abstract: This article alters the essential inquiry of this special issue to ask, "Isn't CCTV media?" Our goal is to summon thoughts about the borders of media, their enclosures and racialized logic, the spaces they occupy, their ownership, and what they open up and exclude by moving away from participatory use and enclosing into institutional use for control. By exploring closed-circuit television (CCTV) and other media it generates in spaces of discipline and entertainment, we propose reformulating media as a resource for people, where media is constituted out of a strained relationality between opening and enclosure.
Rappas et al. (2026) studied this question.