Sousveillance, Media and Strategic Political Communication is a fascinating book that shows the impact of how social media and Web 2.0 has transformed political communication and the political debate.
The US went into Iraq thinking it could offer democracy to an oppressed people. With the tempting fruit of democracy, media disasters such as the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal shows the power that the photo and ensuring media coverage created.
The book is based on Steve Mann's notion of hierarchical sousveillance (politically motivated watching of the institutional watchers) and personal sousveillance (apolitical, human-centered life-sharing) via Web 2.0. Bakir's interpretation of Mann's notion of sousveillance is somewhat different than the standard definition.
Mann's concept of Sousveillance is meant to explore the philosophical and techno-social issues arising from human-centered capture, processing and transmission of sensory information. It was developed in conjunction with his research on wearable computing and wearable cameras in the 1980's; before they were commonplace. Bakir provides numerous details on how it has impacted strategic political communications.
The book takes a deep look at media in the Middle East and how it is used, and misused. A point the author makes numerous times is that political communication in the middle east is for the most part highly limited, given the nature of oppressive regimes where the government has long maintained direct control over the media.
In contract to the West, most of the regimes governing the Arab Leagues 22 states are autocrats lacking any sort of democratic institution.
The book notes that there are 3 taboos in Arab national media coverage: promoting the views of political opposition, criticizing a country's ruler or their families, religious writing that might cause undue dissention, and upsetting social mores.
The books focuses is on the US invasion of Iraq and how user-generated media had significant input, including the Abu Ghraib scandal, Saddam Hussein's execution, war blogs and more.
The power of social media for agenda-building, thought control and how the resistance can get their message out is detailed in numerous case studies. Bakir also notes the challenges of doing that in an anonymous manner, given the nature of the oppressive regimes the bloggers are often commenting on.
Sousveillance, Media and Strategic Political Communication provides an interesting look at how Web 2.0 generates an intensification of the notion of sousveillance and the rise of sousveillance cultures. For anyone who wants an understanding of how media worked and continues to operate in the Iraq conflict, Sousveillance is required reading.
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