Kirstie Ball
Biographic Data
| ID | 3650608 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kirstie Ball |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kirstie |
| FAMILY NAME | Ball |
| SIGNATURE | BALL K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of St Andrews |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 104 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Developing the Citizen Summit Method: Understanding citizens’ views on digital surveillance technologies
This paper discusses how to turn citizen summits into a robust, replicable, and participatory mixed methods approach for studying public views on digital surveillance technologies and other areas of internet policy
Surveillance Studies in Retrospect and Prospect: Recollections and Thoughts to Mark the 20th Anniversary of Surveillance & Society
As part of the twentieth anniversary edition of Surveillance & Society, chief editors Torin Monahan and David Murakami Wood asked two of the founding co-editors, Kirstie Ball and Steve Graham, for the reflections on how the journal was founded, its contribution of surveillance studies, the challenges facing the field, and where they think it is going next. Kirstie and Steve met in Autumn 2022 for the discussion and what follows represents their c…
Surveillance in the Workplace: Past, Present, and Future
As part of Surveillance & Society’s twentieth anniversary issue, this short article explores the recent rise in interest in the phenomenon of workplace surveillance. It briefly reviews the latest findings and future research priorities. Recent developments in workplace datafication have foregrounded workplace surveillance as a more vital organizing force. A range of interdisciplinary research now addresses workplace surveillance in action, attest…
What's In It For Us? Benevolence, National Security, and Digital Surveillance
This article challenges suggestions that citizens should accept digital surveillance technologies (DSTs) and trade their privacy for better security. Drawing on data from nine EU countries, this research shows that citizens’ support for DSTs varies not only depending on the way their data are used but also depending on their views of the security agency operating them. Using an institutional trustworthiness lens, this research investigates three …
Organizational tensions arising from mandatory data exchange between the private and public sector: The case of financial services
Sowing the seeds of value? Persuasive practices and the embedding of big data analytics
Big Data and surveillance: Hype, commercial logics and new intimate spheres
Big Data Analytics promises to help companies and public sector service providers anticipate consumer and service user behaviours so that they can be targeted in greater depth. The attempts made by these organisations to connect analytically with users raise questions about whether surveillance, and its associated ethical and rights-based concerns, are intensified. The articles in this special themed issue explore this question from both organisa…
Institutional trustworthiness and national security governance: Evidence from six European countries
This article examines the relationship between the institutional trustworthiness of security agencies in the context of data‐intensive security practices. It focuses on the public's acceptance of the way digital surveillance technologies feed into large‐scale security data analytics. Using the case of deep packet inspection (DPI), survey data gathered in six European countries ( n = 1,202) demonstrates that security agencies' institutional trustw…
Surveillance and Democracy in Europe
Beyond the security paradox: Ten criteria for a socially informed security policy
This article investigates the normative and procedural criteria adopted by European citizens to assess the acceptability of surveillance-oriented security technologies. It draws on qualitative data gathered at 12 citizen summits in nine European countries. The analysis identifies 10 criteria, generated by citizens themselves, for a socially informed security policy. These criteria not only reveal the conditions, purposes and operation rules that …
Big Data Surveillance and the Body-subject
This paper considers the implications of big data practices for theories about the surveilled subject who, analysed from afar, is still gazed upon, although not directly watched as with previous surveillance systems. We propose this surveilled subject be viewed through a lens of proximity rather than interactivity, to highlight the normative issues arising within digitally mediated relationships. We interpret the ontological proximity between sub…
Carnivalesque collaborations: Reflections on 'Doing' Multi-Disciplinary Research
Many funding bodies emphasize the advantages of using multi-disciplinary approaches; in response, in this article we consider our reflections on doing such a project. We contribute to the multi-disciplinary literature by considering the standardizing effect of collaboration on multifarious research approaches. We argue that greater attention should be paid to 'doing' qualitative multi-disciplinary research. We find that elements of 'letting go' a…
Taking responsibility for border security: Commercial interests in the face of e-borders
Working on the edge: Remediation work in the UK travel sector
