How Do You Turn a Mobile Device into a Political Tool?

Abstract

This paper reports on findings from an ongoing study of recent software applications that attempt to turn mobile ICT’s into political tools. The software in question endeavors to make new types of political behavior expressible for ICT users. Two troubling trends were found. The first involves incommensurability between backend databases and the data traces generated by users. The second involves the production of data and metadata vulnerabilities. As part of discussing these trends, the authors introduce the idea of “minor apps” and argue for their importance within discussions of sociotechnical aspects of digital infrastructure.