Cultural Affordances of “Emma”, USCIS’s Latina Virtual Assistant

Dr. Miriam E. Sweeney (University of Alabama) and Dr. Melissa Villa-Nicholas (University of Rhode Island) join us for a conversation on virtual assistants; and how virtual agents are increasingly integrated as ‘user-friendly’ interfaces for e-government and commercial services. This research investigates the case study of the virtual assistant, ‘Emma’, that is integrated into the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website. This research has implications for how citizen-consumers are made informationally ‘legible’ to the state through their engagement with digital technologies for government services.

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