Interfacing the semiosis of affect and crowdsourced spatialities in the context of post-panoptic surveillance. A case study of Safecity app

Abstract

ABSTRACT The current study investigates the intersection between crowdsourcing apps and postdigital affective polarization of online communities as manifested in the mobile app Safecity. The main thesis is that the embodied, affective semiosis, as enacted by the app algorithmic agency and participants’ testimonials, produces a negative discourse of fear that may regulate the spatial actions of the putative app users. Safecity algorithms discursively frame, shape, and sort the app contents, contributing to the construction of new spatial repertoires. The resulting space is of a particular hybrid spatiality. First, it is divided down by being algorithmically entextualized as abstract de-territorialized space. Second, it is reassembled in different timescapes by different participants through a series of data flows. The ways in which sporadic incidents of harassment are recorded by past participants and then (re)interpreted by algorithmic rationality, the study concludes, should be treated as may be having consequences beyond warning other users, potentially altering larger spatial realities and instantiating ideologically-based spatial inequalities.