In response to recent terror attacks, Western governments now involve private sector organizations in national security regimes in key strategic areas such as travel, communication and financial services. The UK's e-Borders programme is one such regime. Its goal is to collect and analyse passport and passenger data from all travellers entering and leaving the UK in advance of travel. Airlines and their supply chains are required to collect data f…
The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: A Political Economy of Surveillance
Introduction: The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: Towards a Political Economy of Surveillance? by Kirstie Ball and Laureen Snider Part I: International Networks and Global Circuits of Surveillance 1. The New Military Urbanism by Stephen Graham 2. Promoting Global Identification: Corporations, IGOs and ID Card Systems by David Lyon and OEzgun E. Topak 3. Pandemic Governance: Using Event-Based Surveillance to Manage Emerging Infectious Diseases by…
Surveillance-Industrial Complex: A Political Economy of Surveillance
"Today's 'surveillance society' emerged from a complex of military and corporate priorities that were nourished through the active and 'cold' wars that marked the twentieth century. Two massive configurations of power - state and corporate - have become the dominant players. Mass targeted surveillance deep within corporate, governmental and social structures is now both normal and legitimate. The Surveillance-Industrial Complex examines the inter…
Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies
Surveillance is a central organizing practice. Gathering personal data and processing them in searchable databases drives administrative efficiency but also raises questions about security, governance, civil liberties and privacy. Surveillance is both globalized in cooperative schemes, such as sharing biometric data, and localized in the daily minutiae of social life. This innovative Handbook explores the empirical, theoretical and ethical issues…
A hotel inspector calls: Exploring Surveillance at the Home-Work Interface
This article, which examines inspection experiences in the home-based context of the B&B, makes a distinctive contribution to surveillance theory, and specifically the concept of ‘exposure’. It draws on Levinas’s phenomenological ideas on identity and his concept of ‘sensibility’, in order to better place the ‘exposed’ subject at the centre of analysis. Our empirical research shows how B&B proprietors negotiate their exposure to surveillance with…
Workplace surveillance: An overview
This article attempts to review the proliferation of research findings about surveillance in the workplace and the issues surrounding it. It establishes a number of points of departure when considering the issue of workplace surveillance, before reviewing some of the more critical issues. First, it establishes that organizations and surveillance go hand in hand; and that workplace surveillance can take social and technological forms. Personal dat…
Exposure: Exploring the subject of surveillance
The aim of this paper is to identify a construct which may be used to frame the subjective experience of surveillance in contemporary society. The paper's central question concerns whether there is a concept to describe the experience of surveillance which can then inform empirical studies. Surveillance practice has consequences for the individual, yet surveillance studies do not have a particular take on the subject. Building on some preliminary…
Privacy, Surveillance and Public Trust – By D. Neyland
Organization, Surveillance and the Body: Towards a Politics of Resistance
This paper examines the problematic of embodied resistance to biometric surveillance practices. After establishing that surveillance is becoming more widespread, the paper draws on the multidisciplinary areas of organization theory, surveillance theory, and body and feminist sociology. It is argued that current theoretical resources available to organization theorists are inadequate for analysing resistance to these technologies. After an investi…
The Intensification of surveillance: Crime, terrorism and warfare in the information era
Our public and private lives are under surveillance as never before. Whether we are shopping with a credit card, walking down the street or emailing a colleague at work, our activities are monitored. Surveillance has become more routine, more integrated and more intrusive. It is vital to ask how and why this should be so, and assess what the consequences are.Since September 11th 2001 surveillance has intensified further. Yet although individuals,…
The Intensification of Surveillance: Crime, Terrorism and Warfare in the Information Age
Surveillance involves the observation, recording and categorization of information about people, processes and institutions. It calls for the collection of information, its storage, examination and – as a rule – its transmission. It is a distinguishing feature of \nmodernity, though until the 1980s the centrality of surveillance to the making of our world had been underestimated in social analysis. Over the years surveillance has become increasin…
Elements of surveillance: A new framework and future directions
