Monday 11 August 2008

Google's Streetview Seen As Culturally Insensitive In Japan

Global Voices reports that one year after its debut in the United States, Google's Street View has arrived in Japan, where it is already drawing criticism. Despite the company's generally positive image in this country, bulletin board threads and blogs are filled with comments questioning the way Google has rolled out its latest service. In the past few days, the CEO of a major Internet services company has spotted his own wife, others have found images of men urinating outdoors, and others have caught couples entering love hotels (not to mention birds in full flight). All of this has raised serious privacy concerns. Article in full here.

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I am director of the Media and Persuasive Communication (MPC) network at Bangor University where I also lecture on political-economy of the media. I am currently working on a book provisionally titled Deconstructing Privacy for Peter Lang and leading two empirical projects in connection with privacy perception and the use of new media for smoking cessation. I am author of Creativity and Advertising: Affect, Events and Process (Routledge, 2013); The Mood of Information: A Critique of Behavioural Advertising (Continuum, 2011); and Digital Advertising (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2009). Please contact me at mcstay@bangor.ac.uk if you are interested in Ph.D supervision or consultancy services.