"It must be a system thing": information infrastructure genres as sites of inequity

Dana Comi

doi:10.1145/3507870.3507874

Communication Design Quarterly Sep 2022 Open Access

"It must be a system thing": information infrastructure genres as sites of inequity

Dana Comi Auburn University at Montgomery

Abstract

Drawing on qualitative data collected from program participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), I show how federal government assistance information infrastructure often does not remediate, and instead exacerbates, existent inequalities. I use the example of WIC's Approved Product List (APL) to show how the APL, as a genre that's part of WIC's information infrastructure, contributes to a hyper-standardized benefit redemption process that increases visibility and vulnerability for program participants. This article argues that increased attention to the genres that make up information infrastructures may help to better locate sites of inequity like the APL, and better understand how systemic/structural problems perpetuate infrastructurally.

Journal: Communication Design Quarterly
Published: 2022-09-01
DOI: 10.1145/3507870.3507874
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Open Access: OA PDF Gold
Topics: genre theory
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Cited by in this index (1)

Littlefield (2025)

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"It must be a system thing": information infrastructure genres as sites of inequity

Abstract

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

References (18) · 6 in this index

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