Governments today are actively developing and integrating digital and computational systems, transitioning into what sociologists Jenna Burrell and Ranjit Singh call the “Datafied State.” Consequently, there is increased scholarly interest in studying the growing implications of algorithms, automation, and surveillance across civic life. This panel explores the use of ethnographic methods in examining the complex relationship between computation and statecraft. How does ethnography become useful for investigating the logic and labor behind the building and maintenance of these technologies? What unique challenges exist? Our panelists, Burcu Baykurt and Chuncheng Liu, will explore these themes through cases of smart city developments in the US and social credit systems in China.
Burcu Baykurt is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research examines how digital infrastructures reshape and perpetuate durable inequalities. She is currently working on a book, Smart as a City, based on her fieldwork in an aspiring smart city in the United States.
Chuncheng Liu is a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research New England and an incoming Assistant Professor at Northeastern University. His research focuses on the sociotechnical production of data and classifications in authoritarian states. He is currently working an ethnography of a social credit system, a data-driven governance infrastructure in China.