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This paper analyzes Fang Fang's 2020 Wuhan Diary‐Dispatches from a Quarantined City, to show how the author communicates the coronavirus crisis in Wuhan in a global information ecosystem. The success of the diary showcases how the actual health emergency has been transformed into a communication issue.

This study is exploratory and qualitative in nature. The authors conducted a thematic analysis (TA) of Wuhan Diary, in which we decided to focus on the aspects of sousveillance and solidarity. For the purposes of our paper, we used the English translation of the text by Dr. Michael Berry.

The authors focus on two major themes in their exploration of the corona crisis as a global communication issue: sousveillance and solidarity. The authors argue that the diary's ways of seeing perform a version of “sousveillance” or “undersight” in juxtaposition to surveillance or “oversight” (Mann, 2017). Fang Fang calls for solidarity as an effective measure for individuals, communities and societies to contain the pandemic and a potential misinfodemic.

Since Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wuhan Diary presents an unprecedented narrative account of life under quarantine that could function as a litmus test for other cities and countries. Fang Fang's diary provides a countermeasure to official accounts of the pandemic in Wuhan, which has resonated both with people in China and abroad.

The study explores the use of video to document police interaction with citizens and its role in the renaissance of a contemporary crisis focused on police use-of-force, race relations, and legitimacy in the United States. The saturation of communication technologies and network access have ushered an era of citizens watching the police, consolidating the new visibility of policing and potentially reorganizing to some degree the power dynamics of traditional police/community relations.

The argument is supported through a triangulated analysis that draws on several data sources about video technology use by both citizens and police, media coverage of police shootings, and public opinion on trends in police excessive force.

The institution of policing is experiencing a legitimacy crisis that is fueled by high-profile police shootings of African Americans by white police officers captured by video technology. The public increasingly expects access to video of police/citizen encounters, which redefines the public’s role in police accountability matters as well as the consequences for police legitimacy.

The theory illuminates the ways in which video has become central to public and official discourse in police use-of-force cases and the problems its presence and absence presents in police/community relations. The ability of citizens to record and widely share video of police encounters is a new development in the ability of citizens and police reform advocates to frame the discourse on police/community relations, accountability, and legitimacy.

Purpose – This chapter considers the economic and political relationship between artificial intelligence tools such as facial recognition software and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) identity construction and identification. In doing so, the chapter considers the threats and opportunities to diverse LGBTQ identities from algorithmic governance.

Methodology/approach – The author analyzes public discourse on these issues and its relationship to agency for LGBTQ communities. The conceptual approach integrates research into surveillance capitalism and neuroliberalism with “digiqueer” criminology to map the relationship between digital media technologies, institutional legitimacy and negotiations for LGBTQ rights, recognition and resources.

Findings – The discussion shows that the surveillance capitalist principles of blurred consent and redistributed privacy are underpinned by geopolitical and technological forces that have undermined the legitimacy of governments and big tech companies. LGBTQ community resistance to harms perpetrated through digital media platforms is one positive consequence of the ambiguities of surveillance capitalism, but which also reflects the investment required by such communities to secure basic protections that the general population might take for granted.

Originality/value – Research into the relationship between recognition and redistribution through access to rights granted to different social groups on the basis of sexuality, sexual expression and identity is under-interrogated. This chapter responds to that gap with a focus on the role that digital media technologies can play in securing recognition and redistribution of resources for LGBTQ communities, or the significance of their absence and/or diminution in current contexts.

This chapter, based on a sociological approach, addresses the ethical issues of surveillance research from the perspective of the profound transformations that science and innovation are undergoing, as part of a broader shift from modern to post-modern society, affecting also other major social institutions (such as government, religion, family, and public administration). The change occurring in the science and technology system is characterised by diminishing authority, uncertainty about internal mechanisms and standards, and a declining and increasingly difficult access to resources. Such changes, also related to globalisation and new digital technologies, have transformed the way research is conducted and disseminated. Research is now more open and its results more easily accessible to citizens.

Scientific research is also put under increased public scrutiny, while, at the same time, public distrust and disaffection towards science is rising. In such a context, it is more important than ever to make sure that research activities are not compromised by fraudulent and unethical practices. The legitimate expectations of citizens to enjoy their rights, including the ability to protect their private sphere, are growing. Scientific and technological development is deeply interrelated with the widespread awareness of these rights and the possibility of exercising them, but it produces also new risks, while a widespread sense of insecurity increases. The digital revolution, while improving people’s quality of life, offers at the same time new opportunities for crime and terrorism, which in turn has produced a demand to strengthen security systems through increasingly advanced and intrusive surveillance technologies. Misconduct in the field of surveillance may not only undermine the quality of research, but also further impair society’s trust in research and science as well as in the State and its institutions.

