Americans currently live in a society marked by a vast surveillance dragnet that has continually evolved over time. One such evolution is the conceptualization of lateral surveillance. First, explored by Andrejevic (2005), lateral surveillance describes peer to peer surveillance. Though this is not a new phenomenon, research on lateral surveillance has been limited. Research on lateral surveillance on social media is even more underdeveloped, with the current literature focusing heavily on lateral surveillance on Facebook (Jiow & Morales, 2015; Lukacs and Quan-Haase ,2015, Ivana, 2013; Trottier, 2012). This is problematic given both the heavy presence of social media in our lives and the amount of lateral surveillance content that is posted across the most popular social media platforms. The current study uses an evolved grounded theory approach to address two main study objectives: (1) examine how college students engage in or avoid lateral (peer-to-peer) surveillance, both actively (as the surveillant) and passively (as an observer of lateral surveillance); and (2) understand what motivates college students to engage in lateral surveillance.
This exploratory, qualitative study uses focus groups with college students who report using at least one of the following six social media platforms in the past five years: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, SnapChat, or TikTok. The focus was placed on college students, as they fall into the age demographic of the most active social media users. Drawing on the attitudes and perceptions of 69 Temple University students, across 12 focus groups, a decision-making framework which explains engagement in lateral surveillance was developed.
Findings from this study highlighted the complexities and nuances of both general and lateral surveillance. College students believe surveillance is far reaching and omnipresent. However, they make a variety of distinctions about who engages in surveillance. They agree that the government and corporations are the main surveillors (those who engage in surveillance) in this county and are concerned with the amount of data that each of these entities collects about them. In contrast, they do not always view friends and family members as surveillors, despite them using the same mechanisms, such as tracking, watching, and recording, to engage in surveillance. These findings served as the contextual background under which they engage in lateral surveillance as exhibited by the decision-making framework.
The decision-making framework provides a step-by-step walkthrough of the process that college students go through when deciding to engage in lateral surveillance. Findings related to the framework showed that there are a variety of situations and themes that influence lateral surveillance decision making. However, the actual decision-making process appears to be very quick and initial motivating factors that influenced the decision to engage in lateral surveillance remain consistent when deciding where and with whom to share the content. / Criminal Justice
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/8526 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Williams, Katorah, 0009-0000-8154-068X |
| Contributors | Rege, Aunshul P., Wood, Jennifer, 1971-, Jones, Peter R., Payne, Brian K. |
| Publisher | Temple University. Libraries |
| Source Sets | Temple University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation, Text |
| Rights | IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/8490, Theses and Dissertations |
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