Return to search

Harnessing Power: Exploring Citizen's Use of Networked Technologies to Promote Police Accountability

In this examination of citizen surveillance, I engage with Foucaultian and Deleuzian
conceptualizations of surveillance, power, resistance, control, and desire, to explore the
motivation(s) of community members who film and disseminate footage of the police.
Methodologically, I conducted semi-structured interviews with community stakeholders
to study the latent thematic ideas embedded in their responses. These themes represent
the underlying motivational factors a citizen surveiller may have when filming the police.
In my analysis of these themes, I explore: citizen surveillers’ logic for resisting power;
citizen surveillers’ understandings of power; and, citizen surveillers’ reported approaches
to both passive and active forms of resistance. Subsequently, there appears to be an
underlying desire for power and a resistance to power when filming the police. However,
given the exploratory nature of this study, there is a need to continue investigating the
theoretical and under substantiated claims about citizen surveillance and its association
with race, gender and socio-economic status.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/35338
Date January 2016
CreatorsSchwartz, David
ContributorsKempa, Michael
PublisherUniversité d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Source SetsUniversité d’Ottawa
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

Page generated in 0.0018 seconds