COMM317 Media and Human Rights
as “ an organised course of action to achieve a goal ” ( Lexico , n / a ).
This report will analyse Liberty ’ s ‘ Resist Facial Recognition ’ campaign , following the structure of : Relevance , Effectiveness , Efficiency , and Impact .
Relevance The ultimate objective of the Resist Facial Recognition campaign is to ban the use of facial recognition cameras on the streets of Britain . In order to try and achieve this , Liberty has circulated an e-petition , which can be definitively considered the most appropriate means to the ends they desire . Currently , there is no law underpinning the use of facial recognition , nor any Home Office policy regarding the technology ( Syed , n / a ). Thus , facial recognition has been being used without any proper parliamentary debate and public scrutiny ( Liberty , n / a ). Therefore , an e-petition is appropriate as it allows for the public ’ s views to be articulated and centred and then connected to that of the decisionmaking body , parliament ( Wright , 2012 ). If the petition reaches 100,000 signatures , it will then be considered for a debate in parliament , which is of absolute necessity if there is to be a nationwide ban on the technology , given that the police force derive their mandate from government .
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Effectiveness Given that this campaign is currently ongoing , this assessment will be based upon its current standing . As it stands , the aim of banning the use of facial recognition has not been achieved . That said , the campaign has been effective to an extent in its secondary aim of promoting awareness as to how facial recognition technology can be considered a violation of human rights .
To date , the campaign has received exposure from large media publications , such as Forbes ( Brewster , 2020 ) and The Guardian ( Sample , 2019 ). Boyle et al . ( 2017 ) assert that media attention both strengthens community coalitions and generates legitimacy for policy changes . This considered , the increased awareness resulting from this media exposure constitutes partial effectiveness .
The campaign has also been prominent on social media , namely Twitter , where @ LibertyHQ has 61.5k followers ( Liberty HQ , 2020 ). Twitter can be an extremely effective tool for campaigning , given the potential for topics to go viral , especially if they start trending . ‘ Trending ’ refers to the most talked about topics of the day on Twitter by the number of times a hashtag is used .