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

受文化研究、媒体研究和政治学的启发，我将撰写一本专题论文，暂定名为《Sousveillance，紧急干预媒体与政治传播：伊拉克、英国和美国2003-09》。这种跨学科的研究重点是远程技术变革的一个特定时刻-什么被称为“Web 2.0”，“参与式媒体”和“用户生成的内容”的出现-及其对战略政治沟通的影响。与早期的万维网相比，Web 2.0技术构成了重新混合、重新利用和管理在线信息的革命性方式，因此吸引了“社交网络”的绰号。战略性政治沟通是领导者精心设计公共语言，以创造，控制，分发和使用作为政治资源的中介信息。通常，战略性的政治传播是在成熟的、因此也是可以理解的媒体环境中进行的。然而，Web 2.0在21世纪世纪的第一个十年的出现创造了一个媒体环境，在一段时间内，没有得到很好的理解，允许挑战战略政治沟通的外行人去他们的日常生活，而不仅仅是专业的沟通。Steve Mann的sousveillance概念概括了Web2.0远程技术变革的政治方面。与需要由更高当局从上监视的监视相反，sousvehicle需要从下监视的警戒，包括等级sousvehicle（with political disruptive intent）or personal sousvehicles（类似于lifesharing）。我的专著侧重于用户生成的和主流媒体的相互作用，并从伊拉克，因为在英国和美国收到，沿着这种相互作用对2003-2009年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，对比了嵌入式美国和英国主流电视新闻报道与伊拉克平民的博客。这就产生了一个关于使用这两种不同的远程技术来见证所产生的真实性类型的讨论。两个案例研究，然后指出，如何以不同的方式，用户生成的军事酷刑照片从阿布格莱布（2004年）和军事恶搞音乐视频，告诉我去Armadillo的路（2005年），动摇了美国和英国的军事大厦从内部，不同的结果为军队的流行形象。这就提出了一个问题，即在Web 2.0中，对图像的控制在多大程度上是可能的和可取的。最后两个案例研究对比了完全受控监视的极端情况（2003年12月萨达姆·侯赛因被捕时，电视上对他衣冠不整的尸体进行了检查），（广泛传播的他被处决的照片（2006年12月），其中有两个版本的现实--伊拉克政府官方版本和非官方的“暴民”（移动的手机博客）-站在彼此形成鲜明对比。这导致了一个讨论的政治意图背后的sousveillance和民主的社会responsibility.Building的关系，这些案例研究的基础上，并纳入后来的政治和teletechnological的发展，从2007年至2009年，我理论化的政治沟通和控制在Web 2.0，专注于sousveillance。从案例研究中梳理出更大的图景，我提出了进一步的概念发展的sousvehicle的影响，探索匿名性，信任，即时性的问题，以及sousvehicle和监视之间的模糊。我评估的影响，战略政治沟通的融合文化的时代，主流媒体共存，并共同生动，用户生成的内容。最后，我评估新闻业的影响，解决多样化，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.