Papers by Stephen J . Neville
Communications Law: Journal of Computer, Media and Telecommunications Law, 2022
Offers an outline of the emergent problems associated with audio digital surveillance (i.e. eaves... more Offers an outline of the emergent problems associated with audio digital surveillance (i.e. eavesmining) in relation to children's digital rights.
Surveillance and Society, 2021
Panacoustic surveillance can be low-intensity and mundane, but when taken to its extreme, it is c... more Panacoustic surveillance can be low-intensity and mundane, but when taken to its extreme, it is coordinated with physical violence to create an atmosphere of hallucinatory fear. Our entry point into this problem is through a case study of the Saydnaya torture prison in Syria, a terrifying and opaque architecture of power. This short paper draws from the earwitness art and human rights activism of Lawrence Abu Hamdan concerning Saydnaya in collaboration with Amnesty International: from our analysis of the prison, we extrapolate lessons of panacoustic technologies more broadly, which are not necessarily or immediately violent but nonetheless disempower subjects by constraining their behaviors and rendering walls indefensibly porous. In developing a nascent theory of panacoustic surveillance, this paper makes two distinct contributions to surveillance studies. First, it puts sound and surveillance studies scholars into dialogue to echo Hamdam’s argument that walls do not represent an a...
Communications Law, 2022
Offers an outline of the emergent problems associated with audio digital surveillance (i.e. eaves... more Offers an outline of the emergent problems associated with audio digital surveillance (i.e. eavesmining) in relation to children's digital rights.
SSRN Electronic Journal
Using a digital methods analysis, the following article conducts a cross-platform study of the em... more Using a digital methods analysis, the following article conducts a cross-platform study of the emergent “Zoombombing” phenomenon alongside COVID-19 and the concomitant on-lining of professional and public life. This empirical study seeks to provide further insight to media frames characterizing Zoombombing at the outbreak of the pandemic, providing further insight into Zoombombing as a practice, how related actions act as an extension of longer histories and practices of online harassment, and the role that various platforms play in the phenomenon’s unfolding. By interrogating these points of departure, our study sheds light not only on Zoombombing as a cultural practice, but also how these acts manifest within and across a range of Internet platforms.
Journal of Sonic Studies, 2021
This article reports on the findings of an autoethnographic case study of the Amazon Echo smart s... more This article reports on the findings of an autoethnographic case study of the Amazon Echo smart speaker to explore problems of acoustic privacy at home. The concept of aural expectations of home (AEH) is introduced to theorize how one lives with and through sound at home. This contribution centers on a gap in surveillance studies literature: critical discussion of smart speakers tends to focus primarily on issues of data bleed, the extraction of knowledge about the household, as opposed to multisided issues of sonic bleed. In response, the goal of this article is to highlight issues of acoustic boundary control to explore how Amazon Echo’s logic of surveillance might interact with the acoustic environment and sonic practices of home. I argue that smart speakers do not enact an “utter invasion” of domestic privacy, but rather affect interpersonal, embodied, and environmental processes of acoustic boundary control; however, this new media development represents an emergent vector of surveillance in the domestic sphere that can indirectly render one’s AEH as data.
Canadian Journal of Communication, 2021
Background: Social media and digital technology play a central role in amplifying the potential h... more Background: Social media and digital technology play a central role in amplifying the potential harms of the far right.
Analysis: The concept of enemy imaginaries is developed to map the digital and social media practices of far-right actors and groups in their antagonistic participation with and against a liberal, multicultural, globalist imagined community. Analysis focuses on a dramatic clash at a People’s Party of Canada event in Hamilton, Ontario, during the 2019 federal election.
Conclusion and implications: Disparate far-right groups can momentarily crystallize around a particular event to define new nationalist objects that are symbolic of their networked and mediated fight against an imagined enemy.
Social Media + Society, 2021
Using a digital methods analysis, the following article conducts a cross-platform study of the em... more Using a digital methods analysis, the following article conducts a cross-platform study of the emergent “Zoombombing” phenomenon alongside COVID-19 and the concomitant on-lining of professional and public life. This empirical study seeks to provide further insight to media frames characterizing Zoombombing at the outbreak of the pandemic, providing further insight into Zoombombing as a practice, how related actions act as an extension of longer histories and practices of online harassment, and the role that various platforms play in the phenomenon’s unfolding. By interrogating these points of departure, our study sheds light not only on Zoombombing as a cultural practice, but also how these acts manifest within and across a range of Internet platforms.
Surveillance & Society, 2021
Panacoustic surveillance can be low-intensity and mundane, but when taken to its extreme, it is c... more Panacoustic surveillance can be low-intensity and mundane, but when taken to its extreme, it is coordinated with physical violence to create an atmosphere of hallucinatory fear. Our entry point into this problem is through a case study of the Saydnaya torture prison in Syria, a terrifying and opaque architecture of power. This short paper draws from the earwitness art and human rights activism of Lawrence Abu Hamdan concerning Saydnaya in collaboration with Amnesty International: from our analysis of the prison, we extrapolate lessons of panacoustic technologies more broadly, which are not necessarily or immediately violent but nonetheless disempower subjects by constraining their behaviors and rendering walls indefensibly porous. In developing a nascent theory of panacoustic surveillance, this paper makes two distinct contributions to surveillance studies. First, it puts sound and surveillance studies scholars into dialogue to echo Hamdam's argument that walls do not represent an absolute barrier but a corporeal medium by which power and knowledge can permeate and reflect as vibration. Second, our discussion articulates a politics of transparency and accountability that helps rethink notions of actuarial surveillance as not only a form of top-down statistical and biopolitical monitoring and governance but also as a means of developing panacoustic audits that seek to hold governments and other human rights abusers to account.
