Panopticism is not Enough: Social Media as Technologies of Voluntary Servitude

Abstract

The article aims to offer a new theoretical framework for thinking about surveillance and control in social media. In the first section, the authors show how Panopticism found breeding ground in social media studies. Yet they claim that despite an expanding critical literature, not much seems to be changing in prosumers’ practices online. Their hypothesis is that this is happening not only because individuals are forced or cheated by the technical systems, as it has been usually argued, but also because they voluntarily submit to them. For this reason, in the second section, the authors introduce the notion of voluntary servitude, coined by Étienne de la Boétie in the XVIth century. Voluntary servitude is a paradoxical notion because it represents the attempt of tidying up two opposite facts: human beings’ will of freedom and their reiterated submission. In the third section, they make the notion operative in the context of social media by focusing on privacy as the counter-discourse of surveillance. In conclusion, the authors deal with the emancipatory character of voluntary servitude, as well as with the concept of subjectivity it entails.

Surveillance and the Impossible Search for Ideal Behaviour

“…Although the public has become increasingly aware of the fact that mass surveillance exists, and because of hit series such as “Black Mirror,” so far not much seems to be changing in their daily practices. Perhaps the main reason is submission to the notion that being under constant surveillance cannot be avoided (Romele et al 2017 ). But maybe we do see some gradual changes.…”

The employability dispositif, or the re-articulation of the relationship between universities and their environment

“…Our study also seeks to explore the role of social media in rearticulating the relationship between universities and the labour market. We understand them as part of the employability dispositif with their own subject constituting effects (Romele 2017).…”

Data Activism: Reviving, Extending and Upgrading Critical Citizenship Education and Consumer Rights Movements

“…6 In the case of activist uses of social media, a remarkable point is the fact that most of the Internet users voluntarily release personal information on the web. Romele et al (2017) consider this as an act of voluntary servitude, where people are willingly enslaved. However, from a broader perspective, people are sharing these with certain expectations and/or actual returns.…”