In the mid-1990s Microsoft founder Bill Gates claimed that computers and the Internet were making geography less important (1995). This statement illustrates a common theme of the early Internet days: that the “information highway” and “cyberspace” would connect people with similar interests and thus bridge gaps of distance, culture, and language. To some extent this has become reality, but mostly it has remained a beautiful vision of a potential global society. However, in later years the focus moved from this anti-geographical understanding of the Internet to a location- or place-based understanding. A number of Internet-connected surveillance-capable technologies have been introduced to everyday life and especially adapted in urban spaces. These include a variety of mobile devices that allow for location tracking, which along with more familiar technologies, such as closed-circuit television (CCTV), make up a network of surveillance-enabling technologies in urban spaces. The technologies facilitate both new surveillance practices and practitioners, as not only city authorities and private businesses have access to surveillance equipment. Ordinary citizens, tourists, restaurant guests, drivers, pedestrians, and many other inhabitants of the city carry mobile devices, which distribute the surveillance capabilities to a wide variety of actors.
The increase in surveillance technologies and practices has already been thoroughly explored and analyzed (for example: Andrejevic 2006, Fuchs 2008, Lyon 2006); however, this chapter offers an alternative perspective on surveillance technologies and the Internet that focuses on the “locative turn” (de Lange 2009, 56) in new media practices and approaches this topic phenomenologically. The questions that guide this focus are (a) what is online sharing? (b) what does location mean to online sharing?, and (c) how can we understand the popularity of this practice?
A central characteristic of Internet usage is the sharing of information. Today, in its broadest interpretation, this includes activities at commercial and corporate websites, private websites dedicated to personal interests, multiplayer games, web applications, blogging, media websites, forums and message boards, social networking sites, and many other platforms for computer-mediated communication. More specifically, when we think about online sharing, we often refer to social practices that have come to prominence during the last decade. Websites such as Twitter, Foursquare, MySpace, and, in particular, Facebook have changed how we connect to each other on the web, which in turn has changed web culture, professional relations, as well as consumer behaviour. Even though social life is not new to the web (boyd and Ellison 2007), i.e., only a “web 2.0” phenomenon, the majority of Internet traffic today is related to social network sites (Lenhart and Madden 2007). Therefore, in order to explore online sharing, I will focus on this main social activity on the web.
In this section I will further discuss online sharing in three ways: First step is to elaborate the definition of the social web to get a better grasp on this dominating practice. Second, the focus is on whom we are sharing with, especially those people, agencies, and organizations that are not necessarily our friends. The final step is to broaden this surveillance perspective from potential privacy breaches with regard to the recipients of the shared information to the online social networking as social surveillance practice in itself. I suggest that online sharing can be viewed as a practice of exchanging more or less personal information, and thus, social networking has the characteristics of other surveillance practices. However, there are notable differences with regard to power relations, reasons for engagement, and the structure of transparency, and I will explore these alterations brought on by this practice of social surveillance.
Social interaction in its many varieties is the dominant Internet activity today, and especially online social networking has grown considerably with Facebook (500 million users as of 20101 driving the development. To distinguish these activities from other types of computer-mediated communication, danah boyd and Nicole Ellison offer this three-fold definition of social network sites (SNS):
We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site. (boyd and Ellison 2007)
According to this definition, a SNS includes making visible a network of friends to this very network and possibly to people outside the network. The level of transparency of the network depends on the particular user’s privacy settings, which can be more or less determined by the design of the SNS. Sharing your life with others on the web can also be about meeting strangers; however, studies show that most people rather develop and maintain the same social relations online as well as offline (Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe 2007; Lenhart and Madden 2007). Observing SNSs today and considering the rise of Twitter, Foursquare, and the News Feed-feature in Facebook, it seems that the importance of the first point of the definition (the profile) has diminished compared to the flow of a “news stream”, “tweets”, or “check-ins”.
