‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Data Subjects: Media Representations of the ‘Surveilled’ in Three UK Newspapers’[1]
Rachel L. Finn and Michael McCahill
Trilateral Research and Consulting, LLP and The University of Hull
Introduction
Drawing upon the preliminary findings of a broader ESRC-funded project on the ‘surveilled’, this chapter examines media representations of ‘data subjects’ in three UK newspapers over the last decade. There is a long tradition in social science of looking at the ways in which ‘news stories’ impact upon our understanding of ‘community’ and mark the boundaries of that community. Anderson (1991) has argued that historically the newspaper has acted as an important part of the dissemination of the ‘imagined community’ of the nation because it used vernacular language and represented a standard object with which everyone in the imagined community had a relationship. In the context of media reporting on crime, there has always been a clear division between those who truly belonged to this ‘imagined community’ and the ‘deviant outsiders’ who were ‘in the community but not of the community’ (to paraphrase Greer, 2004). For instance, during the Victorian period of industrialisation and urbanisation the so-called ‘criminal classes’ were a constant source of anxiety.
These processes continued during the twentieth century when media-inspired ‘moral panics’ over working class youth subcultures led to calls for more intensive policing and surveillance of these populations (Cohen, 1972). Media constructions of ‘marginalised’ populations as deserving of surveillance was further demonstrated by British press opposition to the continued use of ID cards after the Second World War, because they ‘put the law-abiding citizen in the same row of filing cabinets as the common thief with a record’ (Daily Express, March 12, 1945; cited in Agar, 2001: 110).This contrast that is often drawn in the British press between ‘law-abiding citizens’ and ‘deviants’ who are ‘deserving’ of surveillance has continued in recent press coverage on the introduction of ‘new surveillance’ technologies. Regional press coverageon the introduction of CCTV cameras for example found a rhetorical construction of a binary opposition between ‘us’, law-abiding citizens who supported the introduction of cameras, and ‘them’, ‘mindless thugs’, ‘vice girls’, and ‘rowdies’ who were to be its targets (McCahill, 2002). Similarly, media representations of ‘speed cameras’ involved a discursive strategy which suggested that CCTV cameras that monitor ‘them’ (e.g. thieves, robbers, muggers, etc.) are ‘good’, while speed cameras that monitor ‘us’ (motorists) are ‘bad’ (McCahill, 2003). Here, the news media works to ‘confer’ belonging in the community on to certain subjects of surveillance through these different representational strategies (Lawler, 2004).
In this chapter we will build on these findings by arguing that a strategy of ‘positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation’ (van Dijk, 1998: 61) has been the central discursive strategy in newspaper reporting on the introduction and use of ‘new surveillance’ technologies. However, critical reflections on the ‘us’ and ‘them’ binary reveal a complexity in the representation of ‘Others’ in the media. In his research on media representations of child sex murders, Greer (2004) distinguishes between different categories of ‘Other’ in the press. ‘Stigmatised others’, such as asylum seekers, drug addicts and homosexuals, are ‘of society but not in it’ in that they are a product of social relations although they are ‘criminalised on the basis of some failure to conform to the “proper way of doing things”’ (Greer, 2004: 111, emphasis in original). In contrast, ‘absolute others’, like terrorists and child sex murderers, are ‘in society but not of it’, where they are recognised as existing within society however they are considered entirely outside accepted social relations (ibid., emphasis in original). Meyer (2007) argues that mainstream media representations of paedophiles distinguish this criminalised group as a special category of ‘Other’ through language that dehumanises them as ‘monsters’. Our research also recognises these multiple categories and finds that different linguistic strategies are used to signify the ‘we’ of the community and to differentiate specific categories of ‘Other’.
Whether or not media reporting on ‘new surveillance’ technologies is ‘critical’ therefore seems to depend not much so much on how surveillance is being conductedbut on who is on the receiving end of surveillance monitoring. With this in mind our current analysis focuses on media representations of ‘data subjects’ rather than ‘new surveillance’ technologies. While drawing upon previous research which has demonstrated how media reporting in this area revolves around a binary construction of ‘us’ and ‘them’ (McCahill, 2003), our current analysis of ‘data subjects’ reveals that there are in fact multiple categories of ‘them’ and multiple categories of ‘us’ who are targeted by different technologies. In short, we found that ‘good’ data subjects (‘innocents’, ‘motorists’, ‘international travellers’)are described in ‘neutral’ or ‘inclusive’ language, offered advice on ‘how to avoid surveillance’ and are equipped with the ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ capital required to ensure that their voices are heard in media discourse. In contrast, we found that ‘bad’ data subjects (‘criminals’, ‘yobs’, ‘prostitutes’)are described in ‘emotive’ language, are not offered any advice on ‘how to avoid surveillance’ and lack the ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ capital required to ensure that their voices are heard in media discourse.
