Some of my early hopes for social media, that it represented, like Kevin Kelly reckons, some kind of renaissance for socialism in the western world, are starting to run dry.
There’s a splendid series of articles over at O’Reilly Media concerning the dark side of social media by Joshua-Michéle Ross. The first of these, The Digital Panopticon, was drawn to my attention by Antony Mayfield today.
[This post is terribly unpolished – my books are in boxes for a couple of weeks, so only internet research here – and also, I am a critical theory dilettante at the best of times].
The Panopticon, as you probably know, was a scarily-perfect model of perpetual surveillance in a prison, first mooted by Jeremy Bentham, one of the great philosophers of The Enlightenment. Prisoners in such an institution may be observed at any time and they’re unable to tell whether or not they’re being watched. Thus, they’re kept in continual paranoia. Many prisons, including current-day institutions like London’s Pentonville and Pelicon Bay in California, are believed to be inspired by the Panopticon model.
Josh suggests, and I am bound to agree somewhat, that social media technologies have a strong panoptical element:
In the age of social networks we find ourselves coming under a vast grid of surveillance — of permanent visibility. The routine self-reporting of what we are doing, reading, thinking via status updates makes our every action and location visible to the crowd. This visibility has a normative effect on behavior (in other words we conform our behavior and/or our speech about that behavior when we know we are being observed).
Josh’s point is that we somehow accept social media networks as empowering, democratic and all about spreading fresh ideas. The reverse may be the case: any given information about ourselves donates some portion of control to another party.
Let’s take this across to one model of critical theory. Post-structuralist modernist (I get my posts mixed up) philosopher Michel Foucault back in the 70s picked up and ran with the idea of the Panopticon, especially in his best-known work Discipline and Punish. His idea was that Bentham’s model wasn’t just an idea for a prison; but for a society.
He argued that prisons are a really new idea. Back in the past, we simply thrashed/burned/drowned/stabbed transgressors. That all changed in the C18th with the Enlightenment . The idea of law-enforcement was ‘enlightened’ with the understanding that resources [people] didn’t need to be wasted and that better social control is exercised through freely-given compliance, rather than co-option.
People could be turned into machines, a consequence of political thinking in the emergence of industrial society and the rush to efficiency and cost-allocation. Once properly mechanised, they could be ‘trusted’ – the scare quotes, because the trusted prisoner is no longer human. A big part of that process is surveillance: once people know that they are always (potentially) watched, they’re a bit more compliant to the rules, and a bit more like machines.
The genius of the current model is that we are self-surveillant, of course. We willingly offer our identity, friends, thoughts and so-forth, to the all-seeing eyes of anyone who can be bothered to set up an appropriate search alert. We’re consequently a bit less likely to say or do things that fall outside the accepted models of political and corporate behaviour.
Foucault saw this coming in what was happening back in the C18th. Foucault observed that over the period of that century, the exercise of power changed from explicitly keeping people down to encouraging people to express themselves (and then governing that), rather than repressing expression as in the earlier model. Foucault’s ideas of power produced knowledge, produced information, produced pleasure – in the right directions. Creating knowledge, creating information is a form of surrender in this model.
It produced (arguably) blog-conversations, for example. They are a discourse, in his terminology – conversations that follow an agreed etiquette, language and code – creating implicitly agreed audience-identities and scope. If you cannot submit to that discourse, you cannot be a part of it. I can’t explore that fully right now, but blog conversation as discourse is a rich course of enquiry, I promise.
One small part of this to pick out: Foucault remarked on the way people could now be disciplined by:
tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical
How perfect a description is that of the unfollow, unfriend, forum-ban, IP-ban?
For dozens of contemporary examples, check out this issue of Surveillance and Society, though it is very academic.
And where is transgression in social media?
It is simply not allowed to exist in many cases. No, wacky viral videos and satire along the lines of the Daily Show do no not count – the former often serve Capitalism, the remainder and all of the latter are our current carnivalesque release-valve on norms that really couldn’t care less about political change. Porn doesn’t count either, because it’s so fully and perfectly Capitalist in the first place.
