Wildlife in the Digital Anthropocene: Examining human-animal relations through surveillance technologies

Abstract

Digital surveillance technologies enable a range of publics to observe the private lives of wild animals. Publics can now encounter wildlife from their smartphones, home computers, and other digital devices. These technologies generate public-wildlife relations that produce digital intimacy, but also summon wildlife into relations of care, commodification, and control. Via three case studies, this paper examines the biopolitical implications of such technologically mediated human-animal relations, which are becoming increasingly common and complex in the Digital Anthropocene. Each of our case studies involves a different biopolitical rationale deployed by a scientific-managerial regime: (1) clampdown (wild boar); (2) care (golden eagle); and (3) control (moose). Each of these modalities of biopower, however, is entangled with the other, inaugurating complex relations between publics, scientists, and wildlife. We show how digital technologies can predetermine certain representations of wildlife by encouraging particular gazes, which can have negative repercussions for public-wildlife relations in both digital and offline spaces. However, there remains work to be done to understand the positive public-wildlife relations inaugurated by digital mediation. Here, departing from much extant literature on digital human-animal relations, we highlight some of these positive potentials, notably: voice, immediacy, and agency.

The viewer doesn't always seem to care—response to fake animal rescues on YouTube and implications for social media self‐policing policies

“…Barber, 2022; Iliopoulou & Rosenbaum, 2013; Kalof & Taylor, 2007, and references therein). Viewers may thus be impressed with the actual fight depicted; alternatively, they might be impressed with the apparent heroism shown by the human rescuers (a version of biopower discussed by von Essen et al, 2021), or simply be impressed with the theatrical ability of the video producers in producing such a scene. Equally, the apparent humour expressed by some of the viewers does not necessarily suggest that viewers find the cruelty funny per se, but might be directed at the obviously fake nature of the videos (although even the latter suggests a disregard of the well‐being of the animals involved).…”

The digital peregrine: A technonatural history of a cosmopolitan raptor

“…‘Digital ecologies’ is an emerging body of research examining the potentials and pitfalls of digital technologies in mediating human–nature relations. Regarding human–non‐human encounters, digital mediation is actualised for: entertainment (e.g., interactive live‐streaming; Oliver, 2021); education (e.g., enhancing public attunement to wildlife; Blue, 2016); activism (e.g., surveillance/policing; Fish, 2022); governance (e.g., Arts et al, 2015); controversial purposes like hunting (von Essen et al, 2021); and research (e.g., Verma et al, 2015). Emerging work on ‘smart forests’ is exemplary of digital ecologies research, showing how woodland habitats are becoming digitised for measuring, managing, and mitigating environmental change (Gabrys, 2020; Prebble et al, 2021).…”

Digital ecologies: Materialities, encounters, governance

“…We begin by defining key terms-digital/digitisation and ecology-to establish a shared lexicon for digital ecologies, before intellectually situating our intervention in relation to a genealogy of related work. While work in more-than-human geography (Whatmore 2002;2006) has explored the role of digital mediation in human-nonhuman relations (e.g., Blue 2016;Davies 2000;Nelson 2017;Ritts and Bakker 2021;Stinson 2017;Verma 2016;Verma et al 2016;von Essen et al 2021), there remains relatively sparse engagement between the disciplinary traditions of more-than-human and digital geographies (although see Dwyer 2021;McLean 2020;Nelson et al 2022;Nost and Goldstein 2021;Prebble et al 2021;Travis et al 2023). As Leszczynski (2019, 21) notes, scant attention has been paid "to how nature as an assemblage of both human and non-human organic life intersects with or fits into what is often presented as a triad of technology-society-space relations."…”

“…However, emerging research in digital ecologies is beginning to show that focusing solely on in-game, in-app, or on-screen encounters is an ineffective approach. Indeed, digital encounters-gaming or otherwiseregularly incite action beyond the screen, such as seeking out a physical encounter with a bird from user coordinates logged in a database (see Turnbull et al 2022;Von Essen et al 2021).…”

“…Moreover, entire agricultural systems are now represented as ‘digital twins’—simulated models that reflect real-time changes in the system. The company ‘Growing Underground’, for instance, has developed a digital twin of its vertical farming operation designed to “monitor, learn, feedback and forecast information that will make the real-life twin work better” (Walsh 2021, np; see also Jans-Singh et al 2020). Through these systems, environmental variables can be sensed and modified, and efficiency and productivity maximised (Gabrys 2014; Green and Chandler 2014; Rose and Chilvers 2018; Wolfert et al 2017).…”