New Media and the power politics of sousveillance in a surveillance-dominated world.

In this paper we address the increasingly complex constructs between power, and the practices of looking, in a mediated, mobile and networked culture.  We develop and explore a nuanced understanding and ontology that examines veillance in both directions:  surveillance and oversight, as well as sousveillance and “undersight”.  In particular, we unpack the new relationships of power and democracy facilitated by mobile and pervasive computing.  We differentiate between the power relationships in the generalized practices of looking or gazing, which we place under the broad term “veillance”.  Then we address the more subtle distinctions between different forms of veillance that we classify as surveillance and sousveillance, as well as McVeillance (the ratio of surveillance to sousveillance).  We start by unpacking this understanding to develop a more specialized vocabulary to talk not just about oversight but also to talk about the implications of mobile technologies on “who watches the watchers”. We argue that the time for sousveillance, as a social tool for political action, is reaching a critical mass facilitated by a convergence of transmission, mobility and media channels for content distribution and engagement. Mobile ubiquitous computing, image capture and processing, and seamless connectivity of every iPad, iPhone,  Android Device, wearable computer, etc., allows for unprecedented ‘on the ground’ watching of everyday life.  The critical mass of ‘sousveillant’ capable devices in everyday life may make the practice of sousveillance a potentially effective political force that.  Sousveillance can now challenge and balances the possibility for corruption that is inherent in a surveillance-only society (i.e. one that has only oversight without undersight).

[1]  John R Connery,et al.  The right to privacy. , 1973, The Linacre quarterly.

[2]  R. Ericson,et al.  The surveillant assemblage. , 2000, The British journal of sociology.

[3]  Torin Monahan,et al.  Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life , 2006 .

[4]  William J. Miller,et al.  Sousveillance, Media and Strategic Political Communication, by Vian Bakir , 2011 .

[5]  U. Eco.  The Subject of Semiotics , 1976 .

[6]  C. William R. Webster,et al.  Living in Surveillance Societies: The Normalisation of Surveillance in Europe and the Threat of Britain’s Bad Example , 2009, Journal of Contemporary European Research.

[7]  David Lyon,et al.  The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society , 1994 .

[8]  G. Armstrong,et al.  The Maximum Surveillance Society: The Rise of CCTV , 1999 .

[9]  Wood D Murakami.  The 'Surveillance Society': Questions of History, Place and Culture , 2009 .

[10]  Kingsley Dennis,et al.  Viewpoint: Keeping a Close Watch – The Rise of Self-Surveillance and the Threat of Digital Exposure , 2008 .

[11]  Greg Elmer.  A Diagram of Panoptic Surveillance , 2003, New Media Soc..

[12]  Jon Coaffee,et al.  Security is Coming Home: Rethinking Scale and Constructing Resilience in the Global Urban Response to Terrorist Risk , 2006 .

[13]  Joseph Ferenbok,et al.  Hidden changes: From CCTV to ‘smart’ video surveillance , 2013 .

[14]  David Lyon,et al.  Eyes Everywhere : The Global Growth of Camera Surveillance , 2012 .

[15]  R. D'amico.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison , 1978, Telos.

[16]  M. Foucault.  The Subject and Power , 1982, Critical Inquiry.

[17]  Kirstie Ball,et al.  Editorial: Doing Surveillance Studies. * , 2005 .

[18]  Jason Nolan,et al.  Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments. , 2002 .

[19]  Wood D Murakami.  Beyond the Panopticon? Foucault and Surveillance Studies , 2007 .

[20]  M. Foucault,et al.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison , 2020, On Violence.

[21]  David Murakami Wood.  The `Surveillance Society' , 2009 .

[22]  David Murakami Wood,et al.  The Growth of CCTV: a global perspective on the international diffusion of video surveillance in publicly accessible space , 2002 .