Lonneke was invited to briefly discuss her sousveillance on the radio at the program Focus, at Nederlandse Publieke Omroep 1.

Find the recording/podcast here (3 minutes, in Dutch):

If you are on the internet, you must assume that you are being watched. You always leave traces. But who is watching all of them? Who keeps track of what you click on, which websites you visit and what searches you type in? And what do they do with it?

Lonneke van der Velden obtained her doctorate in February at the University of Amsterdam for an investigation into internet surveillance and turned the matter around: what happens when the person being spied peeks back?

The article ‘Political Agency, Digital Traces, and Bottom-Up Data Practices’ by Stefania Milan has been published in the International Journal of Communication, in a special section on ‘Digital Traces in Context’, edited by Andreas Hepp, Andreas Breiter, Thomas N. Friemel. It is open access 🙂

Abstract. This theoretical article explores the bottom-up data practices enacted by individuals and groups in the context of organized collective action. Conversing with critical media theory, the sociology of social movements, and platform studies, it asks how activists largely reliant on social media for their activities can leverage datafication and mobilize social media data in their tactics and narratives. Using the notion of digital traces as a heuristic tool to understand the dynamics between platforms and their users, the article reflects on the concurrent materiality and discursiveness of digital traces and analyzes the evolution of political agency vis-à-vis the datafied self. It contributes to our understanding of “digital traces in context” by foregrounding human agency and the meaning-making activities of individuals and groups. Focusing on the possibilities opened up by digital traces, it considers how activists make sense of the ways in which social media structure their interactions. It shows how digital traces trigger a quest for visibility that is unprecedented in the social movement realm, and how they can function as particular “agency machines.”

February 12th, 2018, – Stefania Milan presented her work titled “Studying mediated activism through feminist understandings of technology” at the Uppsala University. The presentation is part of the first panel, Intersectionality beyond feminist studies, in the Experiences of Inclusion and Exclusion seminar on Intersectionality. Please find the abstract of her talk below.

Seminar aim

This seminar will focus on intersectionality and how the different forms of discrimination and exclusion combine, overlap, or intersect by examining intersectionality in and beyond feminist studies as well as in political practices. Additionally, the seminar is interested in contributions that expand the concept and praxis of intersectionality in media studies as a tool to analyse the complexity of multiple identities and their relations to power in a mediated social world.

The seminar on intersectionality invites contributions from a wide range of disciplines as well as from activists, civil society, media and public sector to share knowledge, practices, alternatives and ideas on issues related to contextual dynamics of power, inequalities and marginalised communities.

Abstract of talk

Studying activism entails relating to and writing about vulnerable subjects, both groups and individuals. Vulnerability takes many forms, often intersecting known categories of discrimination such as gender, race and sexual orientation and class; what’s more, often activists are subject to surveillance and repression, often perpetrated and/or facilitated through digital technology. Working with vulnerable subjects such as activists calls for setting up appropriate additional safeguards that have consequences, at two levels: ontological/epistemological and ethical/methodological.

While (new) media studies applied to activism have often considered media as an empowering force able to shape activism for the better, feminist theories of technology emerged along the axis of Science and Technology Studies (STS) might help us to take into account as well as contextualize forms of discrimination that exist within and/or are perpetuated through digital technology. This contribution reflects on what can we learn from STS for the study of contemporary activism, with a focus on tech and data activism.

Thursday February 8th, Lonneke van der Velden successfully defended her thesis Surveillance as public matter: Revisiting sousveillance through devices and leaks and is hereby awarded the title PhD title Dr. Please find a summary below.

Abstract

Our conceptual understanding of surveillance is continuously challenged by digital innovations. Projects that render (digital) surveillance visible and knowable become interesting analytic starting points. Since surveillance consists of technical and often secret processes, this ‘rendering visible’ inevitably requires a form of translation. This translation process is the main concern of this dissertation: How is surveillance made public? That question is tackled by combining an empirical inquiry on how surveillance is traced, made visible and understandable with a conceptual search for new vocabularies to address surveillance practices and countermeasures.

This thesis presents four case studies into four so-called ‘sousveillance’ projects: two counter-tracking devices for mobile phones and web browsing (InformaCam and Ghostery), and two leaks of surveillance repositories (WikiLeaks and the NSA disclosures). Inspired by Actor Network Theory (ANT), these projects are analysed through the notion of the socio-technical ‘device’ with a sensitivity to the materiality of publics. Specific focus is placed on the instruments through which surveillance is brought to the fore, the transformations that take place, the importance of the different settings, and the kinds of publics these configurations (could) enact.

The analysis, combining Surveillance Studies and ANT, shows that sousveillance has a contextually embedded, and publicly relevant, research dimension. In short, in tackling surveillance, the projects turn surveillance into a public resource for re-appropriation, into ‘public matter’. The conclusion outlines a research agenda into ‘surveillance publics’, publics that combine privacy practices with making things public. Lastly, the dissertation calls for more collaboration between academics and technical surveillance experts.

Niels and Stefania will be in Geneva in mid-December for the 2017 edition of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), taking place at the United Nations Office at Geneva on December 18-21. The IGF is a global multistakeholder forum that promotes discussions and dialogue about public policy issues related to the Internet. It was convened in 2006 by the United Nations Secretary-General. This year’s will the the IGF’s 12th edition.

Among other things, DATACTIVE will be featured in one of the main sessions, entitled Local interventions, global impacts: How can international, multistakeholder cooperation address internet disruptions, encryption and data flows, and  discussing the impacts that national policy initiatives may have on the global Internet environment and the jurisdictional issues still to be solved (December 18). Stefania will speak in the sub-them of “data flows”. In addition, DATACTIVE is co-hosting, in collaborating with the Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University a workshop entitled “Datafication and Social Justice: What challenges for Internet Governance?” (December 21).