M2.2

There are many ways, I find, in which people negotiate their public and private personae online. As if participants have different levels of comfort as to what they share or don't share online. Some look to not participate at all while others are fully involved in an online display of themselves. The bell curve puts the majority within having a moderate participation in social surveillance due to rising social expectation. And with this rise in expectation there comes a fading of privacy implications.

Anders Albrechtslund of firstmonday.org, in his article describing participatory surveillance in online social networking is highly accurate in his description of the current online culture as a hierarchical panopticon. Traditionally a panopticon would be seen in the physical world as a kind of structure wherein a single person could reach a wide audience efficiently due to their equal perspective of them. Albrechtslund tacks on a hierarchy as he moves this concept into the digital realm of social media which I think is accurate. Online in social media each person is his or her own panopticon, however, each is not created equal. There are those who share almost every aspect of their real lives, like a new breed of celebrity.

Whats more is when I consider that in this digital realm we still live in an age of capitalism and even though our panopticon isn't a real structure it is still owned by companies such as Facebook and Twitter who hold great influence and power over their users just through ownership, Cohen, author of The Valorization of Stirveillance warns. A further example of this power can be thought of and conceptualized in this fact, popular free picture texting app Snapchat is now valued at around $500 million USD for an app with no revenue. This is solely due to the prospect of future monetization.

Websites and apps such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are merely platforms for living a digital life and just as in real life your social circles are in flux either at your will or not. In my online life I choose to lean towards more disclosure online and I find myself doing it as more of a going-with-the-flow than anything. This social digital world becomes strikingly similar to the real social world. With this similarity considered I believe room for managing anonymous digital lives is shrinking and the social expectation of having an online persona, one that is true to the self, is increasing.