Surveillance and the Public Sphere: confronting a democratic dilemma

A LSE Media Policy Project public lecture

Date: Thursday 19 May 2016
Time:  6.30-8.00pm
Speaker:  Prof Oscar H Gandy Jr
Chair: Dr Seeta Peña Gangadharan

The increasingly precise segmentation and targeting of commercial messages has been enabled in large part through the analysis of massive amounts of transaction-generated-information. Although some attention has been paid to the use of these privacy invasive strategies within the public sphere, the use of personal data with regard to the formation, implementation and evaluation of public policies at the local, national and regional levels has largely been ignored. After discussing threats of political profiling to the future of public participation in the democratic process, Oscar Gandy will explore some possibilities for managing the nature, extent and distribution of these and associated societal harms.

Oscar H Gandy Jr is a media scholar and Emeritus Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Seeta Peña Gangadharan is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Media and Communications at LSE.

The goal of LSE’s Media Policy Project (@LSEmediapolicy) is to start conversations between policy makers, civil society actors, and media professionals about the latest media research.  

For more details, visit the LSE website.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEGandy