Surveillance and Communication
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 November 2017
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0193
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 November 2017
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0193
Introduction
Over the past decades, surveillance has become an integral part of society and the everyday life of individuals. To many, the surveillance society has to do with the accelerated uses of surveillance cameras by the police, shopping malls, workplaces, and private citizens. However, the electronic eyes of cameras are but one of many important aspects of the surveillance society. In particular, surveillance has become intrinsic to our digitally mediated communication. Many are constantly engaged in forms of social surveillance as they observe what friends, family, celebrities, love interests, and acquaintances are up to on social media. In turn, they also leave trails of digital footprints that may be collected and analyzed by governments, businesses, or hackers. The imperceptible nature of this new surveillance raises some pressing concerns about our digital lives as our data doubles increasingly represent and define us in lieu of our embodied selves. It is thus vital for students and scholars in the field of communication to address surveillance issues. This article takes up the task of providing an overview of the most relevant work on surveillance for the field of communication. The article is structured in five parts. First, it introduces the reader to general overview texts of surveillance studies, including its topics, theoretical diversity, and its history. Second, the ideas of the surveillance society and surveillance cultures are taken up, as they are often understood to be central to surveillance studies’ undertakings and politics. Third, the article presents the reader with core surveillance theories and their sources of inspiration. It points to the panopticon, which has been a dominant but also controversial concept, but mostly the bibliography suggests post-panoptic theories, which are particularly relevant to this topic and audience. The fourth section outlines a variety of themes in which surveillance of communication is being studied. Organized under the headings Tracking; Mass Surveillance; Media; and Art, Fiction, and Popular Culture, this section provides a survey in surveillance studies pertaining to communication. Fifth and finally, the article points to recurring discussions of the relevancy and understanding of privacy.
General Overviews
Surveillance studies is a new but already diverse field, encompassing many different academic disciplines, theories, and areas of study. Since the late 20th century, surveillance has become an increasingly important topic in academic and public debates. Surveillance studies emerged in this environment with its own journal, Surveillance & Society, and its own conferences and has grown into a complex network of scholars from disciplines ranging across the social sciences, arts, and humanities. This section presents a selection of texts that map this diverse field and can act as entry points and guides for aspiring scholars in quite different ways. New readers might want to begin with Lyon 2007. David Lyon is one of the pioneers of surveillance studies, and in this book, he details the history and core concepts of the field and presents the reader with an understanding of the breadth and depth of surveillance in society. Ball, et al. 2012 presents a more difficult and more up-to-date overview of the field. In this anthology, numerous key surveillance scholars review and engage with their specific theoretical and contextual areas of expertise. The Surveillance Studies Reader is a collection of twenty-four original and important texts in the field. In combination with the authors’ framing, the original texts followed by questions to the reader makes this work well suited for teaching purposes.
Ball, Kirstie, Kevin D. Haggerty, and David Lyon, eds. 2012. Routledge handbook of surveillance studies. London: Routledge.
This encyclopedic anthology encompasses fifty chapters, which provide a comprehensive understanding of surveillance studies. It covers panoptic and post-panoptic theories on surveillance and a wide range of surveillance contexts. Most notably, the handbook dedicates two of its four sections to “surveillance as sorting” and “limiting surveillance.”
Hier, Sean, and Josh Greenberg, eds. 2007. The surveillance studies reader. Maidenhead, UK: Open Univ. Press.
The reader differs from the other “overviews” in that it is composed of a selection of original texts. For instance, it includes seminal texts such as Foucault’s chapter on panopticism, but also newer texts by surveillance scholars. Its inclusion of questions for each section makes it well suited for teaching purposes.
Lyon, David. 2007. Surveillance studies: An overview. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
This book sums up the history, core concepts, and contexts of surveillance studies. Furthermore, the book describes how surveillance is organized and part of everyday life, how the watched are made visible, and how they resist. It covers popular culture, the politics of surveillance, and finally, ethical issues.
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Article
- Acculturation Processes and Communication
- Action Assembly Theory
- Action-Implicative Discourse Analysis
- Activist Media
- Adherence and Communication
- Adolescence and the Media
- Advertisements, Televised Political
- Advertising
- Advertising, Children and
- Advertising, International
- Advocacy Journalism
- Agenda Setting
- Annenberg, Walter H.
