Surveillance is pervasive in contemporary societies, driven by massive data sourcing and digital innovations such as algorithmic decision-making, automated facial recognition systems, tracking and sensing devices, and healthcare technologies.

The ubiquity of networked technologies in our everyday lives enables surveillance in many ways and for many kinds of purposes. These technologies obviously increase productivity and convenience, but the circulation of massive amounts of data also leads to serious concerns about the new potentials for surveillance. Data-intensive surveillance can create privacy invasion, manipulation of behavior, biases, inequalities, and increased power and influence beyond our democratic reach. Employed not only towards individuals and social groups by public institutions and private corporations, monitoring and tracking is also performed regularly by and for individuals in the intimate context of their private lives.

Surveillance affects the social world in unintended, messy ways, but is often understood as something externally imposed, hierarchical and instrumental. However, this only offers a limited perspective on the role of human agency in performing, influencing, and experiencing surveillance.