This article argues for a wider conceptualization of the meaning and significance of surveillance in contemporary social studies. It has been written in the context of recently published work by Lyon (2001, 2002) who establishes a powerful argument illuminating the social and technical interconnectedness of surveillance systems, and the invisibility of their social ordering effects, in everyday life. The article is divided into two parts. The fir…
Workplace surveillance: An overview
This article attempts to review the proliferation of research findings about surveillance in the workplace and the issues surrounding it. It establishes a number of points of departure when considering the issue of workplace surveillance, before reviewing some of the more critical issues. First, it establishes that organizations and surveillance go hand in hand; and that workplace surveillance can take social and technological forms. Personal dat…
A hotel inspector calls: Exploring Surveillance at the Home-Work Interface
This article, which examines inspection experiences in the home-based context of the B&B, makes a distinctive contribution to surveillance theory, and specifically the concept of ‘exposure’. It draws on Levinas’s phenomenological ideas on identity and his concept of ‘sensibility’, in order to better place the ‘exposed’ subject at the centre of analysis. Our empirical research shows how B&B proprietors negotiate their exposure to surveillance with…
Big Data Surveillance and the Body-subject
This paper considers the implications of big data practices for theories about the surveilled subject who, analysed from afar, is still gazed upon, although not directly watched as with previous surveillance systems. We propose this surveilled subject be viewed through a lens of proximity rather than interactivity, to highlight the normative issues arising within digitally mediated relationships. We interpret the ontological proximity between sub…
What's In It For Us? Benevolence, National Security, and Digital Surveillance
This article challenges suggestions that citizens should accept digital surveillance technologies (DSTs) and trade their privacy for better security. Drawing on data from nine EU countries, this research shows that citizens’ support for DSTs varies not only depending on the way their data are used but also depending on their views of the security agency operating them. Using an institutional trustworthiness lens, this research investigates three …
Big Data and surveillance: Hype, commercial logics and new intimate spheres
Big Data Analytics promises to help companies and public sector service providers anticipate consumer and service user behaviours so that they can be targeted in greater depth. The attempts made by these organisations to connect analytically with users raise questions about whether surveillance, and its associated ethical and rights-based concerns, are intensified. The articles in this special themed issue explore this question from both organisa…
Institutional trustworthiness and national security governance: Evidence from six European countries
This article examines the relationship between the institutional trustworthiness of security agencies in the context of data‐intensive security practices. It focuses on the public's acceptance of the way digital surveillance technologies feed into large‐scale security data analytics. Using the case of deep packet inspection (DPI), survey data gathered in six European countries ( n = 1,202) demonstrates that security agencies' institutional trustw…
Surveillance in the Workplace: Past, Present, and Future
As part of Surveillance & Society’s twentieth anniversary issue, this short article explores the recent rise in interest in the phenomenon of workplace surveillance. It briefly reviews the latest findings and future research priorities. Recent developments in workplace datafication have foregrounded workplace surveillance as a more vital organizing force. A range of interdisciplinary research now addresses workplace surveillance in action, attest…
Carnivalesque collaborations: Reflections on 'Doing' Multi-Disciplinary Research
Many funding bodies emphasize the advantages of using multi-disciplinary approaches; in response, in this article we consider our reflections on doing such a project. We contribute to the multi-disciplinary literature by considering the standardizing effect of collaboration on multifarious research approaches. We argue that greater attention should be paid to 'doing' qualitative multi-disciplinary research. We find that elements of 'letting go' a…
Taking responsibility for border security: Commercial interests in the face of e-borders
Working on the edge: Remediation work in the UK travel sector
In response to recent terror attacks, Western governments now involve private sector organizations in national security regimes in key strategic areas such as travel, communication and financial services. The UK's e-Borders programme is one such regime. Its goal is to collect and analyse passport and passenger data from all travellers entering and leaving the UK in advance of travel. Airlines and their supply chains are required to collect data f…
Elements of surveillance: A new framework and future directions
This article argues for a wider conceptualization of the meaning and significance of surveillance in contemporary social studies. It has been written in the context of recently published work by Lyon (2001, 2002) who establishes a powerful argument illuminating the social and technical interconnectedness of surveillance systems, and the invisibility of their social ordering effects, in everyday life. The article is divided into two parts. The fir…
