Control

News representations are agents of social control, stability, and change (Barak, 1994, p. 32).

THE IMAGINARY SURVEILLANT OF CONTROL

William Bogard describes the imaginary surveillant of control as being a Baudrillard-ian hyperreal space where the belief that surveillant systems are real, powerful, and sophisticated, so they socially organize themselves and their practices accordingly (Gates, 2011, p.6). Therefore, it is important to not just understand what a surveillance system does as much as it is important to understand what people think it does and thus causes social control.

References:

Barak, G. (1994). “Media, society, and criminology.” In G. Barak (Ed.), Media, process, and the social construction of crime: Studies in newsmaking criminology. 3-45. Garland Publishing: New York.

Gates, K A. (2011). Our biometric future: Facial recognition technology and the culture of surveillance. New York: New York UP.