A collective featuring two Texas A&M University-Commerce faculty members is the recipient of a monetary award that will be used to establish a digital rhetorical privacy lab on the university campus.
Dr. Charles Woods and Dr. Gavin Johnson, both assistant professors in the Department of Literature and Languages at A&M-Commerce, are advisory board members of the Digital Rhetorical Privacy Collective (DRPC), a project Woods founded in 2022. The collective, which currently includes representatives from five universities across the U.S., describes itself as a coalitional action undertaken to continue to better understand the importance of digital privacy for ending oppression in American society and building an equitable future for all.
In February, the DRPC was honored with the Emergent Researcher Award by the National Council of Teachers of English at their Conference on College Composition and Communication. The monetary award of just under $2,000, while small, is seen as a seed to begin funding a lab space on the A&M-Commerce campus dedicated to digital rhetorical privacy research.
One of the goals of the collective is to create a collaborative space dedicated to fostering research into what digital privacy truly is, as well as thinking collectively about a complex issue.
“Digital privacy is such a complex subject that I think a lot of us suffer from what Charles has called ‘privacy apathy,'” Johnson said. “How do we work to make digital privacy something people care about and not just click ‘agree' on a privacy policy without reading through it at all?”
Woods and Johnson describe the Emergent Researcher Award as a “ringing endorsement” of their work.
“While we didn't get a huge monetary sum to immediately start a lab space, this is still exciting because this is our seed,” Woods said. “This is the starting point for us to potentially go out and receive more grants because it shows there is value in the work we are doing.”
The proposed research lab would also be a place to work with campus and community partners on privacy issues, while valuing diverse perspectives on the issues surrounding digital privacy and fostering the work of emerging scholars.