- Applied Communication Research Methods
- Argumentation
- Attitude-Behavior Consistency
- Audience Fragmentation
- Audience Studies
- Bakhtin, Mikhail
- Bandwagon Effect
- Baudrillard, Jean
- Blockchain and Communication
- Bourdieu, Pierre
- Brand Equity
- British and Irish Magazine, History of the
- Broadcasting, Public Service
- Capture, Media
- Castells, Manuel
- Celebrity and Public Persona
- Censorship
- Civic Duty
- Civil Rights Movement and the Media, The
- CNN
- Co-Cultural Theory and Communication
- Codes and Cultural Discourse Analysis
- Cognitive Dissonance
- Collective Memory, Communication and
- Comedic News
- Communication Apprehension
- Communication Campaigns
- Communication, Definitions and Concepts of
- Communication History
- Communication Law
- Communication Management
- Communication Networks
- Communication, Philosophy of
- Community Attachment
- Community Structure Approach
- Computational Journalism
- Computer-Mediated Communication
- Content Analysis
- Corporate Social Responsibility and Communication
- Crisis Communication
- Critical and Cultural Studies
- Cross-tools and Cross-media Effects
- Cultivation
- Cultural and Creative Industries
- Cultural Imperialism Theories
- Cultural Mapping
- Cultural Persuadables
- Cultural Pluralism and Communication
- Cyberpolitics
- 3D Media
- Death, Dying, and Communication
- Debates, Televised
- Deliberation
- Developmental Communication
- Diffusion of Innovations
- Digital Divide
- Digital Intimacies
- Digital Literacy
- Diplomacy, Public
- Distributed Work, Comunication and
- Documentary and Communication
- E-democracy/E-participation
- E-Government
- Elaboration Likelihood Model
- Electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM)
- Embedded Coverage
- Entertainment
- Entertainment-Education
- Environmental Communication
- Ethnography of Communication
- Experiments
- Family Communication
- Federal Communications Commission
- Feminist and Queer Game Studies
- Feminist Data Studies
- Feminist Journalism
- Feminist Theory
- Focus Groups
- Food Studies and Communication
- Freedom of the Press
- Gatekeeping
- Gender and the Media
- Global Englishes
- Global Media, History of
- Global Media Organizations
- Glocalization
- Goffman, Erving
- Habermas, Jürgen
- Habituation and Communication
- Health Communication
- Hegemony
- Hermeneutic Communication Studies
- Heuristics
- Homelessness and Communication
- Hook-Up and Dating Apps
- Hostile Media Effect
- Identification with Media Characters
- Identity, Cultural
- Image Repair Theory
- Implicit Measurement
- Impression Management
- Indexing
- Infographics
- Information and Communication Technology for Development
- Information Management
- Information Overload
- Information Processing
- Infotainment
- Innis, Harold
- Instructional Communication
- Integrated Marketing Communications
- Interactivity
- Intercultural Capital
- Intercultural Communication
- Intercultural Communication, Tourism and
- Intercultural Communication, Worldview in
- Intercultural Conflict Mediation
- Intercultural New Media
- Intergenerational Communication
- Intergroup Communication
- International Communications
- Interpersonal Communication
- Interpersonal LGBTQ Communication
- Interpretation/Reception
- Interpretive Communities
- Journalism
- Journalism, Alternative
- Journalism and Trauma
- Journalism, Citizen
- Journalism, Citizen, History of
- Journalism Ethics
- Journalism, Interpretive
- Journalism, Peace
- Journalism, Tabloid
- Journalists, Violence against
- Knowledge Gap
- Lazarsfeld, Paul
- Mass Communication
- McLuhan, Marshall
- Media Activism
- Media Aesthetics
- Media and Time
- Media Bias
- Media Convergence
- Media Credibility
- Media Dependency
- Media Ecology
- Media Economics
- Media Economics, Theories of
- Media, Educational
- Media Effects
- Media Ethics
- Media Events
- Media Exposure Measurement
- Media, Gays and Lesbians in the
- Media Literacy
- Media Logic
- Media Management
- Media Policy and Governance
- Media Regulation
- Media, Social
- Media Sociology
- Media Systems Theory
- Merton, Robert K.
- Message Characteristics and Persuasion
- Mobile Communication Studies
- Muckraking
- Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Approaches to
- Multinational Organizations, Communication and Culture in
- Murdoch, Rupert
- Narrative
- Narrative Engagement
- Narrative Persuasion
- News, Fake
- News Framing
- News Media Coverage of Women
- NGOs, Communication and
- Online Campaigning
- Open Access
- Organizational Change and Organizational Change Communicat...
- Organizational Communication
- Organizational Communication, Aging and
- Parasocial Theory in Communication
- Participation, Civic/Political
- Participatory Action Research
- Patient-Provider Communication
- Peacebuilding and Communication
- Perceived Realism
- Personalized Communication
- Persuasion and Social Influence
- Persuasion, Resisting
- Photojournalism
- Political Advertising
- Political Communication, Normative Analysis of
- Political Economy
- Political Knowledge
- Political Marketing
- Political Scandals
- Political Socialization
- Polls, Opinion
- Priming
- Product Placement
- Propaganda
- Proxemics
- Public Opinion
- Public Relations
- Public Sphere
- Queer Intercultural Communication
- Queer Migration and Digital Media
- Racism and Communication
- Radio Studies
- Reality Television
- Reasoned Action Frameworks
- Religion and the Media
- Reporting, Investigative
- Rhetoric and Communication
- Rhetoric and Intercultural Communication
- Rhetoric, Religious
- Rhetoric, Visual
- Risk Communication
- Rumor and Communication
- Schramm, Wilbur
- Science Communication
- Scripps, E. W.
- Selective Exposure
- Semiotics
- Sense-Making/Sensemaking
- Sesame Street
- Sex in the Media
- Small-Group Communication
- Social Capital
- Social Change
- Social Cognition
- Social Construction
- Social Identity Theory and Communication
- Social Interaction
- Social Movements
- Social Network Analysis
- Social Protest
- Sports Communication
- Stereotypes
- Strategic Communication
- Surveillance and Communication
- Symbolic Interactionism in Communication
- Synchrony in Intercultural Communication
- Tabloidization
- Telecommunications History/Policy
- Television
- Television, Cable
- Textual Analysis and Communication
- Third Culture Kids
- Third-Person Effect
- Time Warner
- Transgender Media Studies
- Transmedia Storytelling
- Two-Step Flow
- Uses and Gratifications
- Video
- Video Deficit
- Video Games and Communication
- Violence in the Media
- Virtual Reality and Communication
- Visual Communication
- Web 2.0
- Web Archiving
- Webcare
- Whistleblowing
- Whiteness Theory in Intercultural Communication
- WikiLeaks
- Youth and Media
- Zines and Communication