Methods
While media analysis involves a diverse range of theoretical approaches and complex methodological strategies, our approach simply aims to identify a number of recurring themes and issues in newspaper representations of those on the receiving end of ‘new surveillance’ technologies in the context of policing and criminal justice. This analysis is focussed on three UK newspapers in order to provide a survey of how ‘data subjects’ are represented in news publications. Articles on ‘new technologies’ of surveillance were searched in the following newspapers: The Times and Sunday Times (a national newspaper situated on the right of centre with a readership of 1.8 million), The Guardian and Observer (a left of centre newspaper with a readership of 1.25 million) and The Daily Echo (a local newspaper in Northern City with a circulation of 51,000).The two broadsheet newspapers and the more populist, local Daily Echo provide a range of political and social perspectives for this overview. It is of course widely acknowledged that the readership of newspapers has been in decline for a number of years now due to increased competition from ‘new’ media, especially the internet. However, traditional news organisations continue to provide an important source of information and increasingly use the ‘new media as a resource, tapping into the viral circulation of online content and weaving it into their news genres and production techniques’ (Chadwick and Stanyer, 2010: 4). This is particularly the case with images from CCTV footage and the amateur video-footage provided by the ‘citizen journalist’ (Greer and McLaughlin, 2010).
Table 1: Number of articles analysed in each newspaper by keyword
Key WordThe GuardianThe TimesTheDaily EchoTotal
CCTV227209308744
DNA Testing27329159623
Speed cameras99331111541
Biometrics1201908318
Electronic Monitoring 636527155
Drug Testing 33431793
PNC Database 1624646
ANPR139527
Total 2547
In each newspaper a keyword search for each surveillance technology was carried out in Lexis Nexis between the dates of Jan 1 2000 and Jan 1 2010. Our original keyword searches produced the following numbers of articles on each surveillance technology: CCTV – 8308; Electronic Tagging and Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme (ISSP) – 446; DNA Testing – 3419; Drug Testing – 819; Speed Cameras – 2159; Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) – 97; Biometrics – 1352; and the Police National Computer – 372. These articles were scanned to determine whether they were ‘peripheral’ news stories, or if they focussed on the surveillance technology in question and the subjects of that surveillance technology. Peripheral articles were excluded from the analysis if they mentioned the technology in relation to policing and security but were not focussed on that technology and/or if they did not discuss ‘the surveilled’. The exclusion of ‘peripheral’ stories left 2,547 articles in total. Table 1 indicates how these stories were spread across the various technologies and newspapers.
Table 2: Number of articles in each representational theme
Data Subjects Number of Articles Percentage
Generalised ‘Others’ 58123%
Dangerous ‘Others’ 51820%
Privileged Mobilities46118%
Innocents on Databases 1446%
Citizens 135%
Caught on Camera 43017%
Others28011%
Total 2547100%
The following analysis is centred on the major themes running through these articles ‘in total’ and concentrates on the new technologies which carried the highest proportion of articles overall. While there was a clear reproduction of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ binary in these articles, this binary was separated into seven major representational themes, which are reproduced in Table 2.The remaining articles represented in Table 2 as Other, included articles which did not fall into any of the above themes or made up very small micro-themes, including articles on the drug testing of soldiers, biometric registration for employees to control building access, etc.
