A sociedade dos ecrãs

: entre ver e ser visto

Abstract

Screens are everywhere. In our daily lives, we find ourselves progressively in front of them, and this trend is predicted to escalate. Today, our life seems to be found eminently inside screens, since it is through them that we receive information, access the world and contact other individuals, shaping the way we experience and view the world. Thus, this increasingly permanent and ubiquitous relationship between screen and individual must be thought to have an impact on how society is molded, on individual behaviours and interpersonal relationships. In order to discuss and characterize the ways control and surveillance are made possible by today’s network of screens in our screened society, we will refer to Foucault’s disciplinary societies and Deleuze’s control societies. In the same line of thought, we shall address Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, which we propose still in existence, presently in a digital setup. We will also refer to contemporary approaches on the subject, namely Ganascia’s and Mann’s, who speak of sousveillance and catopticon, reversing the concepts of surveillance and panopticon. Our viewpoint is slightly different, though. We think of surveillance and power through screens as something which circulates across the entire social fabric, operating in every direction and simultaneously, since every individual is currently part of the network and both manages his own screens and is summoned by others. We aim at portraying the intricate and performative relationship between screens and individuals and how the first may influence the life of the latters. This ought to be achieved through a literature analysis of communication sciences, filosophy and sociology authors, both classic and contemporary, and by means of interviews with common users and experts working with screens. Depicting the need to better understand this (hiper)reality which pervades the entire society, it is our objective to contribute to future investigations on the topic. Here, we provide an outlook which we consider appropriate and useful to approach this phenomenon, in a society increasingly concerned about security and information flows, where the act of seeing seems to progressively imply being seen.

Date of Award	Sept 2012
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Fernando Ilharco (Supervisor)