The Power-Enhancing and Power-Diminishing Effects of Digital Technologies: Marginalized People and US Racial Authoritarianism

The United States continues to evade scrutiny as a place that actively represses, expels, and rules over subsets of its population. This oversight has foreclosed investigation into the empirical relationship between digital technologies, civic engagement, and political control in the United States. For example, how are digital technologies used as a resource for the individual and collective power of marginalized people? How are digital technologies deployed to suppress or disorganize the individual and collective power of marginalized people? To integrate existing work and generate new lines of inquiry, we offer an analytical framework that centers the experiences of marginalized groups, interrogates the United States as a racial authoritarian democratic regime, and examines how institutions and actors leverage digital technologies in a complex political landscape. We argue that digital technologies can have both enhancing and destructive effects on the civic engagement and collective power of marginalized groups in the United States.