According to Media, surveillance and identity: social perspective,Andrejevic (2005) has supported the idea of lateral surveillance (Jansson and Christensen, 2014: 1), and according to Germann Molz, it relates to Alberechtlund's participatory surveillance, "Crawford's (2009) social listening, and Tokunaga's (2011) social surveillance.
It has to do with people using online practices of "watching, tracking, monitoring and following" in order to socialize with friends. The purpose of social media information is for others to look at it. It is "a case of willing participatnts using online netwroking technolgies to watch themselves and each other in a decentralized, non-hierachical system of surveillance" (p. 130).
Lateral surveillance "gestures not only toward the sociable aspects of peer-to-peer surveillance, but also to the was in which these practices foster "the internalization of government strategies and their deployment in the private sphere" (2005: 479)" (p. 131).
According to Trottier (2012), "Users’ ties to their peers are also a means for interpersonal forms of surveillance. Andrejevic (2005) notes that lateral types of surveillance have emerged through a wealth of domestic technologies including search engines, low-cost background reports and nanny cams. Beyond simply being visible, Albrechtslund (2008) contends that the act of sharing information on sites like Facebook can be a deliberate and empowering process for users. While users often confirm these positive outcomes, the acts of watching and being watched are coupled in a way that also augments conventional surveillance practices. Far from levelling the playing field, it is possible that increased scrutiny and visibility among Facebook friends renders everyone more visible to institutions like employers and governments" (p. 22).
References:
Jansson, A.,& Christensen, M. (2014). Media, surveillance and identity: Social perspective. New York: Peter Lang.
Trottier, D. (2012). Social media as surveillance: Rethinking visibility in a converging world. Abingdon: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.