An important consequence of this behaviour is that the alleged gap between offline and online worlds has been bridged. Previous discourses about the Internet have described it as a transcendent space (for example “cyberspace”, “information highway”, or “global village”) with its own conventions, structure, types of activities, and even as a separate moral universe. Opposed to cyberspace was the “real world”, that is, our physical, mundane reality. These two supposedly separate worlds have been woven together; this is especially obvious in connection with our social interactions, which take place in the mixed spaces, i.e., online and offline. In other words, the activities and general social life we experience with our circle of friends take many forms offline and online—sometimes these are performed at the same time with different audiences. These co-online/offline social activities can be observed especially in relation to smartphones, where we can physically be together with (some) friends and simultaneously interact via, e.g., Twitter “tweets”, picture uploads to Flickr, and Foursquare check-ins to our network of online friends, including those physically present with us.
A second significant observation about SNSs compared to other forms of computer-mediated communication has to do with the online persona. The general idea is that profiles should reflect the “real” person, group, project, or organization, i.e., the offline identity of the profile holder. Thus, when we share our social life on the web, our profiles are not supposed to be an alter ego, but rather a more or less accurate representation of ourselves. Facebook even insists that profiles must be personal and use real names,2 whereas Foursquare and Twitter allow for alias names—and the latter for multi-person accounts (e.g., groups, organizations, and projects). Similarly, it is common to use a personalized photo and provide profile information that is grounded in something outside the Internet.
We share information with a number of connections, our online social network, but we also more or less involuntarily share beyond our circle of friends. This is in part a result of the SNS design including privacy options and in part how the user configures these options. The sharing of information beyond the network occurs in numerous ways, including with the service itself, application developers, search engines, and other third-party stakeholders. A wide range of stakeholders will presumably have an interest in detailed information about individuals. Here I will mention two: commercial and government interests.
From a commercial point of view such data are valuable, because they provide insights into customer interests, preferences, and activities. To know what people do, what they want, and what they think makes it much easier to market products. Thus, the insights gained from SNSs can be used to better profile and target consumers. Fuchs (2008), Andrejevic (2007), and others argue that this knowledge is the foundation for corporate exploitation of users.
Further, some government organizations and agencies can have an interest in gaining information about their own citizens and even about foreign organizations and citizens. It is not difficult to understand why governments have an interest in SNSs. To effectively profile and investigate individuals, an organization needs to combine a wide variety of information, including circle of friends, activities, preferences, beliefs, opinions, views—all types of personal information that only a few years ago were very difficult to collect. Here, people themselves publish this kind of information and this makes online social networking appear as a “snoop’s dream” (Marks 2007). The purposes for government interest in this kind of information can range from suspicion of tax fraud to possible involvement in terrorism. This might contribute to what Mark Andrejevic has termed “lateral surveillance” (2007), the process of mixing social, policing, and government technologies and practices, and thus spreading panopticism further.
When we take part in online social networking and when we more or less involuntarily share information beyond our circle of friends, it can have serious consequences. Commercial exploitation, including targeted marketing, can be extremely annoying and privacy invading, and on a societal level it can contribute to social sorting by including or excluding people (Gandy 1993; Lyon 2002). Moreover, to be (wrongly) suspected of terrorism is even more unpleasant, if not dangerous. Accordingly, when our everyday social musings are shared with commercial and government stakeholders, it represents the boundary of free social interaction.
As a result of certain surveillance practices, there can be undesirable or even malicious side effects when we take part in social interactions online (Zimmer 2008). However, my interest here is directed towards another perspective on the possibilities of surveillance. This perspective emphasizes the social, playful, and potentially empowering aspects of surveillance practices, and it is therefore radically different from the dominant ways of understanding the practices, as described above. I have introduced the concept “participatory surveillance” elsewhere as a theoretical framework that allows for this understanding (Albrechtslund 2008).
Many types of surveillance practices can have social, playful, and potentially empowering aspects, but these are especially recognizable in connection with online social networking. When we use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, the basic practice that facilitates social interactions (distributing and collecting information) is—perhaps surprisingly—surveillance. This is certainly a departure from well-known concepts, including Orwell’s iconic Big Brother figure and Bentham’s prison design, Panopticon. However, rather than replacing these ways of thinking about surveillance, I introduce participatory surveillance as an alternative concept, as it is clearly not applicable to all kinds of surveillance practices. Similarly, the Panopticon and Orwellian ways of thinking about surveillance do not adequately help us to better understand all types of surveillance practices—at least they do not exhaust every possible perspective. My aim with this alternative conception is to better explain the reasons and intentions that people might have for taking part in their own surveillance—a practice which is very difficult to meaningfully explain from an Orwellian or Panoptic conception of surveillance. In this way I hope to contribute to a pluralistic approach to surveillance studies that emphasizes the many possible motives, means, ends and conceptions at play.
