Background And Introduction
The emergence of social media has ushered in what Michael Foucault anticipated in his seminal panopticism work. Panopticism is a term coined by Jeremy Bentham to describe the concept of surveillance. Bentham’s panopticon consisted of a central tower encircled by cells. The centre tower featured a guard, while the cells housed inmates — these inmates could be children or workers, depending on the structure’s purpose (Foucault).
In his 1975 book ‘Discipline And Punish: The Birth of the Prison’, Michel Foucault explored the ramifications of ‘Panopticism.’ Foucault writes- ‘The major effect of the panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers’.
The panopticon is an apparatus for separating the see/be seen dyad: at the periphery, one is completely seen without ever seeing; in the centre, one sees everything without ever being seen.
The architectural reference chosen by Foucault to dissect the way the state exercises authority can be further understood from similar patterns that are prevalent in modern times, including but not limited to the prison, the jailer, and the inmates, but also the state, citizens, and the line of dissent. Foucault’s panopticon is being implemented in modern society to control people’s conduct, thanks to technological advancements.
Structures, agency, and processes have developed as cultures have ridden the wave of technological growth. The heart of it, on the other hand, continues to fulfil the purpose and agenda for which it was created or accepted in the first place. During the Roman Empire, for example, state-sponsored art was used to glorify the monarchy. Despite several stages of thesis and antithesis, as Darwin would have predicted, the pattern persists, with advertisements of the government appearing on the front pages of all major dailies in India, many of which are unverifiable.
Panopticon encourages citizens to engage in self-policing for fear of retaliation. Fear of the government’s unseeing eye has fostered this fear. Governments exercise their power in this era of digital surveillance by deploying closed-circuit television (CCTV), monitoring citizens’ online activities, and listening in on phone calls. As a result, a citizen’s privacy is constantly in jeopardy. To avoid punishment, they adapt their behaviour to meet the demands of the government.
For example, speed cameras are deployed on the roadways of Delhi, allowing authorities to monitor residents’ driving habits. A penalty sheet, sometimes known as a challan, is sent to the driver’s address if they exceed the approved speed limit. As a result of the authorities’ unseen eyes, citizens change their behaviour by driving at suggested speeds despite the lack of visual monitoring. The concept of central inspection does not need the construction of a central tower.
For this essay, I’ll look at three major events from the last decade and draw parallels between Foucault’s understanding of the panopticon, the evolution of surveillance, and the implications that come with it.
Social Media and the Arab Spring
Protests and surveillance (Hong Kong, India)
Mandatory linking of Aadhaar with voter ID and of Aarogya Setu application
Using the events of the Arab Spring, we may investigate the role of social media in collective action within a broader theoretical framework. In the early 2010s, the Arab Spring was a wave of anti-government rallies, upheavals, and armed rebellions that swept over most of the Arab world.
The Arab revolutions utilised Facebook to arrange, Twitter to organise, and Youtube to broadcast their rallies against hereditary power, corruption, underdevelopment, unemployment, unequal wealth distribution, and Israel’s existence. Social media was utilised by activists in the popular Arab uprisings to educate, organise, disseminate cultural products of movements, communicate from coalitions, and more.
The Arab revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, which brought down powerful tyrants, were aided in large part by social media. It’s one thing to suggest that communication technologies had a role in these democratic revolutions; it’s quite another to say that these technologies are adequate, if not essential, for political reform. According to several observers, the initial enthusiasm for social media’s significance in political processes in Maghreb and Middle Eastern countries has waned.
According to Ekaterina Stepanova’s study on the impact of ICTs in the Arab Spring, social networks aided political and social mobilisation but did not play a decisive and autonomous role. Instead, as in Egypt, where the existing divide between the ruling class and the rest of the populace would inevitably lead to some type of rebellion, social media catalysed revolution.
Panopticism is reinforced through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. They do so, however, with a more sophisticated model due to the hidden aspects of physical observation. The convicts may see the watchtower and light in Foucault’s panopticism, which adds to the proof of surveillance. Individuals cannot determine the amount of surveillance despite the broad adoption of social media by millions of users. People are aware that their activities are being watched, but they are unable to determine the scope or limitations of the monitoring.
In contrast to the Foucauldian panopticon, which had a central tower for asymmetrical surveillance, social media is virtual and has no physical structures to impose on people. Social media, on the other hand, has similar effects on people. Jeremy Bentham’s architectural figure and Michael Foucault’s views on panopticism are predicated. Social media, on the other hand, does not have that physical form and is instead confined to a phone, camera, or computer.
Panopticism’s practices, on the other hand, are all carried out through social media. Panopticism refers to the idea of being observed from a watchtower, similar to how governments monitor the activities of their population from a central point. People who use social media are also aware that they are being monitored and, as a result, avoid doing things that are against the government’s beliefs.
