‘One is allowed to show the reality’: The creation of panoptic structures in social media communication

Abstract

This article aims to introduce the notion of panoptic structures as a way of theorizing how people strategically exploit the affordances of digital devices to expose other people's behavior. I argue that Foucault's notion of panopticism becomes relevant in new ways in social life as a consequence of the polymedia repertoires of networked individuals. Central here is the ability to store digital communication and repost it for selected audiences. The data I analyze here were collected from a group of students who had just entered the gymnasium (the Danish equivalent of high school). During the months of multi-sited, online and offline ethnography, a conflict occurred between two groups of students. During this conflict, a repeated activity involved students confronting students from the opposing group with screenshots of their earlier social media activities and doing so in front of larger audiences of other students. On this basis, I argue that a theory of such panoptic practices belongs in the sociolinguistic toolbox. (Panopticism, social media, conflict, polymedia repertoire, audience)*

Texting, teens, and parental challenges in practices of family socialization

“…The ethnographic fieldwork consisted of two interconnected phases-a school phase and a family phase. We began our fieldwork in two high school classes at a Copenhagen high school, carrying out participant observation among a cohort of 59 adolescents (15-18 years old) in class, during the breaks, and on selected social media platforms (Møller, 2023;Staehr & Nørreby, 2021 for details on the school ethnography). There are several reasons why we began our fieldwork in a high school.…”