Perceptions of surveillance: Reflexivity and trust in a mediatized world (the case of Sweden)

Abstract

Even though the field of surveillance studies has expanded during the last decade, there is still a need for studies that empirically explain and contextualize people’s perceptions of the increasingly mediatized ‘surveillance society’. This article provides a ‘middle range’ social theorization, following Giddens, as well as an updated empirical account, based on a nationwide Swedish survey, of how various forms of surveillance are perceived as social phenomena. Through factor analysis three dimensions are elaborated: state surveillance, commercial surveillance and mediated interveillance. The article argues that the realm of interveillance blurs the line between systemic and social trust, and thus calls for context-specific modes of routinized reflexivity. Whereas such modes of boundary maintenance may potentially run across social lines of division, the results suggest that the management of interveillance primarily constitutes an instance of sociocultural structuration.