Contributions describing the 15th Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy: Panopticon, covering selective highlights of papers, presentations and the overall context of this meeting.

Observations and descriptions of key themes and ideas that were presented in a conference framework.

Significant participation at this conference.

This is the primary forum for the exploration of issues and challenges relating to the internet and freedom today, focusing on the impact that emerging surveillance societies have on the net and individuals particularly in light of the data mining and data sharing of personal information, combined with and the close partnership between corporations and government.

How problems and issues are resolved by others and realizing that the power of sharing information is greatest when solutions are creative and openly shared.

Good to share information and network with colleagues on issues relating to privacy.

Purpose – The chapter explores the UK’s evolving counter-radicalization program – Prevent – and its increasing alignment with a broader Counter Extremism agenda, which it argues exemplifies not merely a concern with countering radicalization or terrorism, but a broader “civic turn” toward a narrow and restrictive conception of integration and citizenship.

Methodology/Approach – The chapter draws on a range of studies of Prevent and the governance of British Muslims, to examine the traces and impact of Prevent and Counter Extremism agendas across a range of governance domains, including urban governance, schooling, and public sector institutions and integration.

Findings – Prevent has undergone substantial conceptual and operational expansion that has meant that its purpose and efficacy as a counter terrorism strategy has become ambivalent. Its evolution into an element of a broader integration policy places limits on the terms of particularly Muslims’ citizenship. It also brings it into tension with other public sector duties and legal norms.

Originality/Value – The chapter extends existing studies of the permeation of security concerns across governance and public life, and the securitization of citizenship, to examine how these have been expressed in particular domains of governance and their implications for the inclusion and accommodation of Muslims. It also offers a caveat to the tendency in much of the literature to see such securitization as exemplifying a highly cohesive governing project.

This paper examines how contemporary workplace surveillance can simultaneously incentivize and commodify workforce behavior. Specifically, workplace surveillance is reconceptualized as rent-seeking, which offers a framework for analyzing novel employer-employee relationships stemming from alternate views of risk and reward.

The case of workplace microchipping is studied qualitatively as a backdrop for theorizing emergent labor relations in the context of surveillance capitalism and biopolitics.

Reconsidering surveillance within the context of personal risk and entrepreneurial lure offers much to 21st century discourse on labor and supervision. It is imperative that the public sector engages in appropriate regulatory protocols to manage emergent behavior in organizations.

This study departs from the popular conceptualization of human microchipping as an intersection of legal and ethical considerations of surveillance. Instead, the authors examine a different aspect of the microchipping phenomenon, taking into account employee creative reactions to employer surveillance in the context of risk and return.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2022-0009

This paper aims to analyse how the supreme audit institution (SAI) monitors related party transactions (RPTs) in the Brazilian public sector. It considers definitions and disclosure policies of RPTs by international accounting and auditing standards and their evolution since 1980.

Based on archival research on international standards and using an interpretive approach, the authors investigated definitions and disclosure policies. Using a topic model based on latent Dirichlet allocation, the authors performed a content analysis on over 59,000 SAI decisions to assess how the SAI monitors RPTs.

The SAI investigates nepotism (a kind of RPT) and conflicts of interest up to eight times more frequently than related parties. Brazilian laws prevent nepotism and conflicts of interest, but not RPTs in general. Indeed, Brazilian public-sector accounting standards have not converged towards IPSAS 20, and ISSAI 1550 does not adjust auditing procedures to suit the public sector.

The SAI follows a legalistic auditing approach, indicating a need for regulation of related public-sector parties to improve surveillance. In addition to Brazil, other code law countries might face similar circumstances.

Public-sector RPTs are an under-investigated field, calling for attention by academics and standard-setters. Text mining and latent Dirichlet allocation, while mature techniques, are underexplored in accounting and auditing studies. Additionally, the Python script created to analyse the audit reports is available at Mendeley Data and may be used to perform similar analyses with minor adaptations.

The legitimacy crisis faced by law enforcement has been suggested to be the result of a new media environment where citizens can record encounters with police and place these recordings online. The purpose of this paper is to examine the motives of individuals who cop-watch, or record the police, but not the factors influencing visiting cop-watching websites.

Using a cross-sectional, national sample of 702 American adults, and drawing on theories of legal socialization and selective exposure, the current study examines the prevalence and correlates visiting “cop-watching” websites.

Approximately 9 percent of the sample reports having ever visited these sites. Results from a series of logistic regressions indicate legal cynicism is positively associated with having ever visited these sites, having done so recently, following these sites on social media and visiting these sites more frequently after Ferguson. Police legitimacy reduced the likelihood that individuals had ever visited these sites, but was unrelated to other outcomes.

The cross-sectional nature of the survey precludes discussion of causality, but results are fairly consistent with theoretical expectations.

The current study reflects an early attempt to understand correlates of public consumption of “cop-watching” material.