Vian Bakir
Biographic Data
| ID | 277313 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vian Bakir |
| GIVEN NAMES | Vian |
| FAMILY NAME | Bakir |
| SIGNATURE | BAKIR V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bangor University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6828-8384 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 41 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Move fast and break people? Ethics, companion apps, and the case of Character.ai
Riffing off move fast and break things , the internal motto coined by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, this paper examines the ethical dimensions of human relationships with AI companions, focusing on Character.ai—a platform where users interact with AI-generated ‘characters’ ranging from fictional figures to representations of real people. Drawing on an assessment of the platform’s design, and the first civil lawsuit brought against Character.ai in the U…
Routledge Handbook of the Influence Industry
Blurring the moral limits of data markets: Biometrics, emotion and data dividends
This paper considers what liberal philosopher Michael Sandel coins the ‘moral limits of markets’ in relation to the idea of paying people for data about their biometrics and emotions. With Sandel arguing that certain aspects of human life (such as our bodies and body parts) should be beyond monetisation and exchange, others argue that emerging technologies such as Personal Information Management Systems can enable a fairer, paid, data exchange be…
On manipulation by emotional AI: UK adults’ views and governance implications
With growing commercial, regulatory and scholarly interest in use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to profile and interact with human emotion ("emotional AI"), attention is turning to its capacity for manipulating people, relating to factors impacting on a person's decisions and behavior. Given prior social disquiet about AI and profiling technologies, surprisingly little is known on people's views on the benefits and harms of emotional AI technol…
Human-First, Please: Assessing Citizen Views and Industrial Ambition for Emotional AI in Recommender Systems
This paper qualitatively explores the views of diverse members of the British public on applications of biometric emotional AI technologies patented by two globally dominant consumer-facing recommender systems, Amazon and Spotify. Examining Amazon and Spotify patents for biometric profiling of users’ emotions, disposition, and behaviour to offer them tailored services, ads, and products from their wider platforms, this paper points to industrial …
Optimising Emotions, Incubating Falsehoods: How to Protect the Global Civic Body from Disinformation and Misinformation
This book finds that the optimisation of emotions for commercial and political gain is a primary cause of false information online. This is an open access book
Optimising Emotions, Incubating Falsehoods: How to Protect the Global Civic Body from Disinformation and Misinformation
Psychological Operations in Digital Political Campaigns: Assessing Cambridge Analytica's Psychographic Profiling and Targeting
This paper explores whether psychographic profiling and targeting married with big data and deployed in digital political campaigns is a form of psychological operations (‘psy-ops’). Informed by studies on deception, coercion and influence activities from propaganda, persuasion, policy making, cognitive psychology, information and marketing scholarship, this proposition is examined and historically grounded in a politically important case study: …
Organized Persuasive Communication: A new conceptual framework for research on public relations, propaganda and promotional culture
Organized persuasive communication is essential to the exercise of power at national and global levels. It has been studied extensively by scholars of public relations, promotional culture and propaganda. There exists, however, considerable confusion and conceptual limitations across these fields: scholars of PR largely focus on what they perceive to be non-manipulative forms of organized persuasive communication; scholars of propaganda focus on …
Intelligence Elites and Public Accountability: Relationships of Influence with Civil Society
Fake News and The Economy of Emotions: Problems, causes, solutions
This paper examines the 2016 US presidential election campaign to identify problems with, causes of and solutions to the contemporary fake news phenomenon. To achieve this, we employ textual analysis and feedback from engagement, meetings and panels with technologists, journalists, editors, non-profits, public relations firms, analytics firms and academics during the globally leading technology conference, South-by-South West, in March 2017. We f…
Journalism and the NSA Revelations: Privacy, Security and the Press
Introduction to Special Theme Veillance and transparency: A critical examination of mutual watching in the post-Snowden, Big Data era
Introducing the Special Theme on Veillance and Transparency: A Critical Examination of Mutual Watching in the Post-Snowden, Big Data Era, this article presents a series of provocations and practices on veillance and transparency in the context of Big Data in a post-Snowden period. In introducing the theoretical and empirical research papers, artistic, activist and educational provocations and commentaries in this Special Theme, it highlights thre…
Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror: Agenda-Building Struggles
Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror examines the communication battles of the Bush and Blair political administrations (and those of their successors in America and Britain) over their use of torture, first-hand or second-hand, to gain intelligence for the War on Terror. Exploring key agenda-building drivers that exposed the torture-intelligence nexus and presenting detailed case studies of key media events from the UK an…
“Veillant Panoptic Assemblage”: Mutual Watching and Resistance to Mass Surveillance after Snowden
The Snowden leaks indicate the extent, nature, and means of contemporary mass digital surveillance of citizens by their intelligence agencies and the role of public oversight mechanisms in holding intelligence agencies to account. As such, they form a rich case study on the interactions of “veillance” (mutual watching) involving citizens, journalists, intelligence agencies and corporations. While Surveillance Studies, Intelligence Studies and Jou…
News, Agenda Building, and Intelligence Agencies: A Systematic Review of the Field from the Discipline of Journalism, Media, and Communications
Reflecting on Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing revelations regarding indiscriminate online and telephone surveillance and social media manipulation by signals intelligence agencies, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, this article highlights the hitherto limited nature of public knowledge of, and internationally uneven concern regarding, intelligence agencies’ contemporary techniques of communications surveillance and manipula…
A Critique of the Capacity of Strauss’ Grounded Theory for Prediction, Change, and Control in Organisational Strategy via a Grounded Theorisation of Leisure and Cultural Strategy
In this paper we critique grounded theory’s ability to fulfil its aim of offering a practical vehicle for prediction, change, and control as stipulated in grounded theory’s original formulation by Glaser and Strauss, and later developed by Strauss. We do this through a case study approach, whereby we develop a grounded theory of leisure and cultural strategy within a local authority, and critically reflect on the process of grounded theorisation,…
Torture, Intelligence and Media in the War on Terror: Agenda-Building Struggles
Torture and intelligence in the War on Terror: The struggle over strategic political communication
Media and risk: Old and new research directions
A macro‐view of the field of media and risk is offered by examining four main routes of media‐risk research. These routes are the media’s role in: providing risk knowledge to inform citizens; modulating public acceptability of different risks; motivating the public to take responsibility for, and action regarding, risks; and providing imaginative schemata regarding voluntarily chosen risks. Research tendencies in each of these routes are summaris…
Tele-Technologies, Control, and Sousveillance: Saddam Hussein — De-Deification and the Beast
This paper examines two disturbing, post-2003 Iraq War representations of Saddam Hussein – the televised inspection of his disheveled body on his capture (December 2003) and television and internet footage of his execution (December 2006). These representations epitomize two very different examples of government control of information within the emergent tele-technological environment of Web 2.0. The portrayal of Saddam Hussein as a captured beas…
Unpacking complexity, pinning down the “elusiveness” of strategy: A grounded theory study in leisure and cultural organisations
Purpose The dominant strategy discourse projects strategy as rational and calculable. However, leading academics conclude that strategy is “elusive” and “complex”. The purpose of this paper is to unravel strategy's elusiveness and unpack its complexity through empirical hermeneutic investigation. Design/methodology/approach Strauss' grounded theory is used to investigate leisure and cultural managers' understanding of strategy‐making. Data were c…
Policy Agenda Setting and Risk Communication: Greenpeace, Shell, and Issues of Trust
This article uses a qualitative case study approach to examine policy-oriented risk communication in the battle between Greenpeace and Shell over the disposal of the Brent Spar oil structure. Policy-agenda-setting literature is fused with literature from the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) and transnational advocacy networks to generate further insights. This analysis demonstrates that in attempting to influence policy, Greenpeace a…
Greenpeace v. Shell: Media exploitation and the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (Sarf)
This paper examines the usefulness of the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) in understanding the media's role in risk communication. Since the SARF was created in 1988, it has been both further developed and critiqued for (amongst other things) its: static conception of communication; lack of attention towards how key actors use the media; lack of systematic attention towards the media as an amplification station; and simplistic assum…
