Pixel Politics: Advancing Critical Remote Sensing in an Era of New Space and Google Earth Prof. Mia Bennett

While critical GIS is a widely researched subfield within geography, critical remote sensing has received less attention. As remotely sensed imagery and the “view from above” become more prevalent in everything from daily life to newspaper reporting, agriculture, and war, more research is needed into the political and technological contexts in which satellites and satellite data are embedded. Unlike maps, which any individual can produce, generating satellite Earth observation imagery – the paradigmatic form of remotely sensed data – requires engineering expensive satellites and launching them into orbit. As a result, national governments have traditionally dominated the sector, though private companies are now challenging their monopoly.

While the emerging military-digital complex maintains a hold on the production of satellite data, its analysis is increasingly open to any individual with access to a computer or mobile phone. The growing accessibility of satellite data may engender new and more critical approaches within remote sensing, with links to practices such as open source intelligence and investigative journalism. As these approaches often bear an overt political agenda, such analysis of satellite imagery differs from scientific remote sensing. Despite being implicitly political, too, scientific remote sensing has historically been conducted without systematic consideration of its political and sociocultural (as opposed to technological) biases and limitations. In this talk, I will consider the politics of satellites in the era of New Space and Google Earth and sketch out the three building blocks of critical remote sensing: exposure, engagement, and empowerment.