Broadcast Yourself (At Your Own Risk): Social Media Inhibitions and the Policing of Cyberspace

Abstract Title: Broadcast Yourself (At Your Own Risk): Social Media Inhibitions and the Policing of Cyberspace

With TV shows like To Catch a Predator that reinstitute a cyberspace Foucaultian panopticon in a moral-legal policing act, how is this model of societal policing operating in conjunction with the increasing inhibition and erosion of safety precautions associated with social media interactions? I will specifically look at two realms of traits located in social media in order to address this cultural and societal policing that is increasing in visibility, while simultaneously operating in a seemingly invisible way. The first realm I will address is the fused models of narcissism, self-proclamation, and customization that are located in the contemporary state of social media (i.e. Facebook and Youtube paradigm of broadcasting oneself), as well as the ways in which these models structurally and ideologically breed a sense of identity authenticity and verisimilitude. Secondly, I will look at the the shift in new media regulation to a model of deregulation, by considering David Morley and Kevin Robins’ recognized shift in media and mediated approaches to identity. Simultaneously tracing the practices of corporate deregulation and cross-platform/customization that mark new media evolution, with the shift from network exclusivity to network ubiquity/visibility, will provide a means of understanding how structures of safety are being undermined by legal forces in conjunction with the increase in user inhibition. I will be ultimately raising this discussion in the context of addressing the ruptures of moral-legal policing that take advantage of this erosion of cyber self-regulation in a deregulated media market, in order to trace the societal anxieties associated with the freedom of cultivating a visible self that mark legal policy and cultural/moral code in its infiltration of cyberspace.