Abstract
Understanding the social implications of Facebook and Twitter has come to dominate a number of academic journals and disciplines. The novelty of the topic, as well as its ubiquity, makes it a likely target for study. Author Daniel Trottier adds to this scholarly research by spinning outwards from interviews with college students to consider the multiple modalities and apparatuses that are constitutive of new visibilities in an era of social networks. The “dwelling” that is Facebook allows for a self-presentation that, although managed, is nonetheless a target for forms of surveillance ranging from the lateral to the institutional to the market-based. At each of these instances, new strategies of visibility are enacted; an escaped prisoner may take to Facebook as a way of publicly celebrating his new-found freedom, whereas market research firms are increasingly drawn to Facebook as a dwelling in which target demographics can be introduced to socially-curated corporate brands. A push and pull thus emerges, with Facebook being a place for friendships and social interaction while at the same time serving as a platform for an emergent social visibility that increasingly sets its sight on domestic spaces. Issues of identity and privacy are intimately bound up within this tension as each become socially negotiated—constructed within a context that highlights sponsorships as much as friendships.
Social Media as Surveillance provides a compelling multi-perspective approach to new forms of social visibility emerging out of social media in general, and Facebook in particular. The ways in which Facebook, as a dwelling and technological platform, enables ubiquitous surveillance and encourages a managed social identity promises to provide fertile academic ground in the coming years. Trottier’s work, with its focus on the concept of visibility, offers one perspective through which to view what is social about social media, and the economic and cultural ramifications of Facebook surveillance.