Interveillance: A New Culture of Recognition and Mediatization

Abstract

The everyday uses of networked media technologies, especially social media, have revolutionized the classical model of top-down surveillance. This article sketches the contours of an emerging culture of interveillance where nonhierarchical and non-systematic monitoring practices are part of everyday life. It also introduces a critical perspective on how the industrial logics of dominant social media, through which interveillance practices are normalized, resonate with social forces already at play in individualized societies. The argument is developed in three steps. Firstly, it is argued that the concept of interveillance is needed, and must be distinguished from surveillance, in order to critically assess the everyday mutual sharing and disclosure of private information (of many different kinds). Secondly, it is argued that the culture of interveillance responds to the social deficit of recognition that characterizes highly individualized societies. Finally, it is argued that the culture of interveillance constitutes a defining instance and even represents a new stage of the meta-process of mediatization. The dialectical nature of interveillance integrates and reinforces the overarching ambiguities of mediatization, whereby the opportunities for individuals and groups to achieve growing freedom and autonomy are paralleled by limitations and dependences vis-à-vis media.

Geomedia and privacy in context. Paradoxical behavior or the unwitting sharing of geodata with digital platforms?

“…On an individual level, "new performances of self and re-inscriptions of the body in place and space" (Schwartz, Halegoua 2014, p. 1656, called the "spatial self " (Schwartz & Halegoua, 2014) arise; so too do new forms of identity-management (Saker 2016), self-surveillance, competition with others, and "watching one another", called "lateral surveillance"; (Andrejevic 2005). Individuals "[look] at [their] own content through other people's eyes" -social surveillance (Marwick, 2012), or "[control] one another" -interveillance (Jansson 2015), deined as the "social embeddedness of contemporary surveillance processes, typically governed by commercial forces, while at the same time recognizing the non-hierarchical and non-systematic nature of most social monitoring processes occurring in everyday life" (Christensen, Jansson, 2015;Jansson 2015, p. 81).…”

„…ich habe ja nichts zu verbergen!“ Zwischen ubiquitärer Geodatenerfassung als Geschäftsmodell und individuell-kontextuellem Geoprivacymanagement

“…); ebenso neue Formen des Identitätsmanagements (Saker 2016), der Selbstüberwachung (quantifi ed self ), des Wettbewerbs mit anderen und des "gegenseitigen Beobachtens" (genannt "lateral surveillance" (Andrejevic 2005)). Individuen betrachten ihre eigenen Inhalte durch die Augen anderer -"social surveillance" (Marwick 2012), oder kontrollieren sich gegenseitig: "interveillance" (Jansson 2015).…”

Geomedia: Manifestations of Power as Mediatized Communication Practices – A Foucauldian Approach

“…Regarding the individualized use of geomedia, new forms of (location-based) identity performance (Schwartz & Halegoua, 2014) and identity-management arise through powerstructures of self-surveillance, competition with others, and forms of 'watching one another' (lateral surveillance; (Andrejevic, 2005)), 'controlling one another' (interveillance; (Jansson, 2015)) or 'looking at one's own content through other people's eyes' (social surveillance; (Marwick, 2012)). The challenge of locating oneself (physically, structurally and in terms of a social system) requires different modes and strategies of coping with digital network technologies -from unthinking, full adoption of power structures to modes of rejection and resistance (Steinmaurer & Atteneder, 2018).…”