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Chamee Yang

Seoul National University · Social Sciences

About the Lab

Professor Chamee Yang's research lab specializes in the sociotechnical dynamics of urban surveillance, smart city development, and data-driven governance in contemporary East Asia, with a particular focus on South Korea. The lab investigates how digital technologies—ranging from smart stadiums and contact tracing systems to in-car video surveillance and urban analytics—reshape urban life, safety, and individual agency. Central to the lab’s work is a critical examination of the cultural, ethical, and political dimensions of smart urbanism, especially the tensions between security, privacy, and autonomy. The lab also explores how technological innovations are embedded in long-standing national narratives around development, security, and modernity.

smart citiesurban surveillancedata governancesociotechnical systemsurban security

Research Overview

Papers
9
Total Citations
84
Papers (5y)
9
Primary Field
Social Sciences

Research Output Trend

Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.

Publications per year (5y)
9total
2019
2020
2022
2024
Citations per year (5y)
84total
2019202020222024

Selected Papers

9
1
Article|39 citations·2020
Smart Stadium as a Laboratory of Innovation: Technology, Sport, and Datafied Normalization of the Fans
Chamee Yang, Cheryl L. Cole
SJR Q1Communication & Sport

This article addresses the relationship between the contemporary development of the “smart” stadium and changing norms of innovation in sports. Given the evolving forms of smart technologies blurring the boundaries between the actual and mediated domains of sports, an approach that grapples with the broad sociotechnical dynamics within and around sport is necessary. Drawing from critical studies on big data, innovation, and smart cities, this study adopts a sociotechnical perspective to approach

Sociology and Political ScienceSocial Sciences
2
Article|28 citations·2020
Historicizing the smart cities: Genealogy as a method of critique for smart urbanism
Chamee Yang
SJR Q1Telematics and Informatics
Media TechnologyEngineering
3
Article|14 citations·2022
Digital contact tracing in the pandemic cities: Problematizing the regime of traceability in South Korea
Chamee Yang
SJR Q1Big Data & SocietyOA

Since 2020, many countries worldwide have deployed digital contact tracing programs that rely on a range of digital sensors in the city to locate and map the routes of viral spread. Many critical commentaries have raised concerns about the privacy risks and trustworthiness of these programs. Extending these analyses, this paper opens up a different line of questioning that goes beyond privacy-centered single-axis critique of surveillance by considering digital contact tracing symptomatic of the

Information SystemsComputer Science
4
Article|2 citations·2024
The Techno-Optics of Safety: Surveillance and Women's Ambivalent Experiences in South Korea's “Smart Safe City”
Chamee Yang
SJR Q1Science Technology & Human ValuesOA

The rise of “scientific security” discourse has spurred the use of optical technologies and data analytics in crime prevention. It has coincided with a shift in smart city narratives, positing these developments as enhancing women's freedom and safety in urban spaces. However, these narratives often overlook the nuanced and embodied experience of safety and women's ambivalent relationship with technology, while framing its use as a binary choice between privacy or safety. While enhanced legibili

Political Science and International RelationsSocial Sciences
5
Book Chapter|1 citations·2019
Invisible Technologies and Loud Narratives
Chamee Yang
Amsterdam University Press eBooks
Speech and HearingHealth Professions
6
dissertation|0 citations·2020
Remapping Songdo: A genealogy of a smart city in South Korea
Chamee Yang
IDEALS (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)OA

This dissertation addresses the relationship between history, culture, technology, and urban governance in South Korea. It focuses on the technologies and techniques of making and governing a smart city and argues that they have been shaped by the long-term concerns for security, future, development, and globalization. This is not only evident in national economic policies and public discussions of the smart city and the new media technologies, but also in the spatial-material arrangement of urb

Media TechnologyEngineering
7
Article|0 citations·2024
Cultivating vigilant drivers through TV: On the cultural work of dashcam videos and normalization of surveillance
Chamee Yang
SJR Q1International Journal of Cultural Studies

This paper explores the cultural work of surveillance through the emerging YouTube genre of videos that feature footage from in-car video data recorders. South Korea's ‘Han Moon Chul TV’ (HMC TV) exemplifies this genre, inheriting and extending beyond the traditions of public service television for traffic safety. The analysis shows how HMC TV operates as a cultural technology that merges the previous goals of public service television with the visual language of automotive vision while also pro

Cultural StudiesSocial Sciences
8
Book Chapter|0 citations·2019
11. Invisible Technologies and Loud Narratives
Chamee Yang
Amsterdam University Press eBooks
PhilosophyArts and Humanities
9
Book Chapter|0 citations·2020
Smart City and the Reinvented Politics of Governing Through Datafied Environment in Songdo, South Korea
Chamee Yang
Global transformations in media and communication/Global transformations in media and communication research
Media TechnologyEngineering

Research Areas

Media TechnologySociology and Political ScienceInformation SystemsPolitical Science and International RelationsSpeech and HearingCultural Studies

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