Captured at Birth?
Intimate Surveillance and Digital Legacies
Dr Tama Leaver, Centre for Culture and
Technology
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01.02.2014

Overview.
1. Identity Contexts
2. Shifting Surveillance
3. Negotiating Intimate Surveillance
1 February 2014
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I. Identity Contexts
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(a) The Networked Self / Networked Publics
 Persistance
 Replicability
 Scalability
 Searchability (boyd, 2010)
 + Ownership (Aufderheide, 2010)
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Identity 2.0 (Helmond, 2010)
 In Perpetual Beta
 Networked
 (other) User-generated identity
 Distributed
 Indexed
 Persistent
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Web Presence (Allen, 2010; Leaver, 2010)
 Internet Footprints
 Digital Shadows
 Social Media Rivers
 From “user-generated content” to “Content-generated
users.”
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Shared assumptions of Identity 2.0, the
Networked Self, and Web Presence
 Individual agency is central.
 Presumption that identity should be controlled, curated and
managed by the ‘self’ being presented.
 When agency is not the controlling influence, this is seen
as an issue to be overcome (eg better privacy settings).
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(b) The ‘Real Name’ Web
"Nowadays, however, the anonymity of the [early] internet
and the construction of online personas that do not reflect
offline identities have been reconstructed as 'risk factors' of
internet use … Governments, schools, parents and other
concerned parties now routinely warn against online
imposters, bullying and identity theft, and social network
sites like Facebook or Google+ have policies requiring users
to register with their real names and data, and prevent them
from having more than one account.”
(Zoonen, 2013: 45)
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The Shift to Real Names (nymwars) …
Single database point. All activity connected …
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(c) Parents as initial identity curators …
 Parents/guardians set the initial
parameters of online identity.
 From ultrasounds photos to cute toddler
pics, losing that first tooth etc …
 How do and should young people ‘inherit’
online identities?
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The emergence of such social media platforms as
Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Twitter, Bundlr and
YouTube facilitating the sharing of images has
allowed the wide dissemination of imagery and
information about the unborn in public forums.
Indeed, sharing of the first ultrasound photograph
on social media has become a rite of pregnancy for
many women. (Lupton, 2013, p. 42)
1 February 2014
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Parents: Framing Online Identities?
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II. Shifting Surveillance
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(a) Surveillance Culture
 CCTV, airport scanners, various forms of tracking.
 Government tracking (incl. NSA/Prism etc.).
 Corporate tracking (eg frequent flyers or corporate rewards
cards).
 Social media surveillance, Facebook profiles and shadow
profiles.
 Facial recognition in government, corporate and social
media tracking.
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(b) Sousveillance
 Albrechtslund (2008): “social surveillance” as knowing play.
 E.J. Westlake (2008) goes a step further, arguing that just
because a user’s online performance and activity are being
recorded performances can be entirely false or misleading,
subverting the effectiveness of even top-down surveillance.
 Sousveillance: organised watching of the watchers, such as
organised groups watching Facebook’s practices (Fernabck
2013).
 Sousveillance as "inverse surveillance", countering/reversing
organisational surveillance with wearable devices and individuals
surveying society and each other (Mann, et al, 2002).
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Sousveillance as Material Resistance
CV Dazzle anti-facial recognition makeup http://cvdazzle.com/
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Intimate Surveillance
 Beyond ‘peer surveillance’ which involves active agents
(Andrejevic, 2005) .
 Intimate surveillance involves the purposeful (and
almost always well-intentioned) surveillance of young
people by parents, guardians and friends; the surveyed
have little or no agency to resist themselves.
 For example, the sharing of Facebook photographs of very
young children (no ability to request non-sharing, sometimes
tagged with parent’s names, sometimes their own; hence
shadow profiles) and a realm of related practices.
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III. Negotiating Intimate
Surveillance
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(a) Normalising Infant Surveillance:
Sprout Baby
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Sprout Baby: Sleep
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Sprout Baby: Feeding
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Sprout Baby: Data Security / Terms of Use
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Infants becoming big data …
http://owletcare.com/
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(b)
Instagram:
#ultrasound
(11/11/12)
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Instagram’s growth …
 October 2010: Launch (Apple AppStore).
 December 2010: 1 million users.
 June 2011: 5 million users.
 September 2011: 10 million users.
 April 2012: Android version released.
 September 2012: 100 million users.
 But DOES MOBILE = PRIVATE?
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Privacy: experiential but not technical …
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A plethora of Instagram web clients …
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Geotags …
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Data ownership …
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And now official Instagram web timelines …
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A Social Media Contradiction
“a social media contradiction may arise where users focus
on the social elements – often acts of communication and
sharing which are thought of as ephemeral and in the
moment, comparable to a telephone conversation – while
the companies and corporations creating these apps are
more focused on the media elements, which are
measurable, aggregatable, can be algorithmically analysed
in a variety of potentially valuable ways, and can last
indefinitely.”
(Leaver & Lloyd, 2014)
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(c) Many positive uses of data tracking …
 Tracking and surveillance are not intrinsically negative, and can be
incredibly positive and useful.
 Big data tracking of prematurely born babies, using “software that
captures and processes patient data in real time, tracking 16 different
data streams, such as heart rate, respiration rate, temperature, blood
pressure, and blood oxygen level, which together amount to around
1260 points of data” revealed significant diagnostic correlations,
leading to very real health improvements (Mayer-Schonberger &
̈
Cukier, 2013: 60-61).
 Well-managed and transparent tracking, with informed consent, often
leads to significant improvements across a range of fields.
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Conclusions
 Intimate surveillance normalises a surveillance culture facilitated
by parents, family and friends.
 Better digital literacies about the uses (and potential abuses) of
data shared with apps, platforms and services are needed
(informed uses is the key).
 More transparency is required about how data might be shared
and used in all contexts, especially commercial ones.
 Social norms need to evolve regarding the sharing (and nonsharing) of data and media generated about young people not
just moral panics about data shared by young people.
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References

