Privacy-related and surveillance issues are salient in public and political consciousness. The monitoring of human behaviour, and the collection, processing, use, and communication of personal information, are well-established practices in the history of states. The exercise, legitimacy, and organization of power, and the processes of politics and policy-making, have crucial information and communication dimensions. Edward Snowden's revelations in 2013 of surveillance activities by states highlighted the political importance of comprehending these processes and policies, and of responding to them, as many activists have done. Less dramatic contexts, such as in business activity, have existed for a very long time and, with the flourishing of the Internet, online commerce, and social media, are now matters of major social and political concern. The nature and means of contemporary database accumulation, intensive data analysis, data sharing, and other surveillance processes – usually seen as a huge benefit for public policy, law enforcement, security, and democratic governance – increasingly pose dilemmas for the protection of citizens’ rights, including privacy, and for the nature of citizenship itself. The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica debacle erupted into public attention and showed the dangers to democratic elections that data disclosures may pose.

Questions about data protection – which relates to privacy and surveillance – have also been to the fore, not least with regard to the development of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and its potentially profound effects on global as well as local flows of personal data in commerce and the public sector. Lawyers have dissected the legal provisions and novel concepts regarding rights and obligations, and technical specialists have pondered the feasibility of new requirements for the transparency and accountability of opaque information systems and processes such as data analytics. Data protection can potentially leverage changes in the distribution of power between citizens and the state or companies.

These, and many more, are all subjects of great political importance and there has been no shortage of commentary on them by many critics and other observers. However, subjects like these are under-researched by political scientists using the frameworks, tools, and concepts of that academic discipline.