Participatory surveillance is the kind of practice we take part in voluntarily. The prisoners in the Panopticon also take part in their own surveillance when they internalize the gaze, and the characters in 1984 participate in their “love” for Big Brother; however, there are a number of important differences. The panoptic and Orwellian concepts of participation are both the result of processes of mind control and, thus, cannot be described as voluntary engagements, but rather as a form of forced pseudo-participation. The kind of practices of self-surveillance that are consistent with what is here described as participatory surveillance must be pursued actively and truly voluntarily. Of course, absolute freedom of will—complete, unconditional free choices—are probably not a practical possibility for anyone, as even voluntary choices always have to be made in specific situations. Thus, a number of conditions, expectations, specific circumstances, etc. are always also considered when making a choice. Similarly, free choices might be motivated by other circumstances, expectations, conditions, etc. Still, the practice of online sharing remains highly voluntary by comparison.
As a consequence, the gaze plays a different role in the context of participatory surveillance. To be exposed to the gaze is not necessarily equal to being vulnerable. In the Panopticon, the gaze of the guards is a powerful way to discipline the prisoners, and in 1984, the gaze of Big Brother is an almost destructive force that transforms people into victims. In connection with practices of participatory surveillance, visibility is not associated with vulnerability or victimization. Rather, being visible is an important part of these practices, which transforms the gaze into something desirable. This also leads to significant changes in how we can understand the power relations of surveillance practices. Instead of being intimidating and potentially damaging, certain surveillance practices demonstrate that it can be empowering to be on the receiving end of the gaze. Accordingly, the power relation between watcher and watched is not always a one-way connection that puts the former in control; some surveillance practices empower the watched and, thus, sometimes reverse the panoptic and Orwellian understanding of gaze and power.
To share a location with other people is more than simply conveying geographical information. Embedded in our locations is partial information about activities, interests, opinions, patterns of movement, and much more. In the context of online social networking these types of information are already available, but location sharing on the one hand works as a “handle” that holds together manifold types of information, and on the other hand expands and enriches this information. In the following I begin with an example—“a day in the life”—to illustrate how location sharing combines with online social networking. In the second subsection I discuss the idea of “mixed places”, i.e., the necessary connection between physical locations and shared locations in the context of online social networking. The final subsection explores how the process of social interaction and location sharing can be better understood as a mapping process that involves two aspects of mastering.
An example can illustrate how location sharing combined with online social networking adds more information to the picture than the sum of its parts. Someone named Anders uses Foursquare to check in to a venue called “IMV Helsingforsgade 14 Wiener Building” most weekdays sometime between 9:11 and 9:18 in the morning. This particular venue is located in Aarhus, Denmark. About one and half hours earlier he checked into a venue called “Skorping station”, which is at a railroad station ca. 80 km north of Aarhus. Sometime during the morning, he responds to a few tweets as well as posting one himself saying “working on book chapter”. This tweet is automatically imported into Facebook and broadcast on his wall and, thus, included in his network’s news feed (depending on individual settings). This status update—which it is called here—spurs a few comments that lead to a brief discussion about location sharing. At about 11:30 most weekdays, he uses Foursquare to check in to the venue “INCUBA Science Park Katrinebjerg”. He is back at IMV Helsingforsgade 14 Wiener Building about 30 minutes later. In the afternoon, at about 16:30, he is back at Skorping station, and for the rest of the day there are no other Foursquare check-ins, but a few Twitter tweets as well as occasional comments on Facebook posts by people in his network.
Anders is the “mayor” of several venues, including Skorping station and IMV Helsingforsgade 14 Wiener Building. He holds a number of Foursquare badges, including “Bender”, “Overshare”, and “Babysitter”. Because he is the mayor of more than ten venues (currently 17 venues), he also holds the “Supermayor” badge. Some of his mayorships include “Rebild Bakker”, “Rold Skov”, “Troldehaven”, and “Legepladsen, Stentoften”. All of these venues have few or even no check-ins by other people and, looking at a map, most of them are located in a specific rural area. Also, the dominant categories of these venues are park, playground, and train station. However, Anders is also mayor of the urban-located venue IMV Helsingforsgade 14 Wiener Building, and, here, a number of other people also check-in frequently, most of whom are in Anders’ network. The venue is located at the Department of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University.
