The project (officially entitled Living within, navigating and appropriating everyday surveillance: Case studies on subjective experiences of surveillance and privacy) examined subjective experiences of surveillance, with a special focus on young people modifying their behavior as a consequence of constant exposure to surveillance online. Our objective was to recognize common and specific traits in subjective experiences of surveillance, and to utilize this knowledge in formulating and guiding future research and developing theoretical understanding. Furthermore, our goal was to widely communicate our findings to the general public in the aim that people would have a better understanding of surveillance related dilemmas.

The project had three research questions:

  1. What kind of experiences of and reactions to living within, navigating and appropriating everyday surveillance can be identified within the following three contexts: (a) previous research on subjective surveillance experiences, (b) surveillance-critical art works, and (c) young peoples’ experiences of mundane surveillance situations?
  2. How various notions of privacy and subjective surveillance experiences are tangled together? How privacy is perceived and experienced in mundane surveillance practices? How could subjective surveillance experiences be analyzed beyond the concept of privacy?
  3. What kind of social identities and subjectivities are being formed through constant exposure to surveillance?

These research questions were approached through three case studies, which included (1) a systematic review on previous research on subjective surveillance experiences in various fields, (2) examination of presentations of surveillance and privacy in a compilation of surveillance critical art works, and (3) an empirically based analysis on young peoples’ experiences of everyday surveillance and privacy with an internationally comparable data. This project applied a mixed-method approach with different methodologies to create and analyze data: interviews, focus groups, document analyses, content analyses, concept mapping and Q-sorting.

As its outcome, this project produced scientific articles as well as publications intended for professional communities and the general public.