Media and risk: Old and new research directions
A macro‐view of the field of media and risk is offered by examining four main routes of media‐risk research. These routes are the media’s role in: providing risk knowledge to inform citizens; modulating public acceptability of different risks; motivating the public to take responsibility for, and action regarding, risks; and providing imaginative schemata regarding voluntarily chosen risks. Research tendencies in each of these routes are summaris…
Organized Persuasive Communication: A new conceptual framework for research on public relations, propaganda and promotional culture
Organized persuasive communication is essential to the exercise of power at national and global levels. It has been studied extensively by scholars of public relations, promotional culture and propaganda. There exists, however, considerable confusion and conceptual limitations across these fields: scholars of PR largely focus on what they perceive to be non-manipulative forms of organized persuasive communication; scholars of propaganda focus on …
Policy Agenda Setting and Risk Communication: Greenpeace, Shell, and Issues of Trust
This article uses a qualitative case study approach to examine policy-oriented risk communication in the battle between Greenpeace and Shell over the disposal of the Brent Spar oil structure. Policy-agenda-setting literature is fused with literature from the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) and transnational advocacy networks to generate further insights. This analysis demonstrates that in attempting to influence policy, Greenpeace a…
Greenpeace v. Shell: Media exploitation and the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (Sarf)
This paper examines the usefulness of the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) in understanding the media's role in risk communication. Since the SARF was created in 1988, it has been both further developed and critiqued for (amongst other things) its: static conception of communication; lack of attention towards how key actors use the media; lack of systematic attention towards the media as an amplification station; and simplistic assum…
Journalism and the NSA Revelations: Privacy, Security and the Press
News, Agenda Building, and Intelligence Agencies: A Systematic Review of the Field from the Discipline of Journalism, Media, and Communications
Reflecting on Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing revelations regarding indiscriminate online and telephone surveillance and social media manipulation by signals intelligence agencies, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, this article highlights the hitherto limited nature of public knowledge of, and internationally uneven concern regarding, intelligence agencies’ contemporary techniques of communications surveillance and manipula…
Human-First, Please: Assessing Citizen Views and Industrial Ambition for Emotional AI in Recommender Systems
This paper qualitatively explores the views of diverse members of the British public on applications of biometric emotional AI technologies patented by two globally dominant consumer-facing recommender systems, Amazon and Spotify. Examining Amazon and Spotify patents for biometric profiling of users’ emotions, disposition, and behaviour to offer them tailored services, ads, and products from their wider platforms, this paper points to industrial …
Introduction to Special Theme Veillance and transparency: A critical examination of mutual watching in the post-Snowden, Big Data era
Introducing the Special Theme on Veillance and Transparency: A Critical Examination of Mutual Watching in the Post-Snowden, Big Data Era, this article presents a series of provocations and practices on veillance and transparency in the context of Big Data in a post-Snowden period. In introducing the theoretical and empirical research papers, artistic, activist and educational provocations and commentaries in this Special Theme, it highlights thre…
A Critique of the Capacity of Strauss’ Grounded Theory for Prediction, Change, and Control in Organisational Strategy via a Grounded Theorisation of Leisure and Cultural Strategy
In this paper we critique grounded theory’s ability to fulfil its aim of offering a practical vehicle for prediction, change, and control as stipulated in grounded theory’s original formulation by Glaser and Strauss, and later developed by Strauss. We do this through a case study approach, whereby we develop a grounded theory of leisure and cultural strategy within a local authority, and critically reflect on the process of grounded theorisation,…
Torture and intelligence in the War on Terror: The struggle over strategic political communication
Tele-Technologies, Control, and Sousveillance: Saddam Hussein — De-Deification and the Beast
This paper examines two disturbing, post-2003 Iraq War representations of Saddam Hussein – the televised inspection of his disheveled body on his capture (December 2003) and television and internet footage of his execution (December 2006). These representations epitomize two very different examples of government control of information within the emergent tele-technological environment of Web 2.0. The portrayal of Saddam Hussein as a captured beas…
