7(2) 2021: Networked Images in Surveillance Capitalism

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14

Apple Memories and Automated Memory-Making: The Networked Image Inside the iPhone Chip
Pereira, Gabriel (2021)
In 2016, for the first time Apple introduced what it called “advanced computer vision” to organise and curate users’ images. The key selling point for Apple Memories was that all computation would happen inside the user’s device, relying on the privacy afforded by Apple’s widely used smartphone, the iPhone. This article offers a case study of Apple Memories and its automated memory-making, focusing on three dimensions: the vision of Apple Memories; how this vision gets infrastructured through the A11 Bionic chip; and how Apple Memo- ries engages users in automated memory-making. This analysis raises important questions regarding privacy and surveillance capitalism as, even if operating on-device, Apple Memories still relies on the datafi- cation of the personal archive via the automation of image analysis (computer vision) and personalisation. Building upon Mackenzie and Munster’s (2019) notion of “platform seeing”, I argue that control over the networked image today goes beyond data brokering for behavioural analysis and advertising. Apple Memories’ framing of computer vision as an intimate, always-on and personal way of remembering is part of a wider goal of exploiting personal data to bolster user engagement, generate even more data, and ultimately accumulate infrastructural power across Apple’s “walled garden” digital ecosystem.
Automating Platform Spectators: Algorithmic Montage and Affective Scroll in TikTok
Anikina, Alexandra (2021)
Algorithmic automation of visual culture opens an interesting discus- sion of the negotiation of agency and circulation of affect between the user and the network. On audiovisual platforms, the algorithmic proce- dure is looped into the demands of attention economy, keeping the user watching. Taking TikTok as the main case study due to its compelling assemblage of surveillance tactics tailored to techno-embodied modes of spectatorship, this paper questions how platforms renegotiate the user-spectators’ agency and produce new modes of watching and expe- riencing images. I investigate algorithmic montage and affective scroll as TikTok’s key attention capture and instrumentalisation devices, built into the lacunae of behavioural opportunity and capitalising on the affective drive of the moving image flow. I argue that users should be seen as user-spectators whose agency undergoes a double negotia- tion, as users who can interact with the platform and as spectators who are subjected to specific modes of attention capture; their agential dis/empowerment is, therefore, contingent and framed by the specific epistemic and aesthetic affordances of the platform governmentality. Considering the role of algorithmic montage and affective scroll leads to new insights in how algorithmic surveillance simultaneously partici- pates in the aesthetic and temporal figuration of platform spectatorship and conditions the tactics of resistance to the algorithmic logic.
Black Squares and Gucci: Networked Images and the (In)Visibility of Surveillance
Hosters, Sascha; Roesler-Keilholz, Silke (2021)
This paper seeks to investigate the (invisible) effects of networked images by introducing their rhizomatic structure in the intersecting spheres of fashion and social media. By juxtaposing different modes of visual campaigns with socio-political and economic incentives, the authors aim to expose a spectrum of visualisations and user be- haviour that reflects on the underlying platform dynamics at play in the framework of surveillance capitalism. At one extreme, there is #theshowmustbepaused a.k.a. #blackouttuesday – a social awareness campaign that began in response to the killing of George Floyd and effectively blacked out Instagram for one day on June 2nd, 2020 –; and at the other, there is Gucci, the Italian luxury brand, which posted its own statement on the same day and has established a unique cosmos of kaleidoscopic images with innovative (online) campaigns. As such, this unique event functions as a watershed moment, not only for analysis of the ambiguity and immediacy by which images are shared online, but also for exposing the underlying structure of Instagram’s advertising and engagement model. Whereas on its own, the “black square” was born of a socio-political moment of crisis and developed an unintended effect of deletion – the juxtaposition with Gucci’s advertising campaigns stands as a paradigm for the commer- cial appropriation of internet (sub)culture in surveillance capitalism.
