Offering more than just procrastination: Facebook as a site of resistance in the age of panopticism? (original) (raw)

Michel Foucault’s panopticon model theorizes the control of society through an increasingly systematized and rationalized approach to surveillance. Still today, new technologies, such as the Internet, tend to be heralded as perpetrators of this structure. In particular, online social network sites can be seen as a prime example of how this constant surveillance has intersected not only with the macrostructure institutional levels, but has also permeated through to interpersonal relationships. Although it would seem that joining a social network is a voluntary act, therefore implying a certain measure of power over one’s interactions online, an examination of one particular social network site, Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) shows clearly shows that the individual is constantly kept under guard and observed in spite of this supposed control. However, despite these gloomy signs of contemporary society becoming one where the individual is increasingly subject to power, a possibility for change and resistance is presented in the way Facebook allows individuals to use knowledge to act together in an informed manner about pertinent issues.