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When Baby Brother is watching: How civilians surveil control agents in the new era

Mallén, Agneta LU (2016)
Abstract
Today, film clips and still pictures captured by civilians with their mobile phones are increasingly used as evidence to prove specific accounts of events. Distributed on news media, YouTube or other social media, these film clips can also expose misconduct by control agents such as police officers and security guards. The aim of this paper is to analyse three cases of such sousveillance that have been largely discussed in Sweden and Finland – police and security guardian misconduct that was filmed by civilians and distributed widely on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The study shows, that the exposed misconduct both had social and legal consequences for the police and security officers that were filmed: on the one hand, the filming and... (More)
Today, film clips and still pictures captured by civilians with their mobile phones are increasingly used as evidence to prove specific accounts of events. Distributed on news media, YouTube or other social media, these film clips can also expose misconduct by control agents such as police officers and security guards. The aim of this paper is to analyse three cases of such sousveillance that have been largely discussed in Sweden and Finland – police and security guardian misconduct that was filmed by civilians and distributed widely on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The study shows, that the exposed misconduct both had social and legal consequences for the police and security officers that were filmed: on the one hand, the filming and distribution of the events resulted in legal proceedings against these control agents, on the other, the distribution of the mobile phone video clips resulted in processes of shaming and stigmatization of them. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
organization
publishing date
type
Working paper/Preprint
publication status
unpublished
subject
keywords
citizen journalism, control agents, police
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
88b02f98-5d98-46fb-af34-f6ba21ca018a
date added to LUP
2016-08-17 13:59:38
date last changed
2018-11-21 21:25:15
@misc{88b02f98-5d98-46fb-af34-f6ba21ca018a,
  abstract     = {{Today, film clips and still pictures captured by civilians with their mobile phones are increasingly used as evidence to prove specific accounts of events. Distributed on news media, YouTube or other social media, these film clips can also expose misconduct by control agents such as police officers and security guards. The aim of this paper is to analyse three cases of such sousveillance that have been largely discussed in Sweden and Finland – police and security guardian misconduct that was filmed by civilians and distributed widely on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The study shows, that the exposed misconduct both had social and legal consequences for the police and security officers that were filmed: on the one hand, the filming and distribution of the events resulted in legal proceedings against these control agents, on the other, the distribution of the mobile phone video clips resulted in processes of shaming and stigmatization of them.}},
  author       = {{Mallén, Agneta}},
  keywords     = {{citizen journalism; control agents; police}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Working Paper}},
  title        = {{When Baby Brother is watching: How civilians surveil control agents in the new era}},
  year         = {{2016}},
}