me I wasn’t even looking for. The world happened to change in just the right way for people to see the value of my work differently. The research sites I gained access to happened to be open to me because of an unlikely biographical intersection with someone in the right place. I feel incredibly fortunate to be here and doing this work, and the sheer luck I’ve experienced is something I never take for granted.”
TJ will be here at CITAP on February 8th for a book talk on their book, “Voices for Transgender Equality”. You can live-stream, attend in-person, and get more info here!
Internet Privacy Is A Disability Rights Issue
In this thought-provoking piece in Tech Policy Press, CITAP affiliate Ariana Aboulafia delves into the challenges faced by individuals with disabilities who are compelled to disclose sensitive health information to access essential services. The article emphasizes the limited choices faced by these individuals, highlighting instances where disclosure becomes unavoidable in scenarios like standardized testing and transportation services.
Ariana advocates for prioritizing digital privacy as a central issue in disability rights and justice, proposing measures such as data minimization (companies should only collect data that is necessary to the core functions of the provided service) and purpose limitation (companies should only use data for the original reason/ purpose it was collected). The piece underscores the need for legislative support, and for the responsibility of the privacy protection in data collection to be placed on the companies: “…the primary onus should not be placed solely on any individual to keep their information private. Instead, the companies that collect, monetize, and sell this data should be charged with protecting the privacy of that data, and legislators and companies should commit to protecting disability-related data.”
If the topic of online privacy, collective vs. individual responsibility, and how this affects marginalized groups interests you, you should check out Alice Marwick’s “The Private is Political”, where she “offers a new way of understanding how privacy is jeopardized, particularly for marginalized and disadvantaged communities—including immigrants, the poor, people of color, LGBTQ+ populations, and victims of online harassment.”
Publications and appearances
Alice Marwick’s 2021 Social Media + Society paper, “Morally Motivated Networked Harassment as Normative Reinforcement”, was discussed in a Vox article about understanding politics through the lens of fandom.
“These believers aren’t above engaging in what internet researcher Alice Marwick has termed “morally motivated networked harassment”: the simple yet profound concept that being part of an ideologically driven community allows believers to justify even the most toxic behaviors, even if their ideology is unusual and a bystander wouldn’t understand their motivations or goals as moralistic. Left to themselves, most of the people who sieged the Capitol on January 6 would probably never have been instigators; as part of a larger collective being egged on by their leader, however, they came to feel fully justified even in acts as extreme as insurrection.”
Coming soon
February
February 8th @ 3:30pm in the Freedom Forum Conference Center: CITAP is hosting TJ Billard for a book talk on their “Voices for Transgender Equality”.
Register to join online or join in-person. UNC Students are eligible for CLE credit.
March
March 20th @ 12pm in the Freedom Forum conference Center: UNC Sociology and CITAP are co-hosting speaker, Forrest Stuart. Lunch will be provided! More details to come.