Blog post 1 by Yip Sum Yu, SID: 10617021

Student name: Yip Sum Yu

SID: 10617021

Andrejevic, M. (2002). The Work of Being Watched: Interactive Media and the Exploitation of Self-Disclosure. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 19(2), 230-248.

Andrejevic criticises the corporate surveillance as a technique to exploit the work of being watched in this book. He suggests that privacy rights are conniving in the very forms of economic monitoring and data gathering which are opposite on the surface. He also recommends that the surveillance facilitated by interactive media must focus on asymmetries of power and control over information technologies and resources.

Indeed, interactive media is growing rapidly and the work of being watched, works. Viewers are monitored so that the advertisements can be more efficiently shown to specific group of customers and not to become a “wasted viewing”. In the same way, we can link to our interests easily, which means we can be satisfied more easily on the internet. For example, the suggested video function on Youtube always show us to new and fascinating videos that we may interested in. It works by recording our browser history and our searching habit.

However, should we be afraid to be watched like this as it is an intrusion upon our privacy? This kind of interactive media is not just recording your browser history on that particular website, but it may be also recording your own photos, videos or other private messages you uploaded on the other websites. Should the monitoring of those interactive media be more transparent? Or should we leave no trace while we are surfing on the internet? Should we unlink different accounts so that different interactive media platforms cannot transfer our private informations? I believe that it would be a big trouble to us all as we are so used to this approach. We register all kinds of new memberships with our personal Facebook accounts, we upload all kinds of private documents to Google drive or iCloud and linked to all our daily accounts. We cannot really protect ourselves from self-disclosure.

Although the relationship between the users and the interactive media must be well protected, there is legitimate concern still, the work of being watched does not leave us, the users, powerless. Interactive media can extract profit by providing us specific needs depend on our viewing patterns. Is it mean that we can maintain the most power of control?