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KILLER APPS AND SICK USERS: TECHNOLOGY, DISEASE, AND
DIFFERENTIAL ANALYSIS
by
David Travers Scott
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)
May 2010
Copyright 2010 David Travers Scott
Object Description
| Title | Killer apps and sick users: technology, disease, and differential analysis |
| Author | Scott, David Travers |
| Author email | dtraversscott@mac.com; dtraversscott@gmail.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Communication |
| School | Annenberg School for Communication |
| Date defended/completed | 2010-02-03 |
| Date submitted | 2010 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2010-03-09 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Banet-Weiser, Sarah |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Balsamo, Anne Kun, Josh Thomas, Doug |
| Abstract | Throughout the history of electric communication technologies, popular, journalistic, and scholarly discourses have suggested that such devices cause or worsen various forms of mental and physical distress. This dissertation gathers evidence of such associations, or “technopathologies,” since the telegraph, organizing them into a typology of five common disease patterns. Using historiography, discourse analysis, focus groups, and textual analysis, these patterns are examined for what they suggest about expectations of normal and abnormal technology use and technology users. Additionally, technopathological discourses are examined for the cultural work they perform, found to be normalizing, gendering, individualizing, blaming the user, distracting from systemic concerns, reinforcing other vectors of social pathologization, promoting ongoing self-assessment, demonizing collectivity, and naturalizing sickness as part of usership. Representations of technopathologies are analyzed drawing on approaches from visual studies, sound studies, and feminism and gender studies. The latter two also inform this project on a larger theoretical and methodological level. I am attempting to develop a form of “differential analysis,” which appropriates approaches and insights from feminism and gender studies to examine difference in culture more broadly, not exclusively in terms of women or gender. This is a first step toward developing a broader generalized theory of difference with accompanying methodological palette. |
| Keyword | technology; disease; gender; feminism; cultural studies; Foucault; pathologization; media; history; cinema, users; communication; difference |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m2870 |
| Rights | Scott, David Travers |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | http://www.usc.edu/isd/libraries/services/ask_a_librarian/email/ |
| Filename | etd-Scott-3540 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume40/etd-Scott-3540.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Full text | KILLER APPS AND SICK USERS: TECHNOLOGY, DISEASE, AND DIFFERENTIAL ANALYSIS by David Travers Scott A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (COMMUNICATION) May 2010 Copyright 2010 David Travers Scott |
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