I recently sat down with Baz Macdonald from Re: News to chat about what news story comments say about us as a society.  Our conversation drew from two examples about blackface - one in NZ, one in Australia. Yes: I actually mean white people painting themselves black in order to mock people of colour and … Continue reading What do news comments say about us? →

I've just published an online article in Newsroom about why we need to be thinking about the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal as 'mass surveillance.' The piece comes on the back of a free public talk I'll be giving tomorrow with Dr. Markus Luczak-Roesch on "Building the Web We Want" at Victoria University of Wellington's Pipitea Campus. The … Continue reading Building the Web We Want →

I'll be giving a talk this Thursday on the way social media, digital apps and mobile technologies have turned ‘mapping’ into an everyday practice. We regularly ‘check in’, location-tag digital photos, create virtual maps, and publicise, write about and visually document our experience with and within space. As a result, the way we create, represent … Continue reading Upcoming Talk (National Library, Wellington): Surveillance, Privacy & Space in the Age of Social Media →

When I moved to Wellington three years ago, Edward Snowden had just released a trove of classified NSA documents that detailed some of the Five Eyes' mass surveillance programmes. Meanwhile, our own foreign intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), was mired in controversy over an independent report revealing it had been illegally spying on … Continue reading ‘The Post-Snowden Era’ is finally out! →

Social Media + Society has just published what has been a long time work-in-progress, 'Branding the Self on Yelp: Consumer Reviewing as Image Entrepreneurship.'  I'd started writing the article in 2012, put it away until this past March when I realised it only needed a few more day's attention to complete. The article is a interview-based case … Continue reading Branding the Self on Yelp →

I Spy (With My 5 Eyes) is an interactive think-piece about the Five Eyes alliance and contemporary surveillance issues featuring prominent scholars, activists, privacy advocates, intelligence agency officials, hackers and whistleblowers from around the world...and me! The film explores the tensions between governments, intelligence agencies and individuals as data collection grows and personal privacy is eroded. I had … Continue reading I Spy online documentary launches →

I have a new book chapter out called An ‘Office Sex Romp’ and the Economic Motivations of Mediated Voyeurism in Hinda Mandell & Gina Chen's edited collection, Scandal in a Digital Age (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016). Chapter Summary: In January 2015, about 50 patrons at a local pub in Christchurch, New Zealand,  witnessed, recorded and distributed photos and videos of … Continue reading →

I gave a talk last week about my perspective on last year's 'Christchurch sex romp' as an issue that's less about privacy than the economics of 'lateral surveillance.' Listen here: http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/remote-player?id=201800938