I spy with my little eye…

Surveillance can defined as the process of monitoring the behavior of people or processes within organized systems. This is to ensure people conform to the expected or desired norms for security or social control. The Panopticon or the “All Seeing Eye” was a famous form of surveillance designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of this design was to allow the guard to watch over the prisoners while the prisoners were not able to know whether they were being watched or not. This omnipresent sense of constantly being watched caused the prisoners to internalize that process of control exerted by the guards and thereby motivating them to behave themselves.
What does my topic of Facebook have to do with surveillance? Oh you’d be surprised. The day I realized that I should be careful of what I post on Facebook and the people I allow to be my friends went something like this…

Wakes up extremely hung over from partying all night looks at the clock and firmly resolves that 9:15 is a far too un-godly hour to have to be at work. Calls manager claiming to have eaten something bad the night before and couldn’t make it in to work.
Me being naïve had added my manager as a “Facebook friend” when the friend request came up. Little did I know that it would be her way of keeping an eye on her employees.

Next day at work…
Manager: Hey Nicole Feeling Better?
Me: Much thank you.
Manager: You had quite the night on Friday didn’t you?
Me: What do you mean? (Feigns innocence of course)
Manager: Those were quite the pictures of you partying with your friends. Who was that boy you were sitting on? He doesn’t look like your boyfriend.

Oh snap.
This is the moment I realized how valuable privacy blocks could be, and how easily people could monitor your behavior over things like Facebook. We put pictures up of ourselves doing amazingly stupid and potentially illegal things – how many of you readers can say that they have pictures of yourself drinking in public and completely smashed with friends, or even smoking a hookah? The last one still amazes me considering the consumption of illegal drugs is well, illegal, yet we post it on Facebook for the world to see.
During my high school years, some teachers even went as far as to suspend some students on the basis of finding drunken photos of teeny boppers or “I hate (insert teacher’s name here)” groups. I also read an article that workplaces and schools screen potential applicants via Facebook to see what kind of potential employees/students they would be.
What we expect to be private domains that only our friends can see and laugh at, is really an open arena for the world to gape into from all sides. So next time you want to post those “hilarious frat party photos”, stop and think about who just might be watching you.

Facebook - The invention or downfall of the perfect identity

As vain creatures by nature, most of us have created Facebook accounts – our very own little online shrines dedicated to whom else, but ourselves. Within these cyber walls, we have established our own domains illustrating all sorts of colorful aspects of our lives such as what networks we belong to, which “friends” we associate ourselves with, photos, interests, hobbies, music tastes… Theoretically, Facebook sounds like the perfect place to invent an ideal identity for ourselves, where we can alter reality to conform to what we think our “online friends” would want to hear about and see. We can post our most visually appealing pictures of ourselves with carefully selected poses, candid moments out with friends, or adorable pictures with our boyfriend/girlfriend that let the world know that we’re “young and in love”. With all these applications, it really does seem that we can create these ideal identities within our Facebook accounts. However for some, there is only so much you can bend reality. There are a limited amount of “cool” photos of you and your friends having a good time if you rarely go out with friends, and there are a limited amount of people you can add before you run out of social connections (an no it’s not cool to add all of your friend’s friends just because you want more “internet friends”). There is this one girl who added me on Facebook, and she is my prime example of a person who tried too hard to make the “perfect” Facebook page for everyone to view. She is a nice girl as far as I can tell but she constantly posts pictures of herself, BY herself. In her haste to let everyone know that she has a life and gets out a lot, I don’t think she realized that in order to make herself seem popular, she needs friends in the pictures with her, as opposed to the “camera held at arms-length” making kissy faces photos that became the trend in all of her albums. She also seems to own what seems to be every application known to Facebooker-kind in an attempt to connect to people. Unfortunately for the girl, people took advantage of her profile and used it as a place to mock her instead of admiring her faux perfect life. I suppose even with the limitless opportunities presented by the internet and social software, there is still the proverbial wall to be hit when creating your perfect identity.

Assignment ZERO revisited

Hi I'm Nicole! I AM CANADIAN! And was born and raised in Vancouver. I am in the CultureNet program and am on my second semester of my first year. I am taking CMNS 253 because it is a required course for my program. I also love the people in the class and the teacher... (Do I get extra points for sucking up?) I hope to get an A+ this time around :) And learn about more interesting theories and communication models - I enjoyed the advertising last year will you teach us more?I chose Facebook for my social software because it has become such an integral part of networking, locally and internationally. What better communication model to choose than one that lets you communicate to the entire world! ^.^ I'm excited for this course and look forward to Jessie's remarks throughout the term - though the no laptop policy is sad :( Care to change it?As for potential names? I can't access your profile it says I'm not part of the group sorry!How about Edward like the sexy vampire from the Twilight book series? Just kidding. Sort of…Okay Enjoy reading this entry - I’m sure you'll be the only one :)

Assignment 0

Do i actually have to write something here Ted or is it just a test test test...