‘Bad’ Data Subjects
Generalised ‘Others’
Generalised ‘Others’ were discussed in all three papers as targets of surveillance. This construction of data subjects included those who were referred to as ‘offenders’, ‘criminals’, ‘suspects’, ‘burglars’, ‘thieves’ and ‘vandals’. This category of the surveilled was discussed in 23% of all articles in all three newspapers (581 articles) and was the largest representational theme. These targets of surveillance were often over-determined by their ‘offending behaviour’, as a review of newspaper headlines illustrates:
‘50 tagged offenders go on run’ (The Times, 4/3/00)
‘CCTV out to catch dog foulers in the act’ (The Guardian,15/3/02)
‘Drug testing for offenders’ (The Daily Echo,21/8/03)
‘Nine out of 10 young criminals convicted of new offences’ (The Guardian, 28/10/05)
‘Thief caught on CCTV stealing gifts jailed’ (The Daily Echo, 31/12/05)
‘Bow-legged burglar betrayed by gait’ (The Times,15/4/08)
Within the articles themselves, the targets of surveillance were specifically ‘Othered’ through linguistic strategies that separate ‘them’ from the rest of ‘us’. Many of these articles actively usedan us/them binarythrough a reference to ‘them’, ‘they’ and ‘their’ drug problem or offending. An article on CCTV states that ‘if anyone commits an offence they are likely to get nicked, and that makes them think twice about offending’ (The Daily Echo, 9/9/00, emphasis added). Furthermore, talking CCTV cameras ‘warn yobs and litterbugsthey will be punished if they do not stop misbehaving.’ (The Sunday Times 4/3/07, emphasis added). Some articles went further and explicitly contrast ‘them’ with ‘us’. An article on the ISSP scheme in 2000 quotes (then) Home Secretary Jack Straw as stating that the scheme involves that will help young offenders to turn away from crime and that the supervision ‘in the community’ means that ‘we'll make sure they tackle head on their offending behaviour’(The Guardian, 25/9/00).Although it is unclear whether the ‘we’ Straw refers to is the ‘community’ or the government, the contrast draw between ‘we’ with ‘them’ illustrates the exclusion of generalised ‘Others’ from both the community and the state, where the expansion of the community to overlap with the state is the crux of Anderson’s (1991) argument. Furthermore, the reiterative representation of generalised ‘Others’ as ‘they’ or ‘them’ performatively excludes these targets of surveillance from the imagined community of the newspaper readership through language which separates ‘them’ from ‘us’.
Dangerous ‘Others’
Dangerous ‘Others’ were represented as targets of surveillance in 20% of articles in all three newspapers (518 articles) and this group was heavily represented in articles on DNA testing and the Police National Computer. In total, dangerous ‘Others’ made up 42% of the articles on DNA testing (275 articles) and 65% of the articles on the PNC (24 of 37 articles). There was also some overlap in relation to Electronic Monitoring and CCTV surveillance, where 20% of articles on Electronic Monitoring (32 articles) and 25% of articles on CCTV (182 articles) focussed on dangerous ‘Others’. This group of ‘the surveilled’ includes those defined as ‘sex offenders’, ‘terrorists’, ‘murderers’, ‘paedophiles’, ‘rapists’ and ‘attackers’. These dangerous ‘Others’ were further differentiated from ‘us’ through particular discursive strategies. Again, a review of article headlines illustrates the representations of these targets of surveillance, where this group of dangerous ‘Others’ was defined in proximity to violence and through the use of emotive language:
'“Dracula” sex fiend hits sixth victim’ (The Observer,9/7/00)
‘“Spy in the sky” systems to track sex offenders’ (The Times, 5/7/04)
‘Rapist caught after 14 years’ (The Times, 24/1/06)
‘CCTV shows would-be bombers trying to blow themselves up' (The Times, 17/1/07)
‘Killer returns to the bar to spend victim's cash’ (The Daily Echo,18/9/07)
‘Ipswich murder trial: DNA matches, CCTV film and a pattern of sightings - the case against Wright’ (The Guardian,17/1/08)
In addition to behaviourally defining the subjects of surveillance as ‘rapists’, ‘killers’ and ‘sex offenders’ within the article headlines, emotive language also appears in the text. The articles above further described subjects of surveillance as ‘child killers’, ‘paedophiles’, ‘masked men’ who were ‘finally caught by DNA evidence’, ‘terrorists’, ‘dangerous sexual predators’, ‘attackers’, ‘assailants’ and ‘evil monster[s]’. This functions similarly to the emotive language identified by Meyer to describe sex attackers as ‘Other’, and specifically to construct them as ‘persons excluded from the category of humanity’ (2007: 70). Persons discussed in these articles are often referred to by name and the crimes that the person is accused of are often detailed. For example, ‘child killer’ Ian Huntley featured in all but one article on the Police National Computer in The Daily Echo. Significantly, because of British crime reporting laws, these articles often discuss convictions and evidence that emerges in trials, which allows the papers to utilise an assumption of guilt as well as name the defendant.