Detained through a Smartphone: Deploying Experimental Collaborative Visual Methods to Study the Socio-Technical Landscape of Digital Confinement
Sanchez Boe, Carolina; Mainsah, Henry (2021)
The facial recognition software SmartLink is being increasingly deployed as an “alternative to detention” by ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement), along with other surveillance technolo- gies such as voice recognition and electronic ankle shackles. Rather than being a proper “alternative” to immigrant detention, these tech- nologies have become an addition to the ever-increasing detention numbers, spreading confinement into immigrant communities and homes. These new forms of enforcement technologies constitute an understudied aspect of surveillance capitalism, as they are deployed with the active involvement of private companies with for-profit motives. This article draws on an experimental collaborative visual methodol- ogy enacted by an anthropologist, a design scholar, a lawyer and a participant with personal experience seeking asylum and being moni- tored through SmartLINK®. Together, we revisit visual material generated as part of ethnographic fieldwork on “digital confinement”. Using a walkthrough method, we proceed to conduct a collaborative analysis of Smartlink, its technological features, data generation, and cultural representations. Conducting research with someone who is constantly under surveillance through her cell-phone raises specific methodological and ethical issues, and in our article we call for par- ticipatory alliances and relational ethics when researching regimes of digital confinement.
Doing Google Maps: Everyday Use and the Image of Space in a Surveillance Capitalism Centrepiece
Gentzel, Peter; Wimmer, Jeffrey; Schlagowski, Ruben (2021)
The article focuses on the app Google Maps. In structural terms, Google Maps is committed to the production logic of platform or sur- veillance capitalism, insofar as the collected user data are utilised both to maintain Google Maps as a “cartographic infrastructure” (Plantin 2018) and to predict and manipulate behaviour (Zuboff 2019). On the other hand, Google Maps presents an “image of the world” that, as a product of platform capitalism, also conveys specific notions that we depict by using the concepts of “networked images” or “operational images” (Farocki 2004; Rubinstein & Sluis 2008). First, we traced the development of Google Maps and classified it using cartographic principles and criteria. Building on that, we per- formed two empirical studies. In a first step, we highlight findings on the everyday usage practices of Google Maps. In a second step, we characterise city maps produced by residents of a medium-sized city in Germany using an app developed by us. The project thus sheds light on the appropriation aspect of Google Maps and, by exploring the micro- level of individual usage practices, knowledge, and skills, provides an empirical contribution that is comparatively rare in the context of platform studies. Developing a map application furthermore enables us to show that the selection of knowledge and its spatial anchoring – the “image of the world”– follows a different logic when certain indi- viduals create a map for specific locations (e.g., multimodal routes to “hidden culture”).
Embedding Heterogenous Forms of Surveillance in China’s Autocratic Networked Media: How the Government Supports and Controls Platforms, Companies, Online Celebrities, and Users
Bogen, Cornelia (2021)
The rise of platforms, datafication, and the new business model of platform capitalism have prompted scholars to carve out the differ- ences between surveillance capitalism in authoritarian states and Western democracies. However, there has been little research about the mechanisms that authoritarian governments use to subject eco- nomic actors and users to state control and the subsequent social practices. The case studies presented here illustrate how the state’s deep entanglement with platforms is meant to foster both economic and socio-political outcomes by allowing platforms to promote users’ entrepreneurship and restricting their online business if they are radi- cally indifferent to media content or Party censorship rules. Further- more, the case studies demonstrate that China’s model goes beyond the Western concept of surveillance capitalism, because the hetero- geneous logics of marketisation are interconnected with types of state surveillance different from the ones described by Zuboff (2019) for democratic countries. Against the backdrop of Fuchs/Trottier’s (2015) theoretical model of social media surveillance, the societal implica- tions of categorical suspicion, social sorting, and surveillance creep play out differently. The diffusion of China’s institutional setting into e-platforms provokes culture-specific narratives (Versailles literature) and social online practices utilising networked images (barrage sub- titling, human flesh search) unseen in Western online publics to date. Hence, studies of surveillance mechanisms in China’s digital space need to be embedded within the larger context of political economy and state control.