The activities described above could represent a typical day for some people. Although this person is actually not very active with regard to sharing information, there are plenty of data for people in his network—and in part outside of it as well—to make some interpretations and assumptions. One interpretation is that Anders lives in a rural area about 80 km north of Aarhus, and most weekdays he commutes by train to Aarhus where he works at the Department of Information and Media Studies. He is employed in a scientific position that involves writing scholarly manuscripts, and he therefore is likely to hold a PhD degree. There must be a cantina that serves lunch in the nearby INCUBA Science Park Kartrinebjerg. Our example person is probably a father to at least one young child, as he often checks into a playground (the Playground badge is awarded for 10+ check-ins at playgrounds).
The mundane repetition of some of these activities at specific times of the day and at specific locations hints of certain routines and patterns of movement. Also, the general picture of activities might indicate to some that Anders is not among the most experienced users of social media. However, activities that are not done as well as tweets and posts not made nuance and expand this knowledge. The rarity of check-ins in the evening might emphasize partly that Anders has young children and is therefore simply at home most evenings, and partly that he lives in a rural area with perhaps few places to go at night. Moreover, the absence of check-ins, tweets, and posts during the night indicate a pattern of sleep between roughly 23:00 and 7:00. Most weekdays Anders checks in at the train station and his assumed workplace (Aarhus University), but one or two days a week he does not. However, the tweeting and posting indicate that he is working, so it can be assumed that he works at home some days.
What is constructed through location sharing and online social networking is not a snapshot of someone’s life; rather it is a continually unfolding narrative where repetitive activities over a time span form a multifaceted picture. It is the context of activities that makes it possible to form this picture through interpretation, and this is, of course, dependent on how people are related to Anders in the network. For some people the mundane activities described above will just confirm what they already know, and for others the activities will expand knowledge about this person—perhaps as missing pieces that complete the puzzle.
As discussed in section 9.2.1 the online and offline worlds seem to seamlessly mix into a whole social world. Similarly, location sharing makes it difficult to uphold a sharp division between locations in the physical space and “places” (Facebook) or “venues” (Foursquare) in online social networking.3
Locations in online social networking are necessarily tied to a physical location as representations of these. The Foursquare venues mentioned above—e.g., IMV Helsingforsgade 14 Wiener Building, Legepladsen, Stentoften, Troldehaven, INCUBA Science Park Kartrinebjerg—these all have references in physical space. However, this does not mean that these venues are only meaningful as a reference to physical space. Often the opposite is the case, and the relation between digital and physical locations is comparable to the relation between geotagged objects and physical locations (de Lange 2009). Geotagged objects add meaning to the physical world, as “physical locations are often visited, defined, and experienced on the basis of geotags and digital metadata” (de Lange 2009, 60). When we share locations online, these places or venues mix with physical locations, and, together, they form augmented locations that can be accessed by our social networks. Comments, suggestions, photos, etc. can augment and thus reconfigure these locations, and these layers of meaning change in accordance with relations in the social networks.
If we revisit the example above we can observe this mixing of places. For example, the Foursquare venue IMV Helsingforsgade 14 Wiener Building is connected to a particular physical location with the address Helsingforsgade 14, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark, and, as mentioned in above, this address is home to the Department of Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University. When Anders arrives at this venue, his Foursquare network is notified, and in addition to the check-in, he can share information, opinions, or “tips” (Foursquare) with his network. One of Anders’ colleagues has tagged the venue with the comment “Damn good coffee!”—which has been acknowledged by a number of other visitors to this place.4 This simple, knowing statement carries meaning for the network and contributes to a distributed experience of the place, as the stream of shared information reach people regardless of where they are located in physical space. Moreover, the activity itself adds to the shared knowledge in the network about the whereabouts of different people, e.g., who are at the office, who are away for conferences or other external activities, and who are working from home. This is of course not an absolute source of information, as people might not actually check-in even though they are (occasionally) sharing their locations; however, the insight into people’s sharing habits contribute to a more precise picture: For example, is Anders in the habit of checking in at IMV Helsingforsgade 14 Wiener Building whenever he is at the office, which means that people in his network can expect to find him at the department when he checks in to Foursquare.
