From silence to primary definer: The rise of the Intelligence lobby in the public sphere

Until the end of the Cold War the UK intelligence services were not officially acknowledged, and their personnel were banned from entering the public sphere. From 1989 the UK government began to put the intelligence services on a legal footing and to release the identity of the heads of the intelligence agencies. Since then, public engagement by the intelligence agencies has gathered pace. What this article hypothesises is that there is now, in the UK, an effective intelligence lobby of former insiders who engage in the public sphere – using on the record briefings – to counter criticism of the intelligence community and to promote a narrative and vision of what UK intelligence should do, how it is supported and how oversight is conducted. Content analysis and framing models of non-broadcast coverage of intelligence debates, focusing on the 36 months after the Snowden revelations, confirm an active and rolling lobby of current and former intelligence officials. The paper concludes that the extent of the lobby’s interventions in the public sphere is a matter for debate and possible concern

Restricting digital sites of dissent: commercial social media and free expression

The widespread use of commercial social media platforms by protesters and activists has enhanced protest mobilisation and reporting but it has placed social media providers in the intermediary role as facilitators of dissent and has thereby created new challenges. Companies like Google and Facebook are increasingly restricting content that is published on or distributed through their platforms; they have been subject to obstruction by governments; and their services have been at the core of large-scale data collection and surveillance. This article analyses and categorises forms of infrastructure-based restrictions on free expression and dissent. It shows how private intermediaries have been incorporated into state-led content policies; how they set their own standards for legitimate online communication and intervene accordingly; and how state-based actions and commercial self-regulation intersect in the specific area of online surveillance. Based on a broad review of cases, it situates the role of social media in the wider trend of the privatisation of communications policy and the complex interplay between state-based regulation and commercial rule-making

Infrastructures of empire: towards a critical geopolitics of media and information studies

The Arab Uprisings of 2011 can be seen as a turning point for media and information studies scholars, many of whom newly discovered the region as a site for theories of digital media and social transformation. This work has argued that digital media technologies fuel or transform political change through new networked publics, new forms of connective action cultivating liberal democratic values. These works have, surprisingly, little to say about the United States and other Western colonial powers’ legacy of occupation, ongoing violence and strategic interests in the region. It is as if the Arab Spring was a vindication for the universal appeal of Western liberal democracy delivered through the gift of the Internet, social media as manifestation of the ‘technologies of freedom’ long promised by Cold War. We propose an alternate trajectory in terms of reorienting discussions of media and information infrastructures as embedded within the resurgence of idealized liberal democratic norms in the wake of the end of the Cold War. We look at the demise of the media and empire debates and ‘the rise of the BRICS’ (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) as modes of intra-imperial competition that complicate earlier Eurocentric narratives media and empire. We then outline the individual contributions for the special collection of essays

Covid-19: When Species and Data Meet

This article explores how species meet, in particular humans and the Covid-19 virus. It also draws attention to the digital world through the lens of contact-tracing apps. Here, I examine human-virus-data relations, with humans, Covid-19, and data meeting and intra-acting. This article examines what has led us to this situation with Covid-19 and the role data is currently playing. The article offers an answer to two questions. How do humans, Covid-19, and Covid-19 contact-tracing apps meet and intra-act? What are the social justice issues and problems associated with contact-tracing apps? This article examines how species meet and intra-act, as well as how the Anthropocene has contributed to the current situation. The article also discusses contact-tracing apps and what these apps mean for society. Finally, the article shows how entanglements are not only constrained to those which are multispecies but also stretch out to the digital. These postdigital hybrid assemblages enable the coming together of humans, biological-more-than-human-worlds, and the digital. Postdigital hybrid assemblages enable us to push beyond boundaries, helping us understand Covid-19 and its impacts on society. Hopefully, this discussion about the postdigital hybrid assemblage will contribute to discussions in the future, and long after Covid-19, about how we are living our lives, and who and what we are living our lives with