Facebook is Life
By Catherine Colgan.
Retrieved from: http://www.moshlab.com
These days it seems, facebook and and other social media sites are everywhere, and there is a unseen form of peer pressure to become a member of one of these platforms of online space, I will focus on facebook because just about everyone is or has been on facebook since its creation in the early 2000s. The once you join, facebook seems to hold a curious inexplicable compulsion over you to check your news feed every five minutes and for a growing number of people it is now the first thing they do in the morning and the last thing at night. The more involved in your facebook profile you are then the more you are assessed by computer programs to have the same advertisements thrown at you constantly.
In the Week 2 lecture (Kuttainen, V. (2015)) the idea of the "Panopticon" of power was explored where there is a view of omnipotence in the jailhouse with the guard tower in the centre and were able to see into all of the prisoner's cells, to give the idea of being able to see everything the prisoners do. Social media does this by monitoring everything that we do online in order to gauge our preferences for marketing purposes. We do still express a certain amount of control in the groups we allow ourselves to be affiliated with pertaining to our interests such as music, television and films and books.
References
Turkle,S. (1995). 'Panopticon'. In life on the screen. Identity in the age of the Internet. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
Kuttainen, Victoria. (2015). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, Lecture 2: Power. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
In the Week 2 lecture (Kuttainen, V. (2015)) the idea of the "Panopticon" of power was explored where there is a view of omnipotence in the jailhouse with the guard tower in the centre and were able to see into all of the prisoner's cells, to give the idea of being able to see everything the prisoners do. Social media does this by monitoring everything that we do online in order to gauge our preferences for marketing purposes. We do still express a certain amount of control in the groups we allow ourselves to be affiliated with pertaining to our interests such as music, television and films and books.
References
Turkle,S. (1995). 'Panopticon'. In life on the screen. Identity in the age of the Internet. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
Kuttainen, Victoria. (2015). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, Lecture 2: Power. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
I agree it is rarely that you will come across a person not a member of Facebook or some form of social media. I think definitely the concept of the panopticon applies in the sense that social media has taken on the role of the guard with the ability to see all. Further more I believe we as users have taken on the role of the prisoner, not knowing but always assuming we are being watched. Much like in Turkl’s reading I believe that this sense of always being watched has had an effect on how we as users of social media conduct ourselves in this online space. For example many users of Facebook are reluctant to post controversial content that if seen by a certain person or company could affect their current or future employment prospects. Is it possible we as users of social media would behave differently online without this idea of “big brother” always watching us?
ReplyDeleteReference
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet. New York: Simon & Schuster.