Media Convergence
and Surveillance
Nazario Robles Bastida
, Cyberspace, Freedom an
Surveillance
▪ “Much of the conversation about electr
mail, bulletin boards, and the informa
superhighway in general is steeped i
language of liberation and utopian possib
It is easy to see why. I write these word
1995. To date, a user’s experience of
Internet is of a dizzyingly free zone. O
information is easily accessible. One can
anything to anyone”. – Sherry Turkle: Lif
the Screen.
,Cyberspace, Freedom and Surveillance
▪ “Despite many people’s good intentions, there is
much in recent social thought that casts a sobering
light on such enthusiasms. Michel Foucault’s work,
for example, elaborates a perspective on
information, communication and power that
undermines any easy links between electronic
communication and freedom”. – Sherry Turkle
, Discipline and Punish
▪ Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the
Prison (Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison)
▪ Foucault argues in this book that the eighteen
century saw the emergence of new mechanisms of
power: surveillance, regimentation, categorization
and punishment.
▪ This new system of power became materialized, for
Foucault, in a device called Panopticon.
▪ Proposed by the social philosopher Jeremy Bentham,
the Panopticon enabled a prison guard to see all
prisoners without being seen. At any given time, any
prisoner was perhaps being observed, perhaps not.
and Surveillance
Nazario Robles Bastida
, Cyberspace, Freedom an
Surveillance
▪ “Much of the conversation about electr
mail, bulletin boards, and the informa
superhighway in general is steeped i
language of liberation and utopian possib
It is easy to see why. I write these word
1995. To date, a user’s experience of
Internet is of a dizzyingly free zone. O
information is easily accessible. One can
anything to anyone”. – Sherry Turkle: Lif
the Screen.
,Cyberspace, Freedom and Surveillance
▪ “Despite many people’s good intentions, there is
much in recent social thought that casts a sobering
light on such enthusiasms. Michel Foucault’s work,
for example, elaborates a perspective on
information, communication and power that
undermines any easy links between electronic
communication and freedom”. – Sherry Turkle
, Discipline and Punish
▪ Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the
Prison (Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison)
▪ Foucault argues in this book that the eighteen
century saw the emergence of new mechanisms of
power: surveillance, regimentation, categorization
and punishment.
▪ This new system of power became materialized, for
Foucault, in a device called Panopticon.
▪ Proposed by the social philosopher Jeremy Bentham,
the Panopticon enabled a prison guard to see all
prisoners without being seen. At any given time, any
prisoner was perhaps being observed, perhaps not.
