captured at birth? intimate surveillance and digital legacies
TRANSCRIPT
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Dr Tama Leaver, Centre for Culture and Technology
Captured at Birth? Intimate Surveillance and Digital Legacies
01.02.2014
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Overview.
1. Identity Contexts2. Shifting Surveillance3. Negotiating Intimate Surveillance
1 February 2014
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I. Identity Contexts
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(a) The Networked Self / Networked Publics Persistance Replicability Scalability Searchability (boyd, 2010) + Ownership (Aufderheide, 2010)
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Identity 2.0 (Helmond, 2010)
In Perpetual Beta Networked (other) User-generated identity Distributed Indexed Persistent
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Web Presence (Allen, 2010; Leaver, 2010) Internet Footprints Digital Shadows Social Media Rivers From “user-generated content” to “Content-generated users.”
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Shared assumptions of Identity 2.0, the Networked Self, and Web Presence Individual agency is central. Presumption that identity should be controlled, curated and managed by the ‘self’ being presented.
When agency is not the controlling influence, this is seen as an issue to be overcome (eg better privacy settings).
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(b) The ‘Real Name’ Web
"Nowadays, however, the anonymity of the [early] internet and the construction of online personas that do not reflect offline identities have been reconstructed as 'risk factors' of internet use … Governments, schools, parents and other concerned parties now routinely warn against online imposters, bullying and identity theft, and social network sites like Facebook or Google+ have policies requiring users to register with their real names and data, and prevent them from having more than one account.”
(Zoonen, 2013: 45)
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The Shift to Real Names (nymwars) …
Single database point. All activity connected …
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(c) Parents as initial identity curators … Parents/guardians set the initial parameters of online identity.
From ultrasounds photos to cute toddler pics, losing that first tooth etc …
How do and should young people ‘inherit’ online identities?
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The emergence of such social media platforms as Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Twitter, Bundlr and YouTube facilitating the sharing of images has allowed the wide dissemination of imagery and information about the unborn in public forums. Indeed, sharing of the first ultrasound photograph on social media has become a rite of pregnancy for many women. (Lupton, 2013, p. 42)
1 February 2014
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Parents: Framing Online Identities?
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II. Shifting Surveillance
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(a) Surveillance Culture
CCTV, airport scanners, various forms of tracking.
Government tracking (incl. NSA/Prism etc.). Corporate tracking (eg frequent flyers or corporate rewards cards).
Social media surveillance, Facebook profiles and shadow profiles.
Facial recognition in government, corporate and social media tracking.
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(b) Sousveillance Albrechtslund (2008): “social surveillance” as knowing play.
E.J. Westlake (2008) goes a step further, arguing that just because a user’s online performance and activity are being recorded performances can be entirely false or misleading, subverting the effectiveness of even top-down surveillance.
Sousveillance: organised watching of the watchers, such as organised groups watching Facebook’s practices (Fernabck 2013).
Sousveillance as "inverse surveillance", countering/reversing organisational surveillance with wearable devices and individuals surveying society and each other (Mann, et al, 2002).
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Sousveillance as Material Resistance
CV Dazzle anti-facial recognition makeup http://cvdazzle.com/
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Intimate Surveillance
Beyond ‘peer surveillance’ which involves active agents (Andrejevic, 2005) .
Intimate surveillance involves the purposeful (and almost always well-intentioned) surveillance of young people by parents, guardians and friends; the surveyed have little or no agency to resist themselves.
For example, the sharing of Facebook photographs of very young children (no ability to request non-sharing, sometimes tagged with parent’s names, sometimes their own; hence shadow profiles) and a realm of related practices.
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III. Negotiating Intimate Surveillance
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(a) Normalising Infant Surveillance: Sprout Baby
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Sprout Baby: Sleep
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Sprout Baby: Feeding
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Sprout Baby: Data Security / Terms of Use
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Infants becoming big data …
http://owletcare.com/
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(b) Instagram
: #ultrasou
nd (11/11/12
)
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Instagram’s growth …
October 2010: Launch (Apple AppStore).
December 2010: 1 million users. June 2011: 5 million users. September 2011: 10 million users. April 2012: Android version released.
