Watching me, watching you.

We’re all playing the role of online Big Brother in more ways than one.

Big Brother by Mao Tsé-Tung (CC BY 2.0)

Living highly technical and fast paced lives, it’s no wonder a large part of our time is being spent on social media. Constructing important elements, such as our identity, social groups and news outlets, has never been easier with affordable smart devices that give everyday people the ability to access online tools and apps. These devices allow the user to bring order, sense and structure to a world that has become rather chaotic and overloaded with information.

https://twitter.com/t_rozich/status/773531889495707651

As our society has progressed over time, surveillance has adapted and morphed into different forms, and has incorporated itself into developed online environments. Surveillance has always been an omnipresent and highly integral part of our society that over time has filtered its way into our everyday lives more than ever before.

From our quiet local streets and restaurants, to busy large-scale stations and airports, surveillance has always held the role of up-keeping security and safety in public spaces. Due to large parts of our lives consisting with online activity, surveillance has blurred the traditional lines and barriers of physical street monitoring and entered the online realms in ways that we may not entirely realise or be openly exposed to.

technology by Ioana Grecu (CC BY 2.0)

“A number of theorists have noted the ways in which surveillance, once seemingly solid and fixed, has become much more flexible and mobile, seeping and spreading into many life areas where once it had only a marginal sway.” (Lyon and Bauman, 2013 p.7).

In his book, ‘Liquid Surveillance: A Conversation’, David Lyon brings to life the idea of ‘liquid modernity’; a theory coined by Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Liquid modernity refers to the way in which modern society emanates fluid-like movements in the way that is it constantly changing and rapidly evolving. Lyon uses the key beliefs to liquid modernity to explain how ‘always on the move, today’s citizens, workers, consumers and travellers also find that their movements are monitored, tracked and traced’ (Lyon, 2013 p.2) and that surveillance is replicating society’s liquid state. Surveillance has found a way to flow through our online environments and intricately survey and collect individual data with ease via the servers we use and the codes we carry on our many devices.

Another largely documented and theorised concept develops from the notorious Michel Foucault, French philosopher and social theorist, who established works regarding surveillance and discussed elements of panoptic society. Establishing theories in relation to contemporary social control, privacy and contemporary city, Foucault’s theories express a way of life that is very much alive and happening today.

In this podcast, I discuss some ideas on panoptic society in relation to Foucault and Bauman, surveillance in our everyday lives online and what ‘dual nature’ (Bauman) is and how it might relate to our everyday highly digitalised and surveilled environment.

Our digital lives are fundamentally being controlled via panoptic surveillance and digital monitoring that impact our lives in many indirect ways. ‘The drive to self- monitoring through the belief that one is under constant scrutiny (Wood, D p.235)’ means that we alter our behaviour due to the belief that we never really know when someone’s watching.

 

References:

Ltd, W.F.M. 2016, Social theory Rewired. Available at: http://routledgesoc.com/category/profile-tags/liquid-modernity (Accessed: 5 September 2016).

Bauman, Z. and Lyon, D. (2013) Liquid surveillance: A conversation. Available at: https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=flpuJFmDFQYC&oi=fnd&pg=PT5&dq=surveillance+and+consumerism&ots=hkC8QSxR6O&sig=TQz8lKFJmvmgvKywrv8gPRU3q4g#v=onepage&q&f=false (Accessed: 4 September 2016).

Wood, D (date unknown), Foucault and Panopticism Revisited. Editorial. Available at:http://surveillance-and-society.org/articles1(3)/editorial.pdf.

Lights, camera, surveillance!

Have we become our own form of paparazzi?

When it comes to celebrity news and popular culture, we’re feeding our need for entertainment and gossip first hand via social media surveillance sites.

paparazzi! by Federico Borghi (CC BY 2.0)

Surveillance has always been about general, large-scale observation of society. Now with an enormous global community online, surveillance has integrated itself into the depths of the Internet and occurs in many different ways.