The surveillance of protestors in circumstances like following the revocation of Article 370, when the government imposed a complete communication blackout in Jammu and Kashmir, is proof of being monitored. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was passed in parliament a few months later, sparking a wave of protests around the country.
The government began enacting three agricultural legislation in 2020, claiming that boosting privatisation and limiting government interference would stimulate farm growth. In all three incidents, in addition to surveillance of protestors on the ground, the government attempted to stifle free expression by disrupting communication systems and monitoring social media.
Since August 4, 2019, the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir has been cut off from the rest of the world in several ways. This includes a social media embargo that prevented residents in Kashmir from airing their grievances. High-speed internet connections were only restored in February 2021, leaving the union territory without internet connectivity via COVID-19.
At some time during the anti-CAA rallies, the internet was shut down in at least seven states throughout the country. In addition, after one demonstration turned violent during the farmer’s agitation, a variety of communication blockades were implemented in Delhi and Haryana as a preventive measure.
Similarly, since the 2019 Hong Kong street protests (The planned law of the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill catalysed the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. However, other factors have been suggested, such as calls for democratic reform, the disappearance of the Causeway Bay Books, or a fear of losing a “high degree of autonomy” in general) began, Chinese security agencies gained access to millions of hours of footage from CCTV and news agencies, as well as personal social media accounts of protesters, bystanders, and Beijing loyalists. By monitoring social media accounts and intercepting phone calls and messages, the authorities gathered large troves of personal data on Hong Kong students, whether demonstrators or not.
The Pegasus controversy made headlines as it was revealed that Israeli police used the Pegasus spyware, developed by the Israeli technology company NSO Group, to spy on scores of its residents, including high government officials and anti-Benjamin Netanyahu activists. Pegasus spyware was allegedly used on ministers, opposition leaders, political strategists and tacticians, journalists, activists, minority leaders, supreme court judges, religious leaders, administrators such as Election Commissioners, and heads of the Central Bureau of Investigation in India, according to Pegasus Project investigations (CBI). Later analysis of several of these phones revealed that they had been targeted by the Pegasus spyware.
The startling similarity of these instances can also be seen in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, in which a totalitarian government is used to exemplify themes and motifs such as censorship, freedom, and propaganda throughout the story, which is explored through the suspense of Big Brother’s control and motives.
The messaging transformed into tracking and punishing the corrupt as the campaign for Aadhaar-linking expanded from food subsidies to bank accounts to mobile phones. The consoling motto was “nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.” This statement was repeated in justifying the monitoring of activists, dissidents, and public intellectuals. People who continuously criticise the government, we were told, are merely posing as good citizens while plotting India’s demise.
The nation’s defence necessitated the installation of snoop ware on mobile phones, the hacking of email accounts, and the use of facial recognition software. Recall the Supreme Court’s rejection of Aadhaar, the government’s plan to assign a 12-digit biometric-based unique identity number to every Indian citizen.
The government originally objected to the concept of a right to privacy, then stated that privacy was mainly a concern of the wealthy, oblivious to the fact that the poor were more concerned about the project’s reportedly improved welfare distribution efficiency. Aadhaar opponents were derided as elites who were unconcerned about the poor.
The risks of linking Aadhar with voter ID exceed the benefits for various reasons. The lack of a personal data protection regulation, a lack of clarity on the integration process, the risk of leaks, and the potential for voter disenfranchisement are all reasons why this move should not have been pushed. The entire concept should be reconsidered in light of these and the current move.
This kind of fear isn’t new. Tailored monitoring based on Aadhaar and demographic data has been documented. The locations of 5.167 million families in Andhra Pradesh could be tracked using religion and caste as search parameters on a website managed by the state government. Similarly, 2.2 million voters’ names were removed from the Telangana voter records in an attempt to “purify” electoral rolls and remove duplicates.
Many voters were surprised to see their names removed, including 14-time national champion badminton player Jwala Gutta. According to an RTI request, the Telangana Election Commission employed Aadhaar-based software for this, resulting in disenfranchisement and a breach of universal suffrage.
We all got notifications telling us to download the Aarogya Setu app and join the national fight against Covid-19. According to the brief, the app would proactively reach out to users and notify them of the coronavirus’s risks, best practices, and alerts.
More than 100 million individuals have already downloaded the app from Google Play. Many people are pointing out issues that need to be addressed. Strangely, no one appears to be bothered about the fine print: the government can share your information with unnamed “other agencies” for unnamed “other purposes.” The software could provide the authorities access to areas of the user’s private life that are unrelated to Covid-19.
The fact that people are downloading the app at such a high pace implies that they are unconcerned about the government tracking their whereabouts and interactions with others. This arrogance is the result of a well-coordinated campaign to delegitimize the right to privacy in the public mind.