The Labours of Surveillance
Surveillance and work is examined as the central theme of the issue. Two interpretations of the phrase are made – first, surveillance of work, and second surveillance as work. After a focus on the second, a review of recently published work which informs this perspective is undertaken, and then two issues for future research are discussed. These issues concern how the surveilled subject might come to be understood, and how connectivity between di…
The Intensification of surveillance: Crime, terrorism and warfare in the information era
Our public and private lives are under surveillance as never before. Whether we are shopping with a credit card, walking down the street or emailing a colleague at work, our activities are monitored. Surveillance has become more routine, more integrated and more intrusive. It is vital to ask how and why this should be so, and assess what the consequences are.Since September 11th 2001 surveillance has intensified further. Yet although individuals,…
The Intensification of Surveillance: Crime, Terrorism and Warfare in the Information Age
Surveillance involves the observation, recording and categorization of information about people, processes and institutions. It calls for the collection of information, its storage, examination and – as a rule – its transmission. It is a distinguishing feature of \nmodernity, though until the 1980s the centrality of surveillance to the making of our world had been underestimated in social analysis. Over the years surveillance has become increasin…
Organization, Surveillance and the Body: Towards a Politics of Resistance
This paper examines the problematic of embodied resistance to biometric surveillance practices. After establishing that surveillance is becoming more widespread, the paper draws on the multidisciplinary areas of organization theory, surveillance theory, and body and feminist sociology. It is argued that current theoretical resources available to organization theorists are inadequate for analysing resistance to these technologies. After an investi…
Privacy, Surveillance and Public Trust – By D. Neyland
Exposure: Exploring the subject of surveillance
The aim of this paper is to identify a construct which may be used to frame the subjective experience of surveillance in contemporary society. The paper's central question concerns whether there is a concept to describe the experience of surveillance which can then inform empirical studies. Surveillance practice has consequences for the individual, yet surveillance studies do not have a particular take on the subject. Building on some preliminary…
Workplace surveillance: An overview
This article attempts to review the proliferation of research findings about surveillance in the workplace and the issues surrounding it. It establishes a number of points of departure when considering the issue of workplace surveillance, before reviewing some of the more critical issues. First, it establishes that organizations and surveillance go hand in hand; and that workplace surveillance can take social and technological forms. Personal dat…
A hotel inspector calls: Exploring Surveillance at the Home-Work Interface
This article, which examines inspection experiences in the home-based context of the B&B, makes a distinctive contribution to surveillance theory, and specifically the concept of ‘exposure’. It draws on Levinas’s phenomenological ideas on identity and his concept of ‘sensibility’, in order to better place the ‘exposed’ subject at the centre of analysis. Our empirical research shows how B&B proprietors negotiate their exposure to surveillance with…
Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies
Surveillance is a central organizing practice. Gathering personal data and processing them in searchable databases drives administrative efficiency but also raises questions about security, governance, civil liberties and privacy. Surveillance is both globalized in cooperative schemes, such as sharing biometric data, and localized in the daily minutiae of social life. This innovative Handbook explores the empirical, theoretical and ethical issues…
The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: A Political Economy of Surveillance
Introduction: The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: Towards a Political Economy of Surveillance? by Kirstie Ball and Laureen Snider Part I: International Networks and Global Circuits of Surveillance 1. The New Military Urbanism by Stephen Graham 2. Promoting Global Identification: Corporations, IGOs and ID Card Systems by David Lyon and OEzgun E. Topak 3. Pandemic Governance: Using Event-Based Surveillance to Manage Emerging Infectious Diseases by…
Surveillance-Industrial Complex: A Political Economy of Surveillance
"Today's 'surveillance society' emerged from a complex of military and corporate priorities that were nourished through the active and 'cold' wars that marked the twentieth century. Two massive configurations of power - state and corporate - have become the dominant players. Mass targeted surveillance deep within corporate, governmental and social structures is now both normal and legitimate. The Surveillance-Industrial Complex examines the inter…
