Deviance and Control in Communities with Perfect Surveillance – The Case of Second Life

Abstract

Advanced cybercommunities are communities in which perfect surveillance is possible – software tools allow everything to be observed, recorded, archived, pored over at a later date and acted upon. Hence, one expects that these surveillance technologies ought to be heavily used and effective in controlling deviance in these cybercommunities. Drawing on our research in the cybercommunity Second Life, we observe that surveillance technologies are not heavily used to deal with deviance; instead, it is the power of relationships that form the fabric of social control and the regulation of deviance. This discovery questions the effectiveness of technology as a regulator, both in Second Life and in the real world, as well as evidences the importance of social bond as a mediator of deviance.Key Words: deviance, surveillance technology, cybercommunities, control, social bond

(Always) Playing the Camera: Cyborg Vision and Embodied Surveillance in Digital Games

“…Connections between surveillance studies and game studies have previously explored how game design elements are implemented into surveillance technologies and practices (Benjamin 2019;Koskela and Mäkinen 2015;Mäkinen 2017;Whitson 2015). Others have looked at playful representations of surveillance in popular culture in general (Marx 1996), game community related surveillance such as community management and paratext (Kerr, Paoli, and Keatinge 2014), surveillance of players and streamers (Taylor 2016), and how games and gaming platforms often are constructed as surveillance structures (e.g., Cybulski 2014;Wang, Haines, and Tucker 2011) or presented to the player as surveillance structures (Albrechtslund and Dubbeld 2005). Largely missing from these reports is that the games themselves are treasure troves of surveillance imaginations and practices.…”

Playing at Control: Writing Surveillance in/for Gamified Society

“…The gamified system itself is always wrapped in a network of social forces, influences, and obligations. For example, in Second Life normative behaviours are encouraged through social connections rather than any enactment of the possible total surveillance structure of the virtual environment (Wang, Haines, and Tucker 2011). Echoing Doctorow's constant drive towards open technology and creative commons, Chun (2016: 172) suggests that we should move towards thinking in terms of public rights, ephemerality, and being in public (exposed) without being exploited.…”