Greenpeace v. Shell: Media exploitation and the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (Sarf)
This paper examines the usefulness of the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) in understanding the media's role in risk communication. Since the SARF was created in 1988, it has been both further developed and critiqued for (amongst other things) its: static conception of communication; lack of attention towards how key actors use the media; lack of systematic attention towards the media as an amplification station; and simplistic assum…
Unpacking complexity, pinning down the “elusiveness” of strategy: A grounded theory study in leisure and cultural organisations
Purpose The dominant strategy discourse projects strategy as rational and calculable. However, leading academics conclude that strategy is “elusive” and “complex”. The purpose of this paper is to unravel strategy's elusiveness and unpack its complexity through empirical hermeneutic investigation. Design/methodology/approach Strauss' grounded theory is used to investigate leisure and cultural managers' understanding of strategy‐making. Data were c…
Policy Agenda Setting and Risk Communication: Greenpeace, Shell, and Issues of Trust
This article uses a qualitative case study approach to examine policy-oriented risk communication in the battle between Greenpeace and Shell over the disposal of the Brent Spar oil structure. Policy-agenda-setting literature is fused with literature from the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) and transnational advocacy networks to generate further insights. This analysis demonstrates that in attempting to influence policy, Greenpeace a…
Tele-Technologies, Control, and Sousveillance: Saddam Hussein — De-Deification and the Beast
This paper examines two disturbing, post-2003 Iraq War representations of Saddam Hussein – the televised inspection of his disheveled body on his capture (December 2003) and television and internet footage of his execution (December 2006). These representations epitomize two very different examples of government control of information within the emergent tele-technological environment of Web 2.0. The portrayal of Saddam Hussein as a captured beas…
Media and risk: Old and new research directions
A macro‐view of the field of media and risk is offered by examining four main routes of media‐risk research. These routes are the media’s role in: providing risk knowledge to inform citizens; modulating public acceptability of different risks; motivating the public to take responsibility for, and action regarding, risks; and providing imaginative schemata regarding voluntarily chosen risks. Research tendencies in each of these routes are summaris…
Torture and intelligence in the War on Terror: The struggle over strategic political communication
Torture, Intelligence and Media in the War on Terror: Agenda-Building Struggles
“Veillant Panoptic Assemblage”: Mutual Watching and Resistance to Mass Surveillance after Snowden
The Snowden leaks indicate the extent, nature, and means of contemporary mass digital surveillance of citizens by their intelligence agencies and the role of public oversight mechanisms in holding intelligence agencies to account. As such, they form a rich case study on the interactions of “veillance” (mutual watching) involving citizens, journalists, intelligence agencies and corporations. While Surveillance Studies, Intelligence Studies and Jou…
News, Agenda Building, and Intelligence Agencies: A Systematic Review of the Field from the Discipline of Journalism, Media, and Communications
Reflecting on Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing revelations regarding indiscriminate online and telephone surveillance and social media manipulation by signals intelligence agencies, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, this article highlights the hitherto limited nature of public knowledge of, and internationally uneven concern regarding, intelligence agencies’ contemporary techniques of communications surveillance and manipula…
A Critique of the Capacity of Strauss’ Grounded Theory for Prediction, Change, and Control in Organisational Strategy via a Grounded Theorisation of Leisure and Cultural Strategy
In this paper we critique grounded theory’s ability to fulfil its aim of offering a practical vehicle for prediction, change, and control as stipulated in grounded theory’s original formulation by Glaser and Strauss, and later developed by Strauss. We do this through a case study approach, whereby we develop a grounded theory of leisure and cultural strategy within a local authority, and critically reflect on the process of grounded theorisation,…
Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror: Agenda-Building Struggles
Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror examines the communication battles of the Bush and Blair political administrations (and those of their successors in America and Britain) over their use of torture, first-hand or second-hand, to gain intelligence for the War on Terror. Exploring key agenda-building drivers that exposed the torture-intelligence nexus and presenting detailed case studies of key media events from the UK an…