Images of Resistance: Thinking about Computer Vision AI in Surveillance Capitalism through Images of Marielle Franco
Arruda dos Santos; Vinicius Ariel; Moreschi, Bruno; Jurno, Amanda; Prata, Didiana; Lemos, Monique; Nunes Sequeira, Lucas (2021)
This article examines the ambivalent dynamics of activism in social media and online platforms. Made up of Brazilian researchers from areas such as Communication, Visual Arts and Design, Anthropology, Computer Science and Engineering, our group analysed 213,083 images shared on Instagram that are part of the hashtag #MariellePresente, an online political manifestation that arose in response to the assassination of Brazilian councilwoman Marielle Franco in 2018, an unsolved case. After collecting images with a Python programming language script, we used two Computer Vision/Artificial Intelligence tools to read them (Google Cloud Vision and YOLO Darknet). The results show the capi- talistic logics inscribed into these technologies and also shed light on the role played by both online activism and data analysis tools. Thus, the consequences of the shift of political movements online became apparent: by helping activism to find its audience, online platforms simultaneously subject its cause to demands of 21st century digital capitalism (Zuboff 2019; Srnicek 2017; Bruno 2013; Crary 2013; Beiguelman 2020).
Introduction: Networked Images in Surveillance Capitalism
Moskatova, Olga; Polze, Anna; Reichert, Ramón (2021)
Kind of Blue: Social Media Photography and Emotion
Henning, Michelle (2021)
This paper considers emotion recognition and sentiment analysis in relation to social media photographs. It addresses this as part of a larger regime of surveillance and control, in which photographs are treated as symptoms for a diagnosis, and are quantified as data. Auto- mated emotion recognition approaches are capable in principle of analysing the visual qualities of social photos insofar as these can be measured and represented numerically. In reducing the photograph to data, they select out features of the image, as a means to explain or describe a mental state that lies behind or beyond the image. To treat photographs as emotionally expressive goes against the historical idea of the photograph as objective recording. Originally, the idea that pho- tographs could move their viewers was linked to the sense of photog- raphy as detached documentation. Today, more and more people take and share photographs as part of a larger shift in emotional culture, which places a therapeutic sense of self at the heart of economy and governance. Yet while people use mobile phone photos as a means of expressive documentation and self-representation, emotion recogni- tion relies on a behaviourist and positivist model that is indifferent to their intentions and to culture, and which is premised on a myth of total knowledge.
Nudged to Normal: Images, Behaviour, and the Autism Surveillance Complex
Wentz, Daniela (2021)
For Shoshana Zuboff, affective computing is one of the key technolo- gies of “rendition” through which surveillance capitalism is realised (Zuboff 2019). An epistemic and technical condition of affective com- puting is the combination of facial detection and facial expression recognition, i.e., the identification of faces by computer vision and the process of measuring human emotions by identifying the corre- sponding facial expressions. While Zuboff criticises affective comput- ing primarily in immediate economic contexts, particularly in market research, this article is devoted to its application in an area that she considers “innocent”: the therapy of people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The focus of this paper is on wearables based on Google’s smart glasses, which aim at teaching social interaction skills to children diagnosed with autism. The paper critically analyses the role of images, their operational logics and datafication for this heterogeneous human- machine constellation and shows that these technologies are hardly innocent. On the contrary, the glasses are a prime example of what Zuboff terms “rendition”, and of the commercialisation of dis/ability in surveillance capitalism.
