[ecrea] new book - Sousveillance, Media and Strategic Political Communication: Iraq, USA, UK

Given the ongoing Web 2.0- and satellite TV-fueled rebellion in the

Middle East, and the trials of Wikileaks in the West, you may be
interested in my book:

Sousveillance, Media and Strategic Political Communication: Iraq, USA,
UK. New York: Continuum.
by Vian Bakir

You can buy it here:
http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=132977&SubjectId=1366&Subject2Id=1377

And you can read Chapter 1 for free here:
http://cipg.codemantra.us/UI_TRANSACTIONS/Marketing/UI_Widget.aspx?ID=WP9780826430090&ISBN=9780826430090&sts=r

Funded by the AHRC, this inter-disciplinary book offers original
insights into impacts on strategic political communication of the
emergence of web-based participatory media (?Web 2.0?) across the
first decade of the 21st century, expounding the concept of
sousveillance ? or watching from below.

Focusing on the first decade of the 21st century enables analysis of
how this new media environment, initially poorly understood by
strategic political communicators, allowed sousveillant challenges to
strategic political communication from lay-people going about their
everyday lives.

Using a comparative case study methodology set against detailed
analysis of relevant political and media environments, I focus on the
interplay of participatory and mainstream media about, and from, Iraq,
as received in Britain and America, along with impacts of this
interplay on strategic political communication across 2002-2009.

Three empirical chapters each present two case studies that
differentially illuminate strategic political communication on
specific aspects of the invasion of Iraq and ongoing nation-building
in the midst of an insurgency, as well as analyzing how sousveillance
subverted the official line from US, UK and Iraqi governments and
military. Two case studies focus on the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and
four focus on post-war Iraq as the insurgency grew to its peak in
2008.  This balance of attention is deliberate. Whilst we have
detailed understanding of strategic political communication under
conditions of mass-mediated war and different media environments,
turbulent post-war periods of nation-building are comparatively
unexamined.

Building on these case studies, I theorise political communication and
control in Web 2.0, focusing on the hitherto neglected concept of
sousveillance - originally espoused by Steve Mann. In contrast to the
much-researched concept of surveillance, which entails watching from
above by a higher authority, sousveillance entails watchful vigilance
from underneath ? sometimes with political intent, more often simply
to life-share. I coin the term ?sousveillance cultures? and outline
broader implications of sousveillant web-based participatory media for
strategic political communication.


Dr Vian Bakir
Senior Lecturer, Journalism,
School of Creative Studies and Media,
Office 7, John Phillips Hall,
Bangor University,
Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales, UK, LL57 2DG
Email: (v.bakir /at/ bangor.ac.uk)



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