Paper short abstract:

This paper explore the beliefs that underpin stories and debates about the police’s surveillant uses of social media. What beliefs about what the police see and do on social media are expressed, and how can these stories shed light on contemporary beliefs about online surveillance in general?

Paper long abstract:

The Norwegian police make extensive use of social media platforms. These uses are informational and communicational, but there is inevitably a strong element of surveillance connected to these platforms as they are materializations of the social sphere. In contemporary connective culture, casual talk is routinely and extensively written down, stored and accessible from almost anywhere. An offhand remark might come back to haunt you—in Norway, a recent law on hate speech means it might even lead to a home-visit from the police. This fact, however, is intertwined with different beliefs. Some warn of the dangers that what you post online will be visible forever, others claim that the haystack of online postings is getting so big the chances that your needle will ever be found are miniscule, even if you really want to find it. Some cherish that the police have greater access to written evidence, others see it as a threat to the rule of law.

This paper will explore the beliefs that underpin stories and debates from Norwegian media concerning consequences of the police’s surveillant uses of social media. It is based on material collected from Norwegian language social media accounts and edited media sources that in different ways thematise police use of social media as a surveillance tool. What beliefs about what police see and do on social media are expressed through these stories and debates? In what ways can these stories shed light on contemporary beliefs about online surveillance and the digital sphere in general?

Paper short abstract:

This paper studies how the development of voter surveillance among Swedish political parties is conditioned by cultural, economical and judiciary factors. Furthermore how this development might be changing not only the ways election campaigns are conducted but also the democratic system as a whole.

Paper long abstract:

As noted by Lyon (2019) the last couple of decades has seen a development in political campaigns towards enhanced “voter surveillance”. Data from the activities of everyday for citizens are collected and used to target specific voters with tailored messages. During the last decade there here has been a large body of research published on “data-driven campaigning” (Bennett, C. J. & Lyon, D. 2019) particularly focusing on US politics. Among these are the studies by Kreiss (2012; 2016) on how political campaigns in the US has adopted innovations in communication tools, practices and infrastructure. He underlines that data and analytics has become essential in the development. In a European context there has been case studies regarding data-driven campaigning in the UK (Anstead 2017), Germany (Kruschinski and Haller 2017) and the Netherlands (Dobber et al 2017). So far though there has been no systematic study of data-driven campaigning and voter surveillance in a Nordic context.

This study provides insights obtained from semi-structured and in-depth interviews with political operatives involved in data driven campaigning in all political parties represented in the Swedish parliament. Among the themes explored in this paper are how the work with voter surveillance is conditioned by organizational culture, resources, infrastructure, judiciary factors and the election system. Furthermore, the paper discusses how the development of data driven campaigning might be changing not only the ways election campaigns are conducted but also how political parties operate and the democratic system as a whole.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I discuss to what extent the so called privacy paradox should actually be considered paradoxical. I draw attention to two distinctions that I think have largely gone under the radar in the privacy paradox discussion, and conclude that the privacy paradox is not very paradoxical at all.

Paper long abstract:

As numerous studies have shown, people tend to behave online in ways that do not mirror their own privacy concerns. While they report strong concern for their privacy, they behave as if their privacy were not very important to them at all. This has become known in the literature as "the privacy paradox”. In this paper, I discuss to what extent this pattern should actually be considered paradoxical. In doing so, I draw attention to two distinctions that seem to me to largely have gone under the radar in the privacy paradox discussion. The first (1) is a distinction between two kinds of privacy intrusion, and the second (2) is a distinction between two kinds of privacy concern.

(1) A privacy intrusion may either constitute a direct threat to my wellbeing or integrity, or be more indirect, with smaller effects (at least short-term) – if any – which I may not even be aware of.

(2) A privacy concern may be either self-interested or non-self-interested. I may object to privacy intrusions for purely self-interested reasons, or I may oppose them (partly) on ethical or ideological grounds.

I conclude (with previous authors, but on slightly different grounds) that the privacy paradox is not very paradoxical at all, and that acknowledging the two above distinctions in the discussion about the privacy paradox (and what explains it) may help to further our understanding of people’s privacy worries and online behaviour.