To better understand what location means to online sharing, it can be useful to view it as a mapping practice. When we share information about activities and locations, this is also a process of mapping parts of our social life. These activities and locations represent a twofold way of mastering: first, as a reduction of complexity where the different events are fitted into a panorama or seemingly “full picture” of the social life. Second, this mapping process is not private, but rather shared with the network, and this aspect can allow for empowerment. The process of mapping is not necessarily limited to any specific SNS, as available information across social platforms is aggregated. Locations, comments, tweets, posts, etc. are documented and archived and, as such, form a history of activities. In a literal sense the mapping is a way to create an overview, which is at the same time a mastering of the social life.
Mapping as mastering is a well-known cultural practice in human history, and as such, location sharing can be compared to the nineteenth-century concept of the panorama where painters strived to give exhausting representations of a given subject (often landscapes or historical events) by creating a wide, all-encompassing view for the audience. Roland Barthes (1997) interprets the panorama as a way of making the world intelligible as part of a pleasurable fantasy of a demystifying overview. It is pleasurable because it structures the world in a certain way that reduces diversity and replaces it with meaning, and the mastering is a fantasy because the panoramic mapping cannot be exhaustive. This can be observed when we consider the aggregated information from SNSs, e.g., the example involving Anders. Although the collected information gives insight into activities, behaviours, interests, and patterns of movement, it is far from a full picture of this person. This is the case even though the collection of information as a whole (including activities that are not done) gives more insight than the sum of the individual pieces. It is a consequence of the blurry boundaries between online and offline, different types of spaces and places, that subjectivity and social life is distributed and thus impossible to capture in a single, objectifying perspective. However, the pleasurable activity of mapping as mastering might be seen as a strong motivation for the practice of location sharing online.
The mapping does not result in a stilleben, as it is a process where the subjectivity co-shapes the picture. Moreover, the mapping process is not only available to oneself; it is also a sharing process that allows for empowering aspects. When we engage in social interaction online, this is a semi-public process visible to a selected network and perhaps partially visible to the greater Internet-using public. As discussed in section 9.2.2 this more or less broad sharing has a dubious side; however, it also constitutes a way for people to co-construct meaning and identity, as discussed in section 9.2.3. As participants in online social networking, we play a leading role in providing the material that represents us to other people in the network. Compared to for example governmental mapping of citizens (e.g., population register, tax and salary information, address, civil status), social interactions empower people to shape how they appear to others. Mastering as both reduction of complexity and empowerment indicate that the flâneur, i.e., the figure of the turn-of-the-century urban observer, is still relevant for understanding the city, mapping, and mastering. The user of location-based SNSs can be seen as a kind of flâneur employing a certain form of perception of urban space that focuses on finding pleasure in the different layers of meaning while still keeping a distance of cool observation.
Location sharing is an obvious extension of online social networking that offers an opportunity to connect the potentially empowering self-surveillance practices of social life that is especially observable in the city. The ambition of this chapter is not to describe the abstract power structures inherent in the practices of online sharing; rather the point of departure is the subjectivity that takes part in its own surveillance. The reason for this focus is to better understand why people voluntarily engage in such self-surveillance. It is evident that a vast number of people find it attractive to do so and, thus, it becomes interesting to explore and conceptualize this practice. A qualitative, phenomenological approach has been taken here in order to search for the characteristics of the subjective experience and motivation implicated in location sharing and online social networking.
1 http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics (accessed on October 27, 2010).
2 http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=808 (accessed on October 27, 2010).
3 This is not meant as a classification of the words location and place (and venue) as relating to respectively physical space and cyberspace. I use location, place, venue, etc. synonymously, however, as opposed to (physical, cyber and mixed) spaces. Thus, I lean on the classic understanding of place as positioned in space, but without a sharp distinction between types of places and types of spaces.
4 In Foursquare terms the other people have “done the tip”.
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