Surveillance cultures and everyday life

New cultures of surveillance have been emerging since the mid C20th. Now, digitally-mediated relationships mean that subjects are increasingly involved, not merely as the "bearers" of surveillance but as active participants, through social media, interaction with public street cameras and in everyday adoption of surveillance mentalities and practices. A much more complex cultural landscape is emerging than can be captured with simple conceptual binaries such as power/participation, in/visibility, privacy/publicness and so on. The ethics and politics of such complex situations present new challenges. The need for both disclosive and normative ethics is if anything greater. Democracy acquires different meanings in a mediated, information-infused world. Surveillance situations vary widely in the countries of the global north and south. And the kinds of accountability that might be demanded of corporations and government departments may have to be scaled for other levels of surveillance activity. Thus both the analytical and the ethical seem ready for overhaul as Surveillance Studies moves beyond its initial frames.