An analysis of Strategic Political Communication, Sousveillance and Web 2.0 in Convergence Cultures: Iraq, USA & UK 2003-09

受文化研究、媒体研究和政治的启发，我将撰写一本专著，暂时命名为《声音监控，新兴参与性媒体与政治传播：伊拉克、英国和美国2003-09》。这项跨学科的研究侧重于远程技术变革的一个特定时刻--被称为“网络2.0”、“参与性媒体”和“用户生成内容”的出现--及其对战略政治传播的影响。与早期的万维网相比，Web2.0技术构成了一种革命性的在线信息混合、再利用和管理方式，因此吸引了一个绰号--社交网络。战略政治沟通是指领导人精心制作他们的公共语言，以创造、控制、传播和使用中介信息作为政治资源。通常情况下，战略政治传播是在成熟的、因此被理解的媒体环境中进行的。然而，Web 2.0在21世纪头十年的出现创造了一个在一段时间内没有得到很好理解的媒体环境，使日常生活中的普通人而不仅仅是专业传播者对战略政治传播提出了挑战。史蒂夫·曼的监听概念概括了Web2.0的一些S远程技术变革的政治方面。与监听不同，监听需要从上面由更高的权威进行监视，而监听则需要从下面保持警惕，包括分级监听(具有政治破坏意图)或个人监听(类似于生命分享)。我的专著关注用户生成的媒体和主流媒体关于伊拉克的相互作用，以及这种相互作用对2003-2009年间战略政治沟通的影响。两个案例研究探讨了2003年伊拉克战争期间对战略政治沟通的不同控制水平，将嵌入美国和英国的主流电视新闻报道与一名伊拉克平民的博客进行了对比。这就产生了关于使用这两种不同的远程技术来作证所产生的真实性类型的讨论。然后，两个案例研究以不同的方式展示了来自阿布格莱布(Abu Ghraib)的用户生成的军事酷刑照片(2004)和军方恶搞音乐视频《给我指路》(Show Me The Way To Armadillo)如何从内部撼动了美国和英国的军事大厦，对军方的流行形象产生了不同的结果。这就提出了一个问题，即在Web2.0中控制图像的可能性和可取性有多大。最后两个案例研究对比了完全控制的监视(2003年12月萨达姆·侯赛因被捕时通过电视检查他蓬头垢面的身体)和不受控制的监视(广泛传播的他被处决的图像(2006年12月)，其中两个版本的现实--伊拉克政府官方版本和非官方的“移动博客”(手机博客)--形成了鲜明的对比。这导致了一场关于监听背后的政治意图及其与民主社会责任的关系的讨论。在这些案例研究的基础上，并结合2007-2009年的政治和远程技术发展，我对Web 2.0中的政治沟通和控制进行了理论推导，重点是监听。从案例研究中梳理出更大的图景，我提出了对监听概念进一步发展的启示，探索了匿名性、信任、即时以及监听和监控之间的模糊问题。我评估了在一个文化融合的时代对战略政治传播的影响，在这个时代，主流媒体与用户生成的内容共存，并共同使其生动。最后，我评估了对新闻业的影响，讨论了多样化、信任和调查性新闻的问题。

Inspired by Cultural Studies, Media Studies and Politics, I will produce a monograph provisionally entitled, Sousveillance, Emergent Participatory Media & Political Communication: Iraq, UK & USA 2003-09. This inter-disciplinary research focuses on a particular moment of teletechnological change - the emergence of what has been called 'Web 2.0', 'participatory media' and 'user-generated content' - and its impact on strategic political communication. Web 2.0 technologies constitute a revolutionary way of remixing, repurposing and managing information online, in comparison with the early World Wide Web, and as such, have attracted the moniker, the 'Social Web'. Strategic political communication is where leaders craft their public language to create, control, distribute and use mediated messages as a political resource. Normally strategic political communications are conducted in well-established, and therefore understood, media environments. However, the emergence of Web 2.0 in the first decade of the 21st century created a media environment that, for a while, was not well-understood, allowing challenges to strategic political communication from lay-people going about their everyday lives, rather than solely from professional communicators. Steve Mann's concept of sousveillance encapsulates the political aspect of some of Web 2.0's teletechnological changes. In contrast to surveillance, which entails watching from above by a higher authority, sousveillance entails watchful vigilance from underneath, comprising hierarchical sousveillance (with politically disruptive intent) or personal sousveillance (akin to lifesharing).My monograph focuses on the interplay of user-generated and mainstream media about, and from, Iraq, as received in the UK and the USA, along with the impact of this interplay on strategic political communication across 2003-2009. Two case studies explore different levels of control over strategic political communication during the 2003 Iraq war, contrasting embedded US and UK mainstream television news reports with blogs by an Iraqi civilian. This produces a discussion about the types of authenticity generated from using these two different teletechnologies for bearing witness. Two case studies are then counter-pointed to show how, in different ways, user-generated military torture photographs from Abu Ghraib (2004) and the military spoof music video, Show me the Way to Armadillo (2005), shook the US and UK military edifices from within, with different outcomes for the military's popular image. This raises questions about the extent to which control over image is possible and desirable in Web 2.0. The final two case studies contrast the extremes of totally controlled surveillance (the televised inspection of Saddam Hussein's disheveled body on his capture in December 2003) and uncontrolled sousveillance (the widely disseminated images of his execution (December 2006) where two versions of reality - the official Iraqi government version and an unofficial 'moblog' (mobile phone blog) - stood in stark contrast to each other. This leads to a discussion about the political intent behind sousveillance and its relationship to democratic social responsibility.Building on these case studies, and incorporating later political and teletechnological developments from 2007-2009, I theorise political communication and control in Web 2.0, focusing on sousveillance. Teasing out the bigger picture from the case studies, I present the implications for further conceptual development of sousveillance, exploring issues of anonymity, trust, instanteneity, and the blurring between sousveillance and surveillance. I assess the implications for strategic political communication in an age of convergence cultures where mainstream media co-exist with, and co-vivify, user-generated content. Finally, I assess the implications for journalism, addressing issues of diversification, trust and investigative journalism.