Vian Bakir, Andrew McStay







Assessing interdisciplinary academic and multi-stakeholder positions on transparency in the post-Snowden leak era

Drawing on the debates in the ongoing ESRC-funded seminar series (2015-2016), 'Debating and Assessing Transparency Arrangements: Privacy, Security, Surveillance, Trust' (DATA-PSST!), we identify stances on transparency in the post-Snowden leak era held by participants. Participants comprise academics from diverse disciplines, and stakeholders involved with transparency issues. We advance an original transparency typology; and develop the metaphor of the Visibility Slider to highlight the core aspect of privacy conceived in terms of control, management, norms and protocol. Together, the typology and metaphor illuminate the abstract, complex condition of contemporary surveillance, enabling clarification and assessment of transparency arrangements.

Keywords: privacy, security, surveillance, transparency, trust, Visibility Slider


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Note on the contributor

Dr Vian Bakir is Reader in Journalism and Media at Bangor University, Wales, UK. She is author of Torture, intelligence and sousveillance in the war on terror: Agenda-building struggles (2013) and Sousveillance, media and strategic political communication: Iraq, USA, UK (2010). She is guest editor of International Journal of Press/Politics (2015) Special Issue on news, agenda-building and intelligence agencies, and co-editor of Communication in the age of suspicion: Trust and the media (2007). She is Principal Investigator on Economic and Social Research Council Seminar Series (2014-16), DATA-PSST! 'Debating and Assessing Transparency Arrangements: Privacy, Security, Surveillance, Trust': see: http://data-psst.bangor.ac.uk/

Dr Andrew McStay is a Senior Lecturer at Bangor University, UK. His most recent book is Privacy and philosophy: New media and affective protocol (Peter Lang, 2014). He is also author of Creativity and advertising: Affect, events and process (Routledge, 2013); The mood of information: A critique of behavioural advertising (Continuum, 2011); and Digital advertising (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2016 [2009]). He is Principal Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project titled Empathic Media: Theory-Building and Knowledge-Exchange with Industry, Regulators and NGOs (Ref AH/M006654/1). He is also Co-Investigator on Economic and Social Research Council Seminar Series (2014-16), DATA-PSST! 'Debating and Assessing Transparency Arrangements: Privacy, Security, Surveillance, Trust'.