Alternative Futures: Digital Apps and the Governance and Experience of 'Slow Emergencies'

'Alternative Futures' will explore how digital apps are used by
marginalised communities and individuals to disrupt and re-order
'slow emergencies' - understood as situations of ongoing and
endemic harm or damage which gradually wear down people and
populations. A key characteristic of 'slow emergencies' are that
people affected by them or concerned by them need to make claims
that seemingly ordinary situations should be treated as
'emergencies': occasions necessitating an urgent response from
some kind of governing authority. The project focuses on how apps
have emerged as a key way of rendering slow emergencies visible,
means of mitigating their effects, and a resource for making claims
or demands to governmental agencies for further action to end or
alleviate the situation of harm or damage. Through case studies of
apps developed in relation to three slow emergencies, racism, antirefugee discrimination, and state withdrawal and homelessness, the
project will look at how apps are designed, rationalised, and
promoted by organisations concerned with justice, and used by
people living with situations of ongoing harm. It will use a
combination of interface analysis, mobile ethnographies, and in depth interviews with users, app designers, and organisations
working in relation to each of the three areas. The result will be the
first study of the use of apps as a way of living through and
attempting to end slow emergencies.