September 2012: 100 million users.
But DOES MOBILE = PRIVATE?
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Privacy: experiential but not technical …
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A plethora of Instagram web clients …
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Geotags …
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Data ownership …
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And now official Instagram web timelines …
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A Social Media Contradiction
“a social media contradiction may arise where users focus on the social elements – often acts of communication and sharing which are thought of as ephemeral and in the moment, comparable to a telephone conversation – while the companies and corporations creating these apps are more focused on the media elements, which are measurable, aggregatable, can be algorithmically analysed in a variety of potentially valuable ways, and can last indefinitely.”
(Leaver & Lloyd, 2014)
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(c) Many positive uses of data tracking … Tracking and surveillance are not intrinsically negative, and can be incredibly positive and useful.
Big data tracking of prematurely born babies, using “software that captures and processes patient data in real time, tracking 16 different data streams, such as heart rate, respiration rate, temperature, blood pressure, and blood oxygen level, which together amount to around 1260 points of data” revealed significant diagnostic correlations, leading to very real health improvements (Mayer-Schonberger & Cukier, 2013: 60-61).
Well-managed and transparent tracking, with informed consent, often leads to significant improvements across a range of fields.
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Conclusions
Intimate surveillance normalises a surveillance culture facilitated by parents, family and friends.
Better digital literacies about the uses (and potential abuses) of data shared with apps, platforms and services are needed (informed uses is the key).
More transparency is required about how data might be shared and used in all contexts, especially commercial ones.
Social norms need to evolve regarding the sharing (and non-sharing) of data and media generated about young people not just moral panics about data shared by young people.
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References Albrechtslund, A. (2008). Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance. First Monday, 13(3). Retrieved from
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2142/1949 Allen, M. (2009). Web Presence: Understanding persistent and interlinked content as the basis of identity formation and promotion
through the contemporary Internet, Communication, Creativity and Global Citizenship: Australia and New Zealand Communications Association Annual Conference, Brisbane.
Andrejevic, M. (2005). The Work of Watching One Another: Lateral Surveillance, Risk, and Governance. Surveillance & Society, 2(4), 479–497.
Aufderheide, P. (2010). Copyright, Fair Use, and Social Networks. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (pp. 274-303). Routledge.
boyd, danah. (2010). Social Network Sites and Networked Publics: Affordances, Dymanics and Implications. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (pp. 39-58). Routledge.
Fernback, J. (2013). Sousveillance: Communities of resistance to the surveillance environment. Telematics and Informatics, 30(1), 11–21. doi:10.1016/j.tele.2012.03.003
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Book. Helmond, A. (2010). Identity 2.0: Constructing identity with cultural software. www.annehelmond.nl, PDF:
http://www.annehelmond.nl/wordpress/wp-content/uploads//2010/01/helmond_identity20_dmiconference.pdf. Leaver, T. (2010) I tweet therefore I am? Challenges in learning identity by teaching web presence, Teaching and Learning Forum,
Edith Cowan University, Joondalup. Leaver, T., & Lloyd, C. (2014, Forthcoming). Seeking Transparency in Locative Media. In R. Wilken & G. Goggin (Eds.), Locative
Media. London & New York: Routledge. Lupton, D. (2013). The Social Worlds of the Unborn. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Mann, S., Nolan, J., & Wellman, B. (2002). Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in
Surveillance Environments. Surveillance & Society, 1(3), 331–355. Mayer-Schonberger, V., & Cukier, K. (2013). Big data: a revolution that will transform how we live, work, and think. Great B: John Murray. Papacharissi, Z. (2010). Conclusion: A Networked Self. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social
Network Sites (pp. 304-318). Routledge. Westlake, E. J. (2008). Friend Me if You Facebook: Generation Y and Performative Surveillance. TDR: The Drama Review, 52(4), 21–40. Zoonen, L. van. (2013). From identity to identification: fixating the fragmented self. Media, Culture & Society, 35(1), 44–51.
doi:10.1177/0163443712464557
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Questions or Comments?
Or find me later …
www.tamaleaver.net@tamaleaver