(iPoster) Digital Surveillance: What Policing Do Americans Want and Who Should Be in Charge?

• In Event: Poster Session: Information Technology and Politics & Science, Technology, and Environment
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Information Technology and Politics

Abstract

I present results from three original surveys run in 2021 and 2024 on demographically representative American samples obtained from a variety of popular online recruitment services, including APSA-affiliated Verasight, LUCID, and Prolific. By the meeting’s time, I hope to also have data collected during the second Trump administration, which will give fundamental contextual variation in institutional law enforcement office-holders’ characteristics.
I explore normative differences in surveillance conducted by the US government, distinguishing federal from local levels and corporate surveillance. I measure these against “deputized surveillance”, which I identify as the prevailing form of surveillance in democratic regimes—where the government demands and rewards corporate collaboration allowing both to elide responsibility from voters-cum-consumers. The work summarizes my doctoral research and additional post-doctoral independently fielded surveys to corroborate findings, draws on political science, surveillance studies, political theory of democracy and majority-minority relations, political psychology, criminology and communication studies.

Author

• Isadora Borges Monroy, McGill University