Recommended Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 121-126
Author(s):  
Rob Kitchin
Keyword(s):  
Social Sorting

This chapter addresses how profiling and social sorting shape consumption and entertainment through recommendations and nudges. It looks at a conversation between a man and his grandchild while they were deciding what to watch. The grandchild mentioned a movie which Netflix says is a 96-per cent match to his tastes. He explains that Netflix tracks what he watches and whether he likes something, then suggests other programmes it thinks he might like. The man then talks about the importance of pushing one's boundaries and getting exposed to new stories, ideas, and genres to learn stuff and cultivate new tastes. When the conversation turned to the news, the grandchild mentions Facebook, which he claims is another thing that only shows him what it wants him to see. He also talks about targeted ads and algorithms.

scholarly journals Surveillance in Practice: Operators’ Collective Interpretation of CCTV Images

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-327
Author(s):  
Barbara Heebels ◽  
Irina Van Aalst
Keyword(s):  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Control Room ◽  
Daily Work ◽  
Bodily Appearance ◽  
The People ◽  
Informal Practices ◽  
Cctv Surveillance ◽  
Social Sorting

CCTV surveillance is a cultural practice and collective effort. CCTV not only involves a technical assemblage that is used to discipline the surveilled, it is also a social assemblage in which the informal practices of operators play a major role in the multiple interpretations of images. This paper provides insights into the daily work practices and discourses of CCTV operators and their supervisors through observations of and interviews in the control room of public CCTV surveillance in Rotterdam. By providing a better understanding of the role of people in socio-technical assemblages, this paper contributes to the discussion on human mediation in computerized networks. The paper contributes to the expanding literature on surveillance as a cultural practice by combining insights on social sorting with insights on collective evaluation of unfolding situations—i.e., how group dynamics within the control room influence how people are “judged.” Building on Goffman’s frame analysis, the paper reveals the crucial role of talk and humor in re-performing what happens on the streets as well as evaluating situations and the people watched. Moreover, it discusses how these collective re-performances of what is being watched both reproduce and reshape “othering” practices within the control room. The paper shows how humorous utterances play an important part in overcoming hierarchy and collectively managing emotions, and explores how this humor influences profiling on the basis of bodily appearance.

scholarly journals Game Studies meets Surveillance Studies at the Edge of Digital Culture: An Introduction to a special issue on Surveillance, Games and Play

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer R. Whitson ◽  
Bart Simon
Keyword(s):  
Data Gathering ◽  
Digital Games ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Finite Range ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Surveillance Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Sorting ◽  
The Relationship

While we could attribute the close ties between surveillance and video games to their shared military roots, in this editorial we argue that the relationship goes much deeper to that. Even non-digital games such as chess require a mode of watchfulness: an attention to each piece in relation to the past, present, and future; a drive to predict an opponent’s movements; and, a distillation of the player-subject into a knowable finite range of possible actions defined by the rules. Games are social sorting, disciplinary, social control machines.In this introduction we tease apart some of the intersections of games and surveillance, beginning with a discussion of the NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden on using games to both monitor and influence unsuspecting populations. Next, we provide an overview of corporate data-gathering practices in games and further outline the production of manageable, computable subjectivities. Then, we show how the game Watch Dogs explores the surveillant capacities of games at both the game mechanical and representational scales. These three different facets of surveillance, games, and play set the scene for the special issue and the diverse articles that follow.  In the following pages we pose new lines of questioning that highlight the nuances of play and offer new modes of thinking about what games - and the processes of watching and being watched that are a foundational part of the experience – can tell us about surveillance.

scholarly journals Surveillance, Suspicion and Stigma: Brown Bodies in a Terror-Panic Climate

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 215-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Girishbhai Patel
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Social Sorting ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Brown Bodies

This paper considers hard and soft surveillance measures, processes of racialised labelling and the allocation of stigma within a post-9/11 terror-panic climate. Using qualitative data from the first stage of a wider study, the paper reports on the perceptions and experiences of those marked as ‘hyper-visible’ (Khoury 2009); that is, those of middle Eastern appearance, or of South Asian or Arabic heritage and of the Muslim faith, who are presented as members of a suspect community. The paper considers ‘browning’ (Bhattacharyya 2008; Burman 2010; Semati 2010; Silva 2010) and ‘social sorting’ (Lyon 2003a) in relation to perceptions and experiences of surveillance. The paper argues that ethnic hostility features heavily in surveillance, and the impact has serious negative consequences for its subjects. Anti-terror surveillance therefore needs to be understood within the wider context of a racially defined citizenship agenda. This would allow us to more accurately understand its impact, and to ask questions about its fulfilling of safety. More significantly, it would also allow for the mapping of mobilised resistance to problematic and discriminatory surveillance.

scholarly journals Transforming Society for the Better?