Albrechtslund, A. (2008). Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance. First Monday, 13(3). Retrieved from
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2142/1949

Allen, M. (2009). Web Presence: Understanding persistent and interlinked content as the basis of identity formation and promotion through the contemporary
Internet, Communication, Creativity and Global Citizenship: Australia and New Zealand Communications Association Annual Conference, Brisbane.

Andrejevic, M. (2005). The Work of Watching One Another: Lateral Surveillance, Risk, and Governance. Surveillance & Society, 2(4), 479–497.

Aufderheide, P. (2010). Copyright, Fair Use, and Social Networks. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network
Sites (pp. 274-303). Routledge.

boyd, danah. (2010). Social Network Sites and Networked Publics: Affordances, Dymanics and Implications. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A Networked Self: Identity,
Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (pp. 39-58). Routledge.

Fernback, J. (2013). Sousveillance: Communities of resistance to the surveillance environment. Telematics and Informatics, 30(1), 11–21.
doi:10.1016/j.tele.2012.03.003

Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Book.

Helmond, A. (2010). Identity 2.0: Constructing identity with cultural software. www.annehelmond.nl, PDF:
http://www.annehelmond.nl/wordpress/wp-content/uploads//2010/01/helmond_identity20_dmiconference.pdf.

Leaver, T. (2010) I tweet therefore I am? Challenges in learning identity by teaching web presence, Teaching and Learning Forum, Edith Cowan University,
Joondalup.

Leaver, T., & Lloyd, C. (2014, Forthcoming). Seeking Transparency in Locative Media. In R. Wilken & G. Goggin (Eds.), Locative Media. London & New York:
Routledge.

Lupton, D. (2013). The Social Worlds of the Unborn. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

Mann, S., Nolan, J., & Wellman, B. (2002). Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments.
Surveillance & Society, 1(3), 331–355.

Mayer-Schonberger, V., & Cukier, K. (2013). Big data: a revolution that will transform how we live, work, and think. Great B: John Murray.
̈

Papacharissi, Z. (2010). Conclusion: A Networked Self. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (pp.
304-318). Routledge.

Westlake, E. J. (2008). Friend Me if You Facebook: Generation Y and Performative Surveillance. TDR: The Drama Review, 52(4), 21–40.

Zoonen, L. van. (2013). From identity to identification: fixating the fragmented self. Media, Culture & Society, 35(1), 44–51. doi:10.1177/0163443712464557
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Questions or Comments?
Or find me later …
www.tamaleaver.net
@tamaleaver
t.leaver@curtin.edu.au
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