Sousveillance
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The recording of an activity from the perspective of participant in the activity. uncountable
"No, you’re not always “the product” on social media; sometimes you’re the raw material. Or the employee. Welcome to “sousveillance capitalism.” […] But you see the flow of capital here: viral sousveillance proliferating in an attention economy that benefits large tech firms, further exploited by traditional advertisers as “relatable” content."
- 2 Countersurveillance, inverse surveillance. uncountable
"This paper describes using wearable computing devices to perform "sousveillance" (inverse surveillance) as a counter to organizational surveillance."
- 3 Veillance by the masses, of the dominant entities. uncountable
Example
More examples"No, you’re not always “the product” on social media; sometimes you’re the raw material. Or the employee. Welcome to “sousveillance capitalism.” […] But you see the flow of capital here: viral sousveillance proliferating in an attention economy that benefits large tech firms, further exploited by traditional advertisers as “relatable” content."
Etymology
Coined by Canadian wearable computing researcher and professor Steve Mann, from surveillance and French sous (“under”) (as opposed to sur (“over”) as in surveillance).
More for "sousveillance"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.