Abstract
While there is an enormous literature on surveillance, surprisingly little has been written on the mediation of surveillance – the part played by media institutions in the representation of state or corporate or personal surveillance and the effects of this on public attitudes. The authors argue that since 9/11 the US press framed the surveillance debate in ways that has privileged the perspectives of administrations, giving little attention to the opinions of critics, and this choice has contributed to the public acceptance of increased surveillance and the erosion of civil liberties. Theoretically, the authors develop and integrate two methods of communication framing – the message framing model and the message processing model – effectively synthesising and clarifying the framing process and how it works. The models are then tested in experimental studies. As such, this book is of relevance to scholars working across a number of fields interested in framing and framing effects. Written by North American authors based in the United States and about surveillance in the United States, this book is one that is normally beyond the purvey of this journal, but its significance theoretically, methodologically and in terms of subject means that it should be of great interest to European scholars working on the framing of European subjects. The authors conclude that individual media frames produce both more elaborate thoughts and lower levels of tolerance in the audience leading in turn to greater opposition to activist groups (who may be anti-war protesters). Here, we have the presentation of a path from the personalisation of conflict leading to domestic repression of democratic opposition. This is clearly something that many scholars have pointed towards, but now, we have a theoretically and methodologically sophisticated account of the process.