ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors present the critical debates regarding the challenges superimposed by surveillance and surveillance with respect to political participation. Autonomy is a central issue regarding threats to political participation. Transparent citizens may hardly be politically autonomous, and consequently free. Citizens may mobilise others unaware of surveillance threats, and even engage in forms of resistance and refusal of some surveillance modes. The concept of autonomy also has more heuristic potential for research on the perceptions of people about the threats of surveillance to political participation. Besides the dominance of the liberal conception of democracy in contemporary societies, the Internet’s libertarian ideology also leads to a devaluation of the autonomy issue. In contemporary societies, the authors are facing two kinds of surveillance: top-down and bottom-up surveillance, both of which have implications with respect to autonomy and political participation, although in different ways and with different consequences.