Analysis
The Right to Look, by Nicholas Mirzoeff, offers a fresh take on modernity. He emphasises that countervisualities challenge authority’s limited view of reality by creating and asserting an alternative. Let’s have a look at some of the counter-visualities in the three case studies:
(i) The Arab Spring and Social Media, (ii) Protests (Hong Kong, India) and Surveillance, and (iii) Mandatory linking of Aadhar with voter ID and Aarogya Setu application
The Electoral Laws (Reform) Bill 2021 was passed by the government, requiring the voter’s Aadhaar card to be linked to their voter ID, even though several famous persons and organisations wrote to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to express their opposition to the idea to link voter IDs with Aadhar cards, claiming that it would be discriminatory and violate privacy, as well as the Supreme Court’s judgement. Despite advocacy groups and individuals objecting against the required use of the Aarogya Setu app, we simply cannot refuse to download it; after all, it enjoys a healthy 160 million+ user base (which isn’t unexpected given the PM’s mandate).
Even if the first wave of revolutions and protests receded after a while, numerous Arab Spring demonstrations were greeted with violent retaliation from authorities, pro-government militias, counter-demonstrators, and soldiers. Following the Arab Spring uprisings, much focus was placed on the role of social media and digital technology in allowing residents in areas affected by “the Arab Uprisings” to bypass state-run media outlets as a means of collective activity.
It can be derived that social media in general, and Facebook in particular, provided new sources of information that the regime could not easily control, and were crucial in shaping how citizens made individual decisions about protest participation, protest logistics, and the likelihood of success.
While the Arab Spring was dubbed the “Facebook revolution” in 2011, the continuing protests in Hong Kong could be dubbed the “Tinder revolution.” Most Hong Kong protesters are increasingly using the dating app Tinder to help organise anti-Chinese government demonstrations.
Other game and news apps, like “Pokémon Go,” Telegram, Whatsapp, Firechat, and Line, were also utilised to avoid the authorities. Even despite the state’s physical and digital assault on CAA protestors, many used telegram, tinder, bumble, hinge, and other messaging apps to coordinate, educate, and dissent after stories of activists and protestors’ social media surveillance entered the news.
Conclusion
Experts believe that despite criticism, the phenomenon is likely to continue and form rigid structures in the coming days. If one was to trace this relating it to Auguste Comte’s Law of Three Stages, societies move from theological wherein all reasoning and questioning are answered to using religion, to metaphysical, which is seen as a transition to the positivist stage wherein answers are sought based on logic and science. The State increasingly uses the logic of centralising data and promoting linkages to ensure an easy connection between the state and the end beneficiary. Going by Comte’s theory of linear movement, it is less likely that this gets reversed.
Another way of looking at the projection of the phenomenon could be Orwell’s 1984. As his Magnum Opus – 1984 celebrates its 73rd year of publication, his prediction of a dystopian surveillance state where every word is monitored, unacceptable speech is deleted, history is rewritten or deleted altogether and individuals can become “unpersons” for holding views disliked by those in power can be seen, with prominence. A Forbes article looks at the process and compares it and concludes that most of his predictions turn out to be frighteningly accurate.
Drawing a parallel, the article states that In 1984, it was the state that conducted surveillance and censored speech, cut to the year 2019, social media companies actively engage and deploy vast armies of human and algorithmic moderators that keep an eye and surveil their users 24/7, flagging those that commit thoughtcrimes and deleting their violations from existence. Those that commit too many thought crimes are banished to “unperson” status by these same private companies, without any intervention or even in contradiction with the will of the state and without any right to appeal.
Whatever be the case, the essential tangent that makes space is citizens’ very right to question, argue, refute and dissent, all of it finding newer ways to overcome the inevitable, giving slight hopes for a positive future with a continued sense of rationale and reasoning. The same has been the case in the three case stories cited in the first section of the essay.
For instance, during the Arab spring, when the state came down heavily to increase surveillance and ban social media platforms, citizens eventually invented newer ways to evade the eye of the ‘state’, package messages and convey their words and intent.
Similarly, during the protests in Hong Kong and India, netizens sometimes resorted to stepping down from the ‘panoptic’, in this case, the social media, and reinventing older means of communication, theatre and music, and continue to do so, in an attempt to minimise their digital footprint.
Lastly, the Aadhaar linkage being made mandatory has been contested time and again by the Indian civil society, arguing on the grounds of it being a breach of the Right to Privacy according to Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, the right to be left alone.
All these instances give us hope that while the State shall continue to reinvent its panoptical strategies, free thought shall contest the same, despite repercussions, posing newer challenges to the status quo or as Foucault says “One must confront what one is thinking and saying with what one is doing, what one is”.