Fake News and The Economy of Emotions: Problems, causes, solutions
This paper examines the 2016 US presidential election campaign to identify problems with, causes of and solutions to the contemporary fake news phenomenon. To achieve this, we employ textual analysis and feedback from engagement, meetings and panels with technologists, journalists, editors, non-profits, public relations firms, analytics firms and academics during the globally leading technology conference, South-by-South West, in March 2017. We f…
Journalism and the NSA Revelations: Privacy, Security and the Press
Introduction to Special Theme Veillance and transparency: A critical examination of mutual watching in the post-Snowden, Big Data era
Introducing the Special Theme on Veillance and Transparency: A Critical Examination of Mutual Watching in the Post-Snowden, Big Data Era, this article presents a series of provocations and practices on veillance and transparency in the context of Big Data in a post-Snowden period. In introducing the theoretical and empirical research papers, artistic, activist and educational provocations and commentaries in this Special Theme, it highlights thre…
Intelligence Elites and Public Accountability: Relationships of Influence with Civil Society
Organized Persuasive Communication: A new conceptual framework for research on public relations, propaganda and promotional culture
Organized persuasive communication is essential to the exercise of power at national and global levels. It has been studied extensively by scholars of public relations, promotional culture and propaganda. There exists, however, considerable confusion and conceptual limitations across these fields: scholars of PR largely focus on what they perceive to be non-manipulative forms of organized persuasive communication; scholars of propaganda focus on …
Psychological Operations in Digital Political Campaigns: Assessing Cambridge Analytica's Psychographic Profiling and Targeting
This paper explores whether psychographic profiling and targeting married with big data and deployed in digital political campaigns is a form of psychological operations (‘psy-ops’). Informed by studies on deception, coercion and influence activities from propaganda, persuasion, policy making, cognitive psychology, information and marketing scholarship, this proposition is examined and historically grounded in a politically important case study: …
Optimising Emotions, Incubating Falsehoods: How to Protect the Global Civic Body from Disinformation and Misinformation
This book finds that the optimisation of emotions for commercial and political gain is a primary cause of false information online. This is an open access book
Optimising Emotions, Incubating Falsehoods: How to Protect the Global Civic Body from Disinformation and Misinformation
Human-First, Please: Assessing Citizen Views and Industrial Ambition for Emotional AI in Recommender Systems
This paper qualitatively explores the views of diverse members of the British public on applications of biometric emotional AI technologies patented by two globally dominant consumer-facing recommender systems, Amazon and Spotify. Examining Amazon and Spotify patents for biometric profiling of users’ emotions, disposition, and behaviour to offer them tailored services, ads, and products from their wider platforms, this paper points to industrial …
Routledge Handbook of the Influence Industry
Blurring the moral limits of data markets: Biometrics, emotion and data dividends
This paper considers what liberal philosopher Michael Sandel coins the ‘moral limits of markets’ in relation to the idea of paying people for data about their biometrics and emotions. With Sandel arguing that certain aspects of human life (such as our bodies and body parts) should be beyond monetisation and exchange, others argue that emerging technologies such as Personal Information Management Systems can enable a fairer, paid, data exchange be…
On manipulation by emotional AI: UK adults’ views and governance implications
With growing commercial, regulatory and scholarly interest in use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to profile and interact with human emotion ("emotional AI"), attention is turning to its capacity for manipulating people, relating to factors impacting on a person's decisions and behavior. Given prior social disquiet about AI and profiling technologies, surprisingly little is known on people's views on the benefits and harms of emotional AI technol…
Move fast and break people? Ethics, companion apps, and the case of Character.ai
Riffing off move fast and break things , the internal motto coined by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, this paper examines the ethical dimensions of human relationships with AI companions, focusing on Character.ai—a platform where users interact with AI-generated ‘characters’ ranging from fictional figures to representations of real people. Drawing on an assessment of the platform’s design, and the first civil lawsuit brought against Character.ai in the U…
Political science (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Public relations (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Media studies (6 works) · Business (5 works) · Politics (5 works)