Seeing Like a Border: Biometrics and the Operational Image
Andrejevic, Mark; Zala, Volcic (2021)
This article considers the role played by automated vision in trans- forming bodies into “operational images” that enable the expansion of borders into enclosures – and the multiplication of these enclosures. In this respect, we seek to expand on Chris Rumford’s (2011) invitation to consider what it might mean to “see like a border” (67). We argue that the iconic character of the image – as representation – is col- lapsed into its operational character by the automated sensing system, and then go on to consider the traces of the visual that remain in the context of such ‘images’. We then consider the modality of governance that operates in the register of the operational image – one in which physical space becomes deformable at the granular, individual level, along the lines envisioned by Deleuze in his discussion of societies of control (Deleuze 2017). The resulting form of governance might be described, drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, as the deployment of a granular form of biopower – one that requires the milieu, or envi- ronment, to become deformable and customisable. This, of course, is the mode of power and control anticipated by those who seek to develop and capture the terrains of augmented and virtual reality – or, in more recent terminology, the realm of the “metaverse”.
The Digital, Capitalist Gaze
Schröter, Jens (2021)
Today, there are surely more images in circulation and more vis- ibility than ever before. This is due mostly to the diffusion of digital technologies in the context of global capitalism. The following paper undertakes to address this situation by relating the image/visibility to digital technologies and capitalism. The core idea is to analyse this situation on the basis of a theory of the gaze as a theory of the subject’s constitutive visibility. One classical notion of the gaze, as elaborated by Lacan, will be discussed. The latter conceived the subject as always already visible. Being seen or surveilled is not something that happens subsequently to an already constituted subject; instead, it plays its part in forming the subject from the very beginning. This can explain the desire and fascination invested in images today. This approach to the gaze is historically differentiated and related to image technologies. Contrary to Lacan’s somewhat ahistorical conception of the gaze, it becomes clear that historically, the gaze is dependent on the available media technologies, which means that the primordial visibility of the subject is realised in different ways. Finally, this is related to a dis- cussion of capitalism, the socioeconomic context to which all modern image technologies belong. It is thus argued that the gaze in modern societies is a digital and capitalist gaze.
The Invisualities of Capture in Amazon’s Logistical Operations
Beverungen, Armin (2021)
This paper explores the status of visuality in surveillance capital- ism by considering its role in the management of Amazon’s logisti- cal operations. Whereas Amazon is often portrayed as being at the forefront of developments in surveillance associated with face recog- nition technologies, a focus on its logistical operations highlights the more mundane role of the barcode scan. The barcode is considered a calm image, central to the operation of capture in the warehouse and beyond. Logistics is here marked by invisualities, wherein visuality is operationalised to optimise logistical flows of data, things and people, rather than geared towards visual forms of surveillance. These invi- sualities mean that power is exercised primarily through the scan as capture, with power characterised as operational and environmental. Recent developments in logistics towards augmented video surveillance and its associated networked images must also be assessed in the context of this mode of power and its economy.
Urban Data Analytics as Research Topic, Method and Ethical Concern
Trottier, Daniel; Lee, Ju-Sung; Boy, John (2021)
Local and global business interests assemble images of neighbourhoods from localised knowledge, including disparate forms of public data such as reviews, blog posts, and open data from municipalities and other organisations. (In)visible forms of working with and worrying about neighbourhood data can be understood as an engagement with the neighbourhood’s reputation, or rather its symbolic trajectory: a set of tangible and intangible indicators through which an urban space is known and treated accordingly over time. This paper addresses ethical concerns that emerge from contemporary datafied urban ethnogra- phy. We consider a combination of large-scale and bespoke, quanti- tative, and qualitative analyses of available sources with sustained ethnographic engagement with a Dutch neighbourhood coping with a troubled reputation. While the latter activities can mitigate ethical issues stemming from the former, ethnography in turn raises further concerns of exploitation and risk exposure and should not be treated as a kind of ‘ethical panacea’ for big, open, or public data projects. A multifaceted and interrogative approach to data collection may offer a more rounded account of contemporary urban data practices by drawing upon distinct and possibly conflicting accounts of social life. The challenge is to prioritise under-represented and otherwise mar- ginalised voices in both the design and the dissemination of research on urban data analytics.

Recent Submissions