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Book:
Mobile Media: Protest and Surveillance. On the Political Rationality of Ubiquitous Individual Connectivity

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Abstract

Based on 50 interviews with activists and hackers this work analyzes the question of political rationality of mobile media within a systematic framework of studies of governmentality. It shows how through a global and massive use of mobile phones the western concept of the individual is enforced, while at the same time by means of surveillance and other interventions these new freedoms of individual mobile communication get restricted and limited again. Following the presentation of this dialectical relation of freedom and surveillance, a third part discusses the possibilities and chances of autonomous approaches for mobile communication, which operate beyond sovereign or commercial regulation. Under discussion are open source wireless solutions, such as mesh networks. Two case studies underline the arguments: SMS as a means of support and development of protests within the Pakistan Lawyer's Movement against dictator Musharraf, and on the other side the surveillance of Berlin based activists by German authorities over years.

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Leistert, Oliver: Mobile Media: Protest and Surveillance. On the Political Rationality of Ubiquitous Individual Connectivity. Paderborn: Universität Paderborn 2012.10.25969/mediarep/12644
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The item has been published with the following license: Unter Urheberrechtsschutz