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Full-Text Articles in Communication Technology and New Media
A Political Ecology Of Information: Media And The Dilemma Of State Power In China, Michael L. Miller
A Political Ecology Of Information: Media And The Dilemma Of State Power In China, Michael L. Miller
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
In this dissertation, I employ a Weberian concept of social power in order to theorize the challenges posed by, and the varieties of state response to, the dilemma of state power: the need of all states to empower societies with social capacities that may, in turn, threaten state interests. Through a comparison of traditional and new forms of media in China, I show that rather than posing qualitatively new types of challenges to authoritarian states, new media exacerbate the dilemma of state power. They do so because along each of three dimensions of social control, new media shift the relationship …
The Limits Of Transparency: Data Brokers And Commodification, Matthew Crain
The Limits Of Transparency: Data Brokers And Commodification, Matthew Crain
Publications and Research
In the United States the prevailing public policy approach to mitigating the harms of internet surveillance is grounded in the liberal democratic value of transparency. While a laudable goal, transparency runs up against insurmountable structural constraints within the political economy of commercial surveillance. A case study of the data broker industry reveals the limits of transparency and shows that commodification of personal information is at the root of the power imbalances that transparency-based strategies of consumer empowerment seek to rectify. Despite significant challenges, privacy policy must be more centrally informed by a critical political economy of commercial surveillance.