“You Lie!” Identity, Paper, and the Materiality of Information

Abstract

This article uses the problems associated with citizenship verification in U.S. government health insurance programs to argue that paper needs to be analyzed as a media technology. To examine paper as a media technology is to ask, “How does paper work?” and “What are the rules and habits that enable paper to be used in paperwork?” To consider paper as a media technology, this article makes 2 arguments. First, it argues that there is a set of skills and knowledge associated with paper documents that need to be recognized as a distinct form of literacy. Second, this article argues that the relation between paper and identity is an argument about the materiality of information. In focusing on how paper facilitates the materialization of information, this case study illustrates how distinct practices of use create specific relationships between technology and information that give information a distinct functional presence.

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