Surveillance Society in a Digitalized World

Introduction

This article examines how digital citizens have been brought under control by the digitalization and globalization of surveillance practices. While classical forms of surveillance are discussed through Jeremy Bentham and Foucault throughout the study, it seems that contemporary forms of surveillance become more fluid with digitalization and contain serious differences. The effects of digitalization on individuals’ lives are only possible when they become digital citizens. Throughout the article, digital citizenship is associated with a person having a digital presence and identity, unlike classical definitions of citizenship. As of this point, it seems that the claims and discussions of the surveillance society have moved to a different stage and taken the phenomenon of digitalization to the center. In order to understand contemporary surveillance practices, digitalization and, more specifically, digital citizenship must be defined. This study primarily aims to show that classic forms of surveillance change with digital citizenship. It then explains the differences, threats and global-scale siege of digital surveillance from classic surveillance. A few questions that the article seeks to answer can be briefly expressed as follows:

• 1-What are the similarities and differences between classic surveillance and digital surveillance?

• 2-Could digital surveillance exist without digital citizenship?

• 3- How far do the boundaries of digital surveillance extend today and where might it lead in the future?

Digital citizenship is defined as the sum of all the qualifications necessary to participate in the online community (Mossberger et al., 2008). Digital citizenship is considered in a broad context throughout the text. Digital citizenship does not mean being a citizen of a state. Digital citizenship means a common citizenship shared by almost everyone at the global level. On the contrary, digital citizenship has a broad context that surrounds every aspect of life, from consumption practices to news reading, from surfing on social media to morning running, from how much time is spent on any site to what meals are liked. It can be thought of as the real identity and preferences of the human being on the virtual stage and all the actions that they take there.

Digital citizenship allows people to recreate their identity and social roles through digital technologies. This possibility is directly proportional to their connection with digital technologies (Isin & Ruppert, 2020). Of course, there are serious differences between the real and the digital, but in the text, these differences are ignored and the subject is examined in terms of surveillance practices. The classic form of surveillance does not include digitalization and draws clear boundaries between the observer and the observed. The observed knows that he is being watched and is forced to accept it, although he willingly does not accept it. However, over time, especially with the presence of digitalization, there is a serious transformation in surveillance forms and now people are followed and recorded with their digital identities to their most intimate moments. While old forms of surveillance obtain information under certain conditions, the time and space limits of surveillance disappear with digital surveillance.

Although the surveillance society emerged in a certain geography in a certain period of history, today it has a global nature. The panopticon, the classical form of surveillance, was not easy to globalize due to its material limitations. However, it is possible to say that with the increase of digitalization and digital citizenship, all kinds of time and space limits have been exceeded. The fact that almost every place in the world and every person can be accessed through digital tools is associated with the digital possibilities of surveillance. Therefore, digital surveillance, which trivializes time and space, has a global nature by its structure.

People no longer need to be taken under control in one place or restricted, to be followed. On the contrary, the more action they take as digital citizens, the more and more easily they can be followed. Digital surveillance takes all kinds of phenomena to a traceable level by processing through quantitative data. In order to explain all these discussions, firstly the concept of digital citizenship will be explained and then the logic of surveillance will be discussed in its historical process. Along with the changing nature of surveillance through old/classic and new/digital forms, some predictions will be made about what might happen in the future.