Taking responsibility for border security: Commercial interests in the face of e-borders
Working on the edge: Remediation work in the UK travel sector
In response to recent terror attacks, Western governments now involve private sector organizations in national security regimes in key strategic areas such as travel, communication and financial services. The UK's e-Borders programme is one such regime. Its goal is to collect and analyse passport and passenger data from all travellers entering and leaving the UK in advance of travel. Airlines and their supply chains are required to collect data f…
Carnivalesque collaborations: Reflections on 'Doing' Multi-Disciplinary Research
Many funding bodies emphasize the advantages of using multi-disciplinary approaches; in response, in this article we consider our reflections on doing such a project. We contribute to the multi-disciplinary literature by considering the standardizing effect of collaboration on multifarious research approaches. We argue that greater attention should be paid to 'doing' qualitative multi-disciplinary research. We find that elements of 'letting go' a…
Big Data Surveillance and the Body-subject
This paper considers the implications of big data practices for theories about the surveilled subject who, analysed from afar, is still gazed upon, although not directly watched as with previous surveillance systems. We propose this surveilled subject be viewed through a lens of proximity rather than interactivity, to highlight the normative issues arising within digitally mediated relationships. We interpret the ontological proximity between sub…
Surveillance and Democracy in Europe
Beyond the security paradox: Ten criteria for a socially informed security policy
This article investigates the normative and procedural criteria adopted by European citizens to assess the acceptability of surveillance-oriented security technologies. It draws on qualitative data gathered at 12 citizen summits in nine European countries. The analysis identifies 10 criteria, generated by citizens themselves, for a socially informed security policy. These criteria not only reveal the conditions, purposes and operation rules that …
Institutional trustworthiness and national security governance: Evidence from six European countries
This article examines the relationship between the institutional trustworthiness of security agencies in the context of data‐intensive security practices. It focuses on the public's acceptance of the way digital surveillance technologies feed into large‐scale security data analytics. Using the case of deep packet inspection (DPI), survey data gathered in six European countries ( n = 1,202) demonstrates that security agencies' institutional trustw…
Organizational tensions arising from mandatory data exchange between the private and public sector: The case of financial services
Sowing the seeds of value? Persuasive practices and the embedding of big data analytics
Big Data and surveillance: Hype, commercial logics and new intimate spheres
Big Data Analytics promises to help companies and public sector service providers anticipate consumer and service user behaviours so that they can be targeted in greater depth. The attempts made by these organisations to connect analytically with users raise questions about whether surveillance, and its associated ethical and rights-based concerns, are intensified. The articles in this special themed issue explore this question from both organisa…
What's In It For Us? Benevolence, National Security, and Digital Surveillance
This article challenges suggestions that citizens should accept digital surveillance technologies (DSTs) and trade their privacy for better security. Drawing on data from nine EU countries, this research shows that citizens’ support for DSTs varies not only depending on the way their data are used but also depending on their views of the security agency operating them. Using an institutional trustworthiness lens, this research investigates three …
Surveillance Studies in Retrospect and Prospect: Recollections and Thoughts to Mark the 20th Anniversary of Surveillance & Society
As part of the twentieth anniversary edition of Surveillance & Society, chief editors Torin Monahan and David Murakami Wood asked two of the founding co-editors, Kirstie Ball and Steve Graham, for the reflections on how the journal was founded, its contribution of surveillance studies, the challenges facing the field, and where they think it is going next. Kirstie and Steve met in Autumn 2022 for the discussion and what follows represents their c…
Surveillance in the Workplace: Past, Present, and Future
As part of Surveillance & Society’s twentieth anniversary issue, this short article explores the recent rise in interest in the phenomenon of workplace surveillance. It briefly reviews the latest findings and future research priorities. Recent developments in workplace datafication have foregrounded workplace surveillance as a more vital organizing force. A range of interdisciplinary research now addresses workplace surveillance in action, attest…
Political science (20 works) · Public relations (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Business (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Politics (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Internet privacy (6 works)