Today’s guest speaker via Skype was Christopher Parsons, UVic PhD candidate focusing on ubiquitous digital surveillance and its accompanying privacy issues. Have you ever done any internet surveillance on your own? Viewing each others posts online is a form of surveillance.
How would you feel if the police had access to everything you posted online or every email you sent? Chris spoke about the politics of surveillance and he gave us lots to think about. Be mindful about how you communicate. Be careful about what you say online. It could come back to haunt you in the future.
With regards to your own internet communication, Chris says you need to consider: “If I do these practices, here’s the possible outcomes. Am I comfortable with them? “
Think about who may be watching you the next time you participate in a demonstration and someone takes pictures and tags you when they post online.
About Ava K
Ava Karvonen is multi-platform producer and the founder of Edmonton’s Reel Girls Media. She has produced more than 100 hours of content for the global market including TV, web and mobile. Her work has seen more than 90 worldwide screenings and been internationally recognized with more than 40 awards (including Best Original Cross-Platform Content at the Alliance for Children and TV Awards, the CFTPA Award for Best Convergent New Media, a Japan Prize and the Ojai California Festival Theme Award: “Enriching the Human Spirit Through Film”).
She recently produced the feature length documentary, Finding Bobbi (After 50 years in the wrong body, Bobbi tells her story while preparing to step on stage for the first time as a woman) and directed/produced audio and video stories for the new Royal Alberta Museum. Her credits include creating and producing four series, ten one-hour documentaries, more than 100 webisodes and podcasts, audio & video for the new Royal Alberta Museum, and an online companion to an animated TV series where users can create their own comics and stories. In addition to producing, Ava also writes and directs. She directed seasons 1 & 2 of Chaos and Courage for APTN; was one of the directors on the CBC series Keeping Canada Alive; wrote and directed The Lie Detective; directed and produced Homefront (a story that followed five soldiers and their families during a deployment to Afghanistan); directed Seeds of Change for Panacea Entertainment (an hour long documentary that tells the story of a friendship between two scientists and how they worked together to help restore the health of China’s Yangtze River).
Ava believes in giving back to her community. Ava has been teaching credit and non-credit courses for NAIT, FAVA, MacEwan, Raindance; served on juries in Canada and abroad; and has served on the advisory committees of Salute to Excellence for the City of Edmonton, the Aids Network Black and White Affair, CFTPA, NextMedia, and NAIT. She has also helped develop industry policy while serving for the past 20 plus years on the boards of the Edmonton Arts Council, AMPIA, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC), and DOC AB. She is the chair of WIFTA (Women in Film and Television Alberta) and sits on the advisory committee of the Edmonton Screen Industries Office.
Ava Karvonen 