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2020
The purpose of this article is to explore how unboxing videos on YouTube contribute to the domest... more The purpose of this article is to explore how unboxing videos on YouTube contribute to the domestication of privacy-invasive technology. Further, the objective is to show how consumer influencers on YouTube adapt to the flexible persona of the online warm expert (OWE) which expands the concept of the ‘warm expert’ from the domestication literature (Bakardjieva, 2005). I argue that the OWE and unboxing discourse advance corporate interests of surveillance capitalism in home environments by promoting the circulation of emergent consumer technologies and eschewing meaningful discussion of privacy and surveillance issues. A case study of the Amazon Echo smart speaker and Alexa, its voice-activated personal assistant, is presented. The research consists of a qualitative thematic analysis of unboxing videos (N = 73) and viewer comments on YouTube. Unboxing discourse reflects normative consumer culture values that are detached from critical discussions of surveillance or the informational privacy framework of end-user agreements. As a practical implication, the study helps look beyond the household and traditional social relationships in the domestic sphere to understand how technological domestication is being shaped in a paradigm of consumer culture that is fused with the infrastructural and cultural logics of the Internet and social media.
Surveillance & Society, 2020
The emergence of smart speakers and voice-activated personal assistants (VAPAs) calls for updated... more The emergence of smart speakers and voice-activated personal assistants (VAPAs) calls for updated scrutiny and theorization of auditory surveillance. This paper introduces the neologism and concept of "eavesmining" (eavesdropping + data mining) to characterize a mode of surveillance that operates on the edge of acoustic space and digital infrastructure. In contributing to a sonic epistemology of surveillance, I explain how eavesmining platforms and processes burrow the voice as a medium between sound and data and articulate the acoustic excavation of smart environments. The paper discusses eavesmining in relation to theories of dataveillance, the sensor society, and surveillance capitalism before outlining the potential contributions offered by a theoretical alignment with sound studies literature. The paper centers on an empirical case study of the Amazon Echo and Alexa conditions of use. By conducting a discourse analysis of Amazon's End User Agreements (EUAs), I provide evidence in support of growing privacy and surveillance concerns produced by Amazon's eavesmining platform that are obfuscated by the illegibility of the documents.
Books by Stephen J . Neville
The Routledge Handbook of Media and Technology Domestication, 2023
This chapter develops a framework that understands domestication as layered with processes of med... more This chapter develops a framework that understands domestication as layered with processes of mediation to highlight the gendered construction of the “warm expert” as technological. This provides a unique approach to understand the broader patriarchal dimensions of domestication as affected by a politics of the “Broken Machine.” Through a qualitative thematic analysis of smart speaker unboxing videos and audience comments on YouTube, the goal of our study is to explore the resonance between the feminine voice of voice-activated personal assistants (VAPAs) and the politics of voice articulated in relation to women warm experts. We argue that patriarchal control of domestication articulates the taming of technology as layered with the taming of women as technology. We clarify this relationship by discussing what we call a resonant politics of voice in which VAPAs are constructed according to a specific technical function of subordination and historically feminine assistance while women warm experts are concurrently rejected as broken vocalic machines. The study asks: How do women position themselves as warm experts in the fraught context of YouTube? How does the domestication of feminine VAPAs proceed in resonance with the domestication of women’s warm expertise? And how does the gendered assistance afforded by warm expert technology interact with the vocalic affordances and feminine design of VAPAs? We conclude by speculating how the warm expert can be co-opted as a broken machine that weighs in on matters of domestication in line with concerns of feminism, equity, and social justice.
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Papers by Stephen J . Neville
Analysis: The concept of enemy imaginaries is developed to map the digital and social media practices of far-right actors and groups in their antagonistic participation with and against a liberal, multicultural, globalist imagined community. Analysis focuses on a dramatic clash at a People’s Party of Canada event in Hamilton, Ontario, during the 2019 federal election.
Conclusion and implications: Disparate far-right groups can momentarily crystallize around a particular event to define new nationalist objects that are symbolic of their networked and mediated fight against an imagined enemy.
Books by Stephen J . Neville
Analysis: The concept of enemy imaginaries is developed to map the digital and social media practices of far-right actors and groups in their antagonistic participation with and against a liberal, multicultural, globalist imagined community. Analysis focuses on a dramatic clash at a People’s Party of Canada event in Hamilton, Ontario, during the 2019 federal election.
Conclusion and implications: Disparate far-right groups can momentarily crystallize around a particular event to define new nationalist objects that are symbolic of their networked and mediated fight against an imagined enemy.