The corporate cultivation of digital resignation

By Nora A Draper, Joseph Turow. New Media & Society, 2019

340 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The aim of this article is to propose a theoretical framework for studying digital resignation, the condition produced when people desire to control the information digital entities have about them but feel unable to do so. We build on the growing body of research that identifies feelings of futility regarding companies’ respect for consumer privacy by suggesting a link between these feelings and the activities of the companies they benefit. We conceptualize digital resignation as a rational response to consumer surveillance. We further argue that routine corporate practices encourage this sense of helplessness. Illuminating the dynamics of this sociopolitical phenomenon creates a template for addressing important questions about the forces that shape uneven power relationships between companies and publics in the digital age.

Subfields: Information Systems, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f57418d23d7c3bf6626b36a6f8b7a51f5dd9aa2f

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In Information Systems

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Transparency you can trust: Transparency requirements for artificial intelligence between legal norms and contextual concerns (2019, background): “…high switching costs, a lack of functional interoperable alternatives, and the fact that AI systems are increasingly becoming part of our daily infrastructure (West, 2019) mean that users are in a structurally disadvantaged position, with little agency to make demands (Draper and Turow, 2019).”
Secrets and Likes: The Drive for Privacy and the Difficulty of Achieving It in the Digital Age (2020, background): “Draper and Turow (2019) propose that people’s apparent inaction regarding privacy issues is the result of a sense of helplessness they refer to as “digital resignation.””