With people from across the world gathering together and sharing bundles of information on multiple online platforms, the desire to watch and observe other peoples lives has greatly grown in digital communities. People have more exposure than ever before with accessible information about foreign communities, activities, events and culture. Through the use of social media, content about individual lives can be shared in creative, interesting and instant ways that allow for up-to-date information to be shared to millions of people in just a few moments.

https://twitter.com/t_rozich/status/773682625487613952

Celebrity culture and gossip has experienced a dramatic change over the last decade with new ways to access celebrity information, their locations and daily activities. Not only has the platform of celebrity content changed, but also the type of celebrity we see in the media today has dramatically transformed. ‘The emergence of reality TV and of the internet, especially web 2.0 phenomena, has pushed ordinariness into the cultural forefront’ (Gamson, J 2011, p.1062). The way in which social media allows us to view celebrity lives has developed an engaging experience for users to get involved in and seek to keep up with their favourite personalities.

Paparazzi by Rob Sinclair (CC BY 2.0)

Via the use of heavily used and highly popular social sites such as Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, we have a plethora of avenues to delve into the realms of pop culture and into the lives of the people within it. For example, we’re able to view the life of Kylie Jenner through her Snapchat and Twitter and feel like we are gaining real time and personal insight into her lavish and extravagant lifestyle. We are also able to view the more personal sides to celebrities lives through these social media platforms as the famous post snippets and photos of themselves and their family/friends completing rather mundane and everyday activities that you or I complete.

https://twitter.com/t_rozich/status/773684667274756096

So why have we become so interested in the everyday mundane? Whilst our traditional celebrities (think Hollywood stars) instantly gain large followings on their social media pages, sites such as YouTube and Instagram have allowed for the birth of many everyday people rising to fame. Spend some time on YouTube and you will experience just how quickly some users gain followings of their own and how we are really living in a time where a rise in the glorification of online bloggers and vloggers is occurring. Events such as VidCon, established for all online creators to come together and meet and greet with their fans always gain mass attendance full of people eager to meet with their favourite online personalities.

VidCon attendees  by Gage Skimore (CC BY 2.0)

There is a sense of attainability that has transformed the way in which we view celebrities. The rise of social media icons nowadays is ‘not distant but attainable – touchable by the multitude’ (Marshall, D 1997, p.6). Celebrities have been brought back down to earth and are now being found in the likes of everyday people.

 

References:

Marshall, PD 1997, ‘Fame in Contemporary Culture’ in Celebrity and Power, U of Minnesota Press, pp. 1-10.

Gamson, J 2011, ‘The Unwanted Life Is Not Worth Living: The Elevation of the Ordinary in Celebrity Culture’ in USF Scholarship Repository, University of San Francisco, pp. 1061-1066.

 

 

Growing up in a 2.0 world

My oh my how times have changed!

It may be interesting to consider the idea that once upon a time humans were all sponges, meaninglessly absorbing information that the media fed us and wanted us to believe. It may also be interesting to imagine that our parents grew up as mindless sheep following the crowd, passively consuming advertisements and propaganda every time they turned on the television or tuned into their preferred radio station.

Whilst the above scenario may appear to be a more exaggerated version of how life used to be before digital technology merged itself into everyday life, imagine a time filled with no smartphones, laptops or even accessible internet available to everyday people across the globe. A time like this really did once exist, and even though it seems like a world away, it was only about 30 years ago when people began using the very early models of laptops and mobile phones.

Coming from the standpoint of a generation Y baby, the way in which we live our lives vastly contrasts to the way in which our parents (and certainly our grandparents) generations lived. Looking back today, we can see two versions of the media, an older media 1.0 with traditionalist ideals, and today’s more digitalised media 2.0.

Understanding how to utilise digital media comes as second nature to many people living in the modernised 21st century. For the last 20 years, people have grown up with and have learnt to use technology from the very early stages of their lives. For children born in the last 10 years, they haven’t lived their lives without some form of technology or digital device influencing their childhoods. We are currently raising ‘digital native‘ children living in a media 2.0 world. Parents are using technology to aid the way in which they raise children, to keep their children occupied and entertained. Institutions such as schools and workplaces are highly digitalised and knowledge about technology is almost a necessity in order to succeed. Our personal lives are becoming more integrated with online activity through social media, our access to information is more widespread than ever before, and our physical activity in everyday life is being monitored in ways we still are yet to uncover. In this 2.0 world, we are certainly living in a fast paced and digitalised time where way of life is is rapidly changing day by day.

 

I will be exploring more into digital media and surveillance topics on this blog. I can’t wait to see what unfolds and hope you enjoy reading through my thoughts!