After a full day of an email barrage about Facebook graphics, promotions and posts, I got stuck in traffic. I was bored and started perusing Twitter feeds to see who else was in traffic with me. Then I realized, there’s a marketing opportunity. Then I said…stop! Everything seems to be revolving around Facebook communities and Twitter feeds. A tornado in Dallas or Tupac’s hologram at Coachella, there was a good chance you knew about it through some social media vehicle.
I got home and this thought of an all-encompassing media sat on my shoulder like an angry Greek god, toga and all. It took a second to get out from all the minute details of social media to look at it from a 50,000-foot view. This all felt familiar and it hit me…Michel Foucault.
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher and social theorist who spent a great amount of his time on critical studies of social institutions. One of his most famous works was a book on the prison system titled Discipline and Punish. One concept of the book is the discussion of the Panopticon. In a Panopticon, a single guard has the ability to watch over many prisoners while the guard is unseen in his tower. Prisoners never know when they are being watched so they must act as if they are being observed. It becomes internal monitoring. An example of this is how sports stadiums are set up. The way seats are tiered is fantastic for the audience to watch the game, but it also allows for guards and security cameras to have full view of the fans. Follow me so far?
So Josh, we get it, you are nerd and enjoy philosophy, but what does this have to do with social media?
Social media has become a glass Panopticon. Continue reading