Blogs you don’t like: don’t subscribe/unsubscribe – you get the Daily Me; Facebook people get unfriended if they say the wrong thing; unsavoury Twitter followers are not followed or blocked. Bland self-approval of the group takes over. There are no racists on my spectrum right now. As far as I am concerned, they don’t exist. But that’s not the real story, clearly. Racists are poised to take Stoke in the next by-election. They don’t appear on my spectrum because I have deliberately blinded myself to their existence on a day-to-day basis. Diversity of opinion is purely opt-in (with strong incentives to opt-out) in socialmediaworld.
In socialmediaworld, there’s consequently no-one who wants to topple our social democracy. Almost everything that I see, and almost anything I am likely to see, is already ranked (Google) and focused (Twitter) through the twin lenses of liberal democracy. Minority views are excluded by the machine – only the recommended and personalised is allowed through. The stuff that dulls and comforts the political imagination. Foucault talked about a ‘new economics of power’ with regard to the French media of the 70s – he would have so relished and reviled our current political abstinence and lack of ideas.
Transgression has almost ceased to exist. Almost. Look to the unchampioned uninnovative for that: IRC, usenet, forums, web-sites.
Terribly unpopular post on ‘innovation and politics’ to follow…
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You’ve surpassed yourself this time, Mr D. I am digesting this post and will be for some hours. Hopefully I will discover my mettle and post a response…
Beautiful new theme for the blog, BTW.
Hey Ian
Great post. I’m a also bit of a Foucault wonk at heart… But the parallels with Social Media go don’t stack up that well… Most analogies tend to break when you press them. Foucault’s too.
Everything would be fine if there was an absolute centre of control, discipline and punishment at the core (like with the Panopticon), but when we realise that there aren’t really reds under the bed and that nobody really has total control over the Social web (or society — certain Fascist regimes aside), then we can sleep a little easier.
The dark side of Social Media is its openness and the fact that we are all living very visible lives… unless we choose to opt out of public updates (which we can mostly do). This creates a knowledge/power/wotnot oppty for those who wish to abuse it.
But this is a dilemma. Openness, socialness, etc, is also what makes Social Media such a wonderful opportunity to do good things/get work/communicate/etc in new ways. It’s also making many people feel human again.
Foucault, on reflection, needed to get out more… or take his paranoia goggles off. I loved him when I was a library hound, but kind of hate him (and his inaccessible, arcane thoughts and lingo) now that I’m doing things that require social contracts and a bit of law and order to back them up (ie, running a biz)…
(Another reading of Foucault’s view of power is via genetics and self interest, grand old economic theory, or some downright funny post post post modernism via David Foster Wallace and co.… all of which tends to emphasise the positive, disruptive and transgressive nature of human contracts rather than the near-Marxist-post-wotsit.)
So maybe there’s a theological post in there somewhere. Social Media giveth and taketh away.… But I’m not down with Mr F’s view on things. These guys and the post modern gang really fecked up the minds and analytical and writing skills of a whole generation of students (replacing them with a reductive kind of sneer-ology instead) and deserve to stay in them there boxes in the attic. (OK, my cards, on the table.)
Rant over. Love your work as always :)
Roger
Excellentt stuff. Where’s the image from? Is it ghosts of the civil dead?
Wealth of information = poverty of attention = reduced capability for independent thought. Orwell saw the use of the radio as “background noise” as a means of preventing thought. Is social media the information age equivalent? Discuss.
More here: http://www.iamone.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=1
I take your general point, but there are a number of points of issue;
1) Not everyone engages with social media to the same level — there are still an awful lot of fake names and fake photos.
2) I think you’re assuming that *all* data published on these sites is useful in anyway; it really is unlikely to help you to know that I had salad for lunch (particularly without a context of whether this is usual behaviour for me).
3) You may have no racists on your Twitter feed, but how is this different from the people you choose to associate with in real life? This isn’t socialmediaworld, this is the world most people create for themselves in real life. You may not like this process (and there is an argument to be made against it), but it’s certainly not down to social media.
So is social networks the new God? new religion? To control people’s behavior?
