The Advent of Surveillance Realism: Public Opinion and Activist Responses to the Snowden Leaks

The Snowden leaks provided unprecedented insights into the workings of state-corporate surveillance programs based on the interception and collection of online activity. They illustrated the extent of “bulk” data collection and the general and widespread monitoring of everyday communication platforms used by ordinary citizens. Yet public response in the United Kingdom and elsewhere has been considerably muted, and there has been little evidence of public outcry, with often conflicting and inconsistent opinions on the subject. Based on research carried out for the project Digital Citizenship and Surveillance Society, this article explores the nuances of public attitudes toward surveillance, including such attitudes among politically active citizens, through focus groups and interviews. We argue that the lack of transparency, knowledge, and control over what happens to personal data online has led to feelings of widespread resignation, not consent, to the status quo that speaks to a condition we identify as “surveillance realism.” We understand this to entail a simultaneous unease among citizens with data collection alongside the active normalization of surveillance that limits the possibilities of enacting modes of citizenship and of imagining alternatives

Constructing commercial data ethics

The ethics of big data and AI have become the object of much public debate. Technology firms around the world have set up ethics committees and review processes, which differ widely in their organisation and practice. In this paper we interrogate these processes and the rhetoric of firm-level data ethics. Using inter-views with industry, activists and scholars and observation of public discussions, we ask how firms conceptualise the purposes and functions of data ethics, and how this relates to core business priorities. We find considerable variation between firms in the way they use ethics. We compare strategies and rhetoric to understand how commercial data ethics is constructed, its political and strategic dimensions, and its relationship to data ethics more broadly

The Post-Snowden Surveillance Policy Turmoil

Arne Hintz and Lina Dencik are conducting an 18-month research project based at Cardiff University, ‘Digital Citizenship and Surveillance Society‘, looking to review and analyse what the Snowden revelations mean for policy, technology, media and civil society. Preliminary results of their research will be presented at the ‘Surveillance and Citizenship’ conference, which starts tomorrow

In/visible conflicts: NGOs and the visual politics of humanitarian photography

This article examines the diverse factors shaping NGO involvement with humanitarian photography, paying particular attention to co-operative relationships with photojournalists intended to facilitate the generation of visual coverage of crises otherwise marginalised, or ignored altogether, in mainstream news media. The analysis is primarily based on a case study drawing upon 26 semi-structured interviews with NGO personnel (International Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, Oxfam and Save the Children) and photojournalists conducted over 2014 to 2016, securing original insights into the epistemic terms upon which NGOs have sought to produce, frame and distribute imagery from recurrently disregarded crisis zones. In this way, the article pinpoints how the uses of digital imagery being negotiated by NGOs elucidate the changing, stratified geo-politics of visibility demarcating the visual boundaries of newsworthiness

Mobilizing media studies in an age of datafication

We are at a pivotal moment for understanding and deciding what is actually at stake with datafication. In this contribution, I argue for the increasingly important and politicized role of media scholarship to privilege lived experiences and situated practices as a counter to the active neutralization of data-driven systems and their implications. In particular, I argue for the relevance of media studies to emphasize the uses to which technology is put and explore how data practices relate to other social practices and historical contexts as a way to broaden the parameters of response, moving data politics beyond the confines of the technology itself, and contending instead with the premise and terms of the debate

From breastfeeding to politics, Facebook steps up censorship

Facebook has recently tried to close down the popular Anarchist Memes page on its site in the latest of a string of crackdowns on political online activism. It’s just one more example of the social media police in action