Court use of web-based videoconferencing software like Zoom to host court hearings grew exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shifting hearings online has had some benefits—it has reduced travel time for participants and allowed the courts to conduct hearings during government shutdown, for example. There is hope that these video hearings can help courts rectify longstanding access barriers that have made the courts less accessible than they should be to people with limited economic resources, those socially marginalized due to their racial, language, or other group membership, those without attorney representation, and/or those living with disabilities. Yet, prior court technologies like electronic filing have disproportionately benefited those with resources and legal training instead, and early empirical research on video hearings shows a similar trend. This dual-sided relationship between injustice and court communication technology creates a paradox: How can court communication technology support equal access when it creates its own injustices?
Communication scholarship offers a fresh perspective to this intractable problem. Drawing on communication technology affordances, software design justice, and political philosopher Amartya Sen’s ideas on injustice-reduction, this dissertation proposes a normative, analytical framework—the Justice Enhancing Communication Technologies (JECT) Framework. The framework provides philosophical grounding for collaborative efforts aimed at re-imagining court technologies alongside the communities that have been harmed by them.
The JECT framework consists of five analytical steps tailored towards discovering the just actions courts can take when using communication technologies:1) listening for the manifest injustice,
2) acknowledging and apologizing for the institution’s role in the injustice,
3) understanding the communicative aspects of the injustice,
4) committing to address the injustice, and
5) cooperatively planning, implementing, and evaluating with members of the public.
These steps point those dedicated to enhancing court access towards injustice-reducing action.
The framework can be used by communication scholars and others that study the courts, court information technology practitioners, judges and court staff that utilize the technologies, court program evaluators, and court diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants. To illustrate how the framework can be utilized, the dissertation applies it to an illustrative, empirical case study of video hearings. / Media & Communication
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/9538 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Lemire-Garlic, Nicole, 0000-0002-8988-5188 |
| Contributors | Kogen, Lauren, Jacobson, Thomas L., 1952-, Iliadis, Andrew, Crable, Bryan, 1970- |
| Publisher | Temple University. Libraries |
| Source Sets | Temple University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 236 pages |
| Rights | IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/9500, Theses and Dissertations |
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