As I was reading this article, I was thinking, “Yeah, I’m not gonna post anything that my boss might see”. Hmm. That’s a shame.
Great build on some of my posts — I particularly like the way you draw out a scenario in which the “microphysics of power” (Foucualt’s term) are embedded in the algorithms and social norms that will drive behavior to homogeneity. Lastly, I disagree a bit with Roger — Foucault’s notion of power lay not with Big Brother elites but in they myriad interactions emerging from the bottom up.…
Best,
Joshua-Michéle Ross
At last! An intelligent, informed and provocative article about the nature of Social Media. All social media is a discourse, its one of its great strengths. Diverse people making sense of phenomenon. This issue of power is crucial too. Just look how business is latching onto it and ensuring it fits the standard managerialist ‘model’. For them social media is great provided its diversity can be controlled and manipulated for corporate gain.
Really good stuff, Ian. Here’s my tuppence ‘orth:
I believe I fall somewhere between your view and Roger’s.
Foucault’s work was very appropriate at the time but maybe doesn’t fit as snugly with commons-based peer production (aka social media) as per Roger’s observation ‘there’s no longer one central panopticon/power base’ providing a heart of darkness.
That’s because society has shifted; we now exist in a post-industrial, networked society envisaged by Manual Castell’s work where economic/state/cultural power, etc is spread around the world throughout networks, rather than locked within a very nation-state focussed silo of power/control.
What social media giveth and taketh away for the public also applies to the state — just see the SM fall-out after the G20 protests.
However, it’s also true that the state is currently responding to these crises by attemtping to tighten its control — not of the tools, but of the network infrastructure itself.
Um… sooooooo.… my point is: while I kind of agree with Roger that the Foucaukt analogy isn’t quite there yet, perhaps it’s closer than we actually imagine.
If we/I/someone can re-work Focuaults original thesis to account for a distributed, networked world rather than a traditional conception of power/surveillance then we’re getting there — sadly :)
a good post. I think the panoptic gaze is a useful lens to use in analysing social media as other have said but the concern with power relations should be expanded (as Simon Collister implies) as per Foucault’s notion of discipline. Power relations are there in any social practice in terms of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour within the overall population or sub-groups as well as various ways of indicating “power” — how many twitter followers, how my blog is ranked, the degree to which I’m capable of designing my own blog or twitter page, coded language, etc.… Some of these indicators will be conscious, some unconscious and some almost incidental. Social media being no different than any other social practice. Also, power relations are not necessarily negative — there is alot of ‘good’ associated with the power of knowledge. Anyway, good post, lots to consider and this is an under researched area (esp in the workplace — noting how swiftly discussion of power relations was demoted in literature on communities of practice).
Just to follow up Peter’s comment — power in networks is definitely something that could do with further exploration.
AFAIK even Castell’s paradigm-shifting work on the networked society struggled with networked power. Indeed I think it was a particular tension as he fell back on the classic Weberian model. It’ll be interesting to see whether he can resolve that tension when in his new thesis which takes into account SM: http://bit.ly/ZVjCF
Hmmmm. A good agument always opens more questions than it answers!
Oh yes, I also meant to add that with delicious serendipity I also came across this today which looks a) relevant and b) interesting: http://bit.ly/SOrFW
Great reading, Simon. What are my best bets/links for understanding Castell better than you in less than 10 minutes?
Everyone get over to:
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2077/1989
I like your basic idea of relationship between panoptican and social media, but I fear that you have missed one substantial point pertaining to this relationship. This paradox of apparent choice of opting out which is sometimes emphasised by people to differentiate this social media from panopitcan model is misplaced because of the reason that same model is first enslaving one to engage through it and when someone is not comfortable with anybody then he/she may opt out once again employing the techniques provided by same social media. Therefore, what is impotant is to highlight this dual aspect of enslavement and freedom through same model. Same social media is connecting and then it is leading us to way outs. If we donot depend on this media substantially then we would be better placed to avoid social media‘s mediated way outs. But I think this sort of solution has not capacity to be an option when I am also employing one of the mode provided by this social media to express way out. This situation is paradoxical.
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