Surfing Foucault’s panopticopolis: Facebooking our way to a panoptic world

This article seeks to address the following question: how might analysing the implications of the panopticon for Facebook better inform understanding about social media communication? The panopticon derives from a prison system designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1791. Michel Foucault analyses the panopticon as a form of surveillance that controls human bodies. Facebook, a popular social networking site, allows users to share content with other users. Although the physical bodies of Facebook users might be invisible, they reveal information about their private lives in the content of their posts. I suggest that the users’ willingness to divulge information reframes Facebook from a neutral social networking site to a panopticopolis, an online space that controls users. Facebook functions as a panopticon by exercising control over the physical bodies of users in the real world as a result of surveillance over user content posted in the virtual world.