MaRBLe ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadja Aldendorff
Keyword(s):  
Moral Virtue ◽  
The State ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
State Council ◽  
Credit System ◽  
The West ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Social Credit ◽  
The Government ◽  
Social Sorting

In 2014, the State Council of the People’s Republic of China released a document that called for the construction of a nationwide Social Credit System (SCS) with the goal to encourage sincerity and punish insincerity. The system uses blacklists that citizens land on for various cases of misbehavior, ranging from failing to pay a fine to being caught Jaywalking. This research explains the design process behind the SCS and in particular why many Chinese citizens are embracing this form of surveillance. It focuses on three topics to answer this question: the historical roots underlying the system, the perceived lack of trust in Chinese society and the comparison with concepts from surveillance theories developed in the West. From the analysis, following conclusions could be drawn: Historically, the state has often acted as a promoter and enforcer of moral virtue. The SCS fits perfectly into this tradition. The most prominent reason for the positive Chinese reaction is the lack of institutions in China that promote trust between citizens and businesses. There is a severe trust deficit which the government had to find a solution for. Regarding surveillance theory, Foucault’s concept of ‘panopticism’ shows similarities with the SCS and underlines its effectiveness in changing and steering people’s behavior while Lyon’s notion of ‘social sorting’ is used to demonstrate the potential dangers of the Chinese system.

scholarly journals In Defense of Privacy: The Concept and the Regime

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin J Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Privacy Protection ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Privacy Issue ◽  
Surveillance Studies ◽  
Spatial Metaphors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Sorting ◽  
Scholarly Inquiry

It has recently become fashionable within the surveillance studies community to subject the concept and regime of “privacy protection” to some very rigorous criticism.   “Privacy” and all that it entails is argued to be too narrow, too based on liberal assumptions of subjectivity, too implicated in rights-based theory and discourse, insufficiently sensitive to the social sorting and discriminatory aspects of surveillance, and overly embroiled in spatial metaphors about “invasion” and “intrusion.”  As a concept, and as a way to frame the various social and political challenges encountered within “surveillance societies,” it is inadequate.   These critiques are important, and to some extent, have set scholarly inquiry on a new, exciting and broader, trajectory than that offered by privacy scholars. On closer examination, however, these critiques are often based on some faulty assumptions about the contemporary framing of the privacy issue, and about the governance of the issue.  Privacy, as a concept, regime, a set of policy instruments, and as a way to frame civil society activism, shows an extraordinary resilience. Surveillance scholars must learn to live with it.  

scholarly journals Straying from the Flock? A Look at How Americans’ Gender and Religious Identities Cross-Pressure Partisanship

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin C. Cassese
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
National Election Study ◽  
And Gender ◽  
White Evangelicals ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Social Sorting

White evangelicals–both men and women–are a mainstay of the Republican Party. What accounts for their ongoing loyalty, particularly when Republican candidates and leaders fail to embody closely held moral standards around sexual monogamy and propriety, as Donald Trump did in 2016? To answer this question, I draw on research about social sorting and polarization, as well as gender and religion gaps in public opinion, to theorize about the nature of the cross-pressures partisans may experience as a result of the religious and gender identifications they hold. Using data from the 2016 American National Election Study, I evaluate whether cross-cutting identities have a moderating effect on partisans’ thinking about gender issues, their evaluations of the presidential candidates, and their relationship to the parties. I find only modest evidence that gender and evangelical identification impact political thinking among white Republicans, including their reactions to the Access Hollywood tape. Other groups, however, experienced more significant cross-pressures in 2016. Both evangelical Democrats and secular Republicans reported less polarized affective reactions to the presidential candidates and the parties. The results highlight the contingent role that gender and religious identities play in the United States’ highly polarized political climate.

Social sorting as ‘social transformation’: Credit scoring and the reproduction of populations as risks in South Africa

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sachil Flores Singh
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
New South ◽  
Credit Scoring ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Security Device ◽  
Social Sorting

In this article, I show that credit scoring, although not explicitly designed as a security device, enacts (in)security in South Africa. By paying attention to a brief history of state-implemented social categories, we see how the dawn of political democracy in 1994 marked an embrace of – not opposition to – their inheritance by the African National Congress. The argument is placed within a theoretical framework that dovetails David Lyon’s popularization of ‘social sorting’ with an extension of Harold Wolpe’s understanding of apartheid and capitalism. This bridging between Lyon and Wolpe is developed to advance the view that apartheid is a social condition whose historical social categories of rule have been reproduced since 1994 in the framing of credit legislation, policy and scoring. These categories are framed in the ‘new’ South Africa as indicators of ‘social transformation’. Through the lens of credit scoring, in particular, it is demonstrated that ‘social transformation’ not only influences, shapes and reproduces historical forms of social categories, but also serves the state’s attempt to create and maintain populations as risks.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document