Fig. 1. Grigoryan, Sona. “Facebook: The Panopticon of Modern Age.” Online Image. Flickr. Flickr Creative Commons, 9 March 2014. Web. 2 Feb 2014.
In 2004, a Harvard university undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook — a small social network for Harvard students to help to identify each other. Gradually, it spread to other universities, and eventually became popular among all colleges, universities, schools, the military, companies in the United States and in the whole world (Westlake 24). Nowadays, Facebook has about 1.19 billion active users who share and post personal information, photos, videos, personal thoughts, and “stay connected with their friends and family” (Navratil 51). By voluntary posting personal or general information Facebook users participate in collaborative creation of a giant database of information (qtd. in Keen). This information is under the constant surveillance not only by their friends and family, but also by Facebook that uses it for its own profit; this surveillance also generates sorted information about users and their preferences to be sold to advertising companies (Navratil 52). Facebook changes the ways of communication and interaction of users by simply keeping them under the constant surveillance. Consideration of Facebook’s surveillance will be interesting to look from panoptic perspective invented by Jeremy Bentham in 1791. The Panopticon was a design of a perfect prison, architecture of which allowed “to see constantly and recognize immediately” (Foucault 200). Furthermore, the Panopticon gave the rise of the disciplinary societies; the transformation of mechanisms that allows exercising power not only on a small enclosed institution, but also on bigger social bodies (Foucault 217). In this research paper, I will argue that there is the relevance between surveillance of Facebook and the surveillance in the Panopticon model, and although the concept of the Panopticon is an old phenomenon, it is still applicable in our digital century.
In order to show the relevance between surveillance of Facebook and the surveillance in the Panopticon, I will first introduce the main physical architecture of Panopticon and its purpose. I will then draw parallels between the elements of the design of the Panopticon and Facebook (see fig. 1). I will show that despite the fact that the Panopticon was meant to be an actual real building and Facebook is a virtual digital entity, they have many similarities. Next, I will introduce the idea of Facebook having a technique of disciplining the users, as well as mechanism of shaping their subjectivities, and I will argue that this is based on the panoptic gaze of surveillance and it comes from the roots of Panopticism. And lastly, I will depict that Facebook itself is a platform that collects knowledge from user posts and information for capitalistic purposes, effective performance of work, and increase of productivity, which in their turn are the criteria for tactics of power in economic process of formation of the disciplinary society.
