Self-branding normalizes surveillance and produces strategic, edited selves

Evidence

The self-branded, micro-celebrity ideal also invites a normalization of surveillance that threatens individual agency. When social technologies emerged, pundits and journalists hailed YouTube, Flickr, and Wikipedia as a way for individuals to fully participate in the creation and dissemination of culture and knowledge. But what is acceptable to create and disseminate has been increasingly circumscribed by what is safe: that is, what is acceptable to be publicly judged, permanently recorded, and viewed by all manner of people, from one’s family to one’s future employer. Even in contexts that are largely permissive about acceptable behavior, thinking of oneself as a product means sharing strategically rather than honestly. The “edited self”is one constructed with a particular group of people in mind, and one that people expect will be scrutinized. In fact, for decades, the Northern California tech community has celebrated the white, male entrepreneur, and the further one’s public presentation drifts from this normative ideal, the more one is subject to public judgment. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 721

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to earlier chapters’ strategic self-presentation, and to surveillance-studies literature on the panoptic self. — connects to: Ordinary users adopt corporate self-surveillance tactics to manage their social media presence — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 259; The Web enabled individuals to apply corporate branding strategies to themselves — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 466; Self-branding demands maintaining an edited yet authentic self before an audience — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 507 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Social media reframed self-identity as a personal brand selling attention #expands (0.78) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1031
• Unpredictable surveillance produces self-surveillance and disempowerment in its targets #corroborates (0.75) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 482
• Automated surveillance threatens the open-ended self-transformative capacity that defines selfhood #complicates (0.72) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 489
• External surveillance becomes internalized self-discipline through dress choices #exemplifies (0.72)