Author archives

Samantha McDonald is a Ph.D. Candidate in Informatics, University of California, Irvine. She studies how technology mediates civic communication between citizens and policymakers. Using theories in political representation, digital democracy, and human-computer interaction. She is investigating how the U.S. Congress use technology for constituent-communication.

How Congress turns citizens’ voices into data points

Samantha McDonald, University of California, Irvine focuses our attention on an increasingly critical issue – big technology companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google aren’t the only ones facing huge political concerns about using citizen data: So is Congress. Reports by congressional researchers over the last decade describe an outdated communication system that is struggling to address an overwhelming rise in citizen contact.

Subjects: Communications, Congress, KM, Legislative