Surveillance Society

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Surveillance Society

Full course description

In this lecture series, we explore questions related to surveillance society and investigate if and why privacy still matters in digital societies. You study the eﬀects of sur-, sous-, and co-veillance on social behaviour, culture and self-understanding, and on rules and regulations of digital platforms and policies. The course runs over the entire year, and analyses privacy, surveillance, and related notions in the diﬀerent domains touched upon in other first year courses: society, politics, ethics, culture. You will also learn about surveillance in the global and non-Western contexts.

Course objectives

At the end of the course, you will be able to:

identify diﬀerent concepts of and approaches to privacy and surveillance;

understand examples of privacy violations and surveillance practices in their relevant political, legal and cultural contexts (e.g. related to social media, search engines, apps);

analyse and evaluate the consequences of technological developments for privacy, surveillance and related notions such as sousveillance, co-veillance, and self-surveillance.

Prerequisites

none/not applicable

Surveillance Society