Certain linguistic and discursive strategies were also used to mark this group of dangerous ‘Others’. This is exemplified by a particular theme running through the articles on DNA testing in the national press - the process of weeding out the ‘criminals’ among ‘us’ by identifying criminals who were masquerading as ‘us’ through DNA testing. The following article exemplifies this theme:
‘Focus: Guilty genes: They think they got away with it. But 600 killers face justice: Time may be running out for murderers in the community thanks to DNA evidence’ (The Observer, 25/2/01)
They have lived as model citizens. Surrounded by family and friends, many have brought up children and appeared every inch the loving grandfather, wife or husband. As time has passed, they have relaxed a little and begun to believe they are untouchable. There are up to 600 such people living freely in Britain today, The Observer can reveal. He or she could be a work colleague, a neighbour, the teacher of your children or even your closest friend. All share a common secret which they hope to take to their graves: they are murderers. But the day they have dreaded may be close at hand.
In articles within this theme, the ‘rapist’, ‘killer’ or ‘attackers’ masquerade as ‘us’, and these articles suggest that DNA technology is the only way in which to be certain that ‘a model citizen’ is not a dangerous ‘Other’. Articles about the July 7th ‘bombers’ on CCTV footage make use of a similar strategy where a headline in The Guardian states, ‘A casual shopper in Boots - then he set off to kill: Chilling new photo of bus bomber released’ (2/10/05). Within these articles surveillance technologies act as ‘tools’ to reveal that ‘they’ are among ‘us’.
‘Good’ Data Subjects
Unlike articles which ‘Othered’ ‘bad’ data subjects, the construction of ‘good’ data subjects relies upon inclusive and neutral language. These groups of surveilled were described in terms which highlighted their privileged mobility as ‘drivers’ or ‘holiday makers’, their lack of criminal behaviour as in being declared ‘innocent’ or their position as ‘citizens’. This linguistic strategy was often used alongside a critique of surveillance practices and highlights the potential misuse of government powers of surveillance. Overall, this representation of ‘the surveilled’ accounted for 29% of all articles in all three newspapers. However, this was split into three major representational themes. The first theme is comprised of those with ‘privileged mobilities’,where the articles construct speed cameras as threatening the mobility of middle class drivers or construct biometrics as enabling a continuation of privileged mobility for airline passengers. The second theme includes the population of the DNA database with subjects defined and described as ‘innocent’. The third theme involvesthe use of biometric ID cards to access citizenship privileges.
Privileged mobilities
In the ‘privileged mobilities’ news theme,‘data subjects’are defined in neutral terms such as ‘drivers’, ‘motorists’ and ‘travellers’. In total, 18% of all articles on ‘the surveilled’ in all three newspapers focus on those with privileged mobilities. This includes 70% of articles on speed cameras (378 articles)and 25% of articles on biometrics (63 articles). Articles within this theme primarilyfocussed on ‘drivers’ being caught by speed cameras or biometric passports that enable individuals to travel internationally. Although some articles in all three of the papers referred to those who drive above the speed limit as ‘offenders’, this represented a very small proportion of articles. Even those articles which did describe these data subjects as ‘offenders’ tempered this with further, and often more frequent, mention of ‘drivers’ and ‘motorists’. Examples include anarticle in The Daily Echo which stated that ‘police used the new...cameras to clampdown on motorists - at times catching one speeder-a-minute’ (25/2/00, emphasis added) and an article in The Times entitled ‘Police plan speed blitz to catch 3m drivers a year’ (The Sunday Times,21/6/01, emphasis added). Discussions around the introduction of biometric passports for ‘British citizens’ and its impact on international travel also use neutral language to describe the subjects of surveillance. Articles within this stream date back from 2001 and discuss the use of biometrics, principally iris scanning systems, for ‘passengers’ and ‘travellers’ beginning with ‘North Americans who frequently use British Airways or Virgin’ to by-pass check-in queues (The Guardian, 1/8/01). A 2002 article in The Times invites ‘frequent fliers’ to ‘Jet away in the blink of an eye’ using iris scanning (19/1/02). Articles in this theme also discuss the ramifications of the delay in introducing biometric passports that will mean that a specific subset of British travellers to the USA for a particular amount of time will have to apply for visas at significant cost and inconvenience. Within this theme, biometrics provides a way for persons with already high mobility to maintain their high mobility status within a framework of increasing scrutiny and inconvenience for the masses.