ABSTRACT
Since Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency's colossal technological and bureaucratic snooping program, awareness has notched up among network publics about new-level threats to privacy posed by government and corporate interests. Discussion has followed about the relationship between privacy and the networked self–how receding privacy is an important force shaping our sense of self. Economies of connective media engage the individual as both a networked laborer and a consumer. Without the active participation of network users—their content choices, linking practices, likes, and other tracked activities–the system would not function. This participation creates a rich source for both commercial and government surveillance. The literature reviewed so far tends to reflect modernist notions of privacy, but it also suggests what is new in the reality of surveillance-based digital environments is the scale of surveillance–our complicity in our own loss of privacy, and the complexity of the workings and uses of surveillance.
