A History of Mass Communications: The Advent of Gang Stalking, Cyber Misbehavior, Electronic Surveillance, and Targeted Assaults
Mass communication in the post-World War II era allowed for communication research and with it the evolving and advancing development of new technologically advancing ways with which humans began to mass communicate with each other. This evolution ultimately affected United States’ citizens on various levels. Dissemination of information reaching greater distances post-World War II era has evolved today into new models of “communication” being utilized even without the spoken word in what has now become known as “a surveillance state.” This level of communication encompasses a new term called cyberspace and with this new development of spatial relationships a new form of “clandestine communication” has also evolved. One that has been placed in the mythical symbolic imaginary realm of “invisibility.” The same imaginary that is used in symbolic verse and poem which hides the author’s true meaning thru symbolism and metaphor, and is also a canvas upon which young minds are shaped through the Oedipal experience. These imaginary symbols have been theorized by Sigmund Freud in his castration complex and in his development of the branch of study known as psychoanalysis we have come to understand these symbolizations emanating from the primal scene. It is also embodying the branch of philosophy known as the phenomenology of spirit through lordship and bondage in the Master-Slave dialectic.
Just as we can map the location of mass communication’s adoption, adaption, reception, and rejection in the historical-cultural narrative, so too we can shed light on the new globalized field of advancing mass communication and surveillance that sets up the structures of power, and resistance to that power, that mark and shape social control. And with these new forms of mass communication, we have the terms cyberspace and mass surveillance. Begging the question has the old term mass communication become outdated? We can show how new forms of communication (cyberspace and mass surveillance) carries with it the residuals of the World War II hegemony and we can argue for greater awareness, policing, and policies to defend against it in order to better safeguard human lives, human dignity, and human rights.
A Concept in Crisis
Misleading truths that obscure the real nature of electronic targeting, electronic harassment, electronic assaults, and electronic torture compound the misunderstandings surrounding the phenomenon. An academic paper entitle The Essence of Rape by Joanne Conaghan published in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (2019) states, “…if perceptions of rape vary so extensively, how can it properly signify a shared understanding around which public debate may be conducted?” The same concept in crisis also exists with the phenomenon known as gang stalking, electronic targeting, and electronic targeted assaults and torture.
Peter Simonson, Junya Morooka, Bingjuan Xiong, and Nathan Bedsole (2019) asked the question: does the term mass communication still name an important, albeit changed, type of mediated communication? Is it pliable enough term to warrant reconceptualization for the current media environment? Should we discard it and adopt a new term for a new era? Originally, mass communication was a term to describe the process in which advertisers communicated to their audiences, a way politicians addressed the public over major television networks, a way news journalist addressed social injustices, but never has it, up till now, described how individual citizens by themselves address or target other citizens with assault, harassment, and even torture. This clandestine mode of hidden language in cyberspace and mass surveillance, models a form of communication that carries out a new way to communicate violence to others through communication and mass communication technologies.
One of the components of the new form of mass communications is cyber-attacks, and lateral surveillance by neighbors, spouses, relatives, friends, and even employers. Lateral surveillance utilizing cyberstalking (cyber misbehavior), electronic assaults, electronic harassment, and even electronic torture of individuals have given an avenue of expression for behavioralists and psychoanalysts to understand and interpret the social world of a very dark and malevolent social force. Surrounding this dark and malevolent social force are historically contingent, rhetorical condensations of aspirations and ideologies that belong to the World War II German era. The symbolic boundary markers that separate positions of power between majority and minority (marginalized) groups.
In the paper, Who’s Watching Whom? A Study of Interactive Technology and Surveillance states:
“Like Poster (1990), Oscar Gandy suggests that information technology and the growth of databases create asymmetrical monitoring of behavior. Drawing on Bentham’s concept of the panopticon (Foucault, 1977), Gandy (1993) demonstrates how information technology facilitates the surveillance by an unseen corporate and bureaucratic observer who can not only commodify the personal information of those observed but also use such information to inform practices of social control and discrimination. Such information technology “involves the collection, processing, and sharing of information about individuals and groups that are generated through their daily lives as citizens, employees, and consumers and is used to coordinate and control their access to the goods and services that define life in the modern capitalist economy” (Gandy, 1993, p. 3). Thus, the monitoring of individuals through information technology allows for people and groups to be sorted into categories based on their presumed economic or political value and those deemed more and less valuable may be given differing economic and political opportunities.”
“Inherent to the definition of surveillance is the power or influence over others. Thus, the monitoring of individuals through information technology allows for people and groups to be sorted into categories based on their presumed economic or political value and those deemed more and less valuable may be given differing economic and political opportunities. Information can also be commoditized and potentially used for discriminatory activities (Gandy, 1993; Humphreys, 2011).”
Originally Michel Foucault (1977) used the term panopticon to refer to the birth of penitentiaries and prisons with which to house, watch, discipline, and punish criminals as created by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. However, Oscar Gandy (1993) demonstrates how information technology and interactive social media facilitate the surveillance of individuals by unseen corporate and bureaucratic observers who can not only commodify the personal information of those observed but also use such information to inform practices of social control and discrimination. Hence, giving new meaning to “the birth of the prison” when your very own personal information is the thing that confines you and when one cannot control what information about oneself others know, one may be open to surveillance and discrimination by others.
There are three (3) types of surveillance to consider:
First, Voluntary Panopticon refers to the voluntary submission to corporate surveillance or what Whitaker (1999) calls the “participatory panopticon.” A voluntary or “participatory” panopticon differs from older systems of surveillance in that it is consensual (Whitaker, 1999). People willingly participate in the monitoring of their own behavior. The voluntary panopticon is based on a consumer society where information technology allows for the decentered surveillance of consumptive behavior. People willingly participate in such monitoring because they believe it is of benefit to them.
Second, Lateral Surveillance is the asymmetrical, nontransparent monitoring of citizens by one another (Andrejevic, 2006). With the advent of the Internet and interactive media, people have similar technological capabilities previously held exclusively by corporate and state entities. As such, citizens can monitor other citizens’ behavior through nonreciprocal forms of watching. Every day people can search for information about other citizens without their knowledge or permission.
Third, the last kind of surveillance is Self-Surveillance. Meyrowitz (2007) defines self-surveillance as “the ways in which people record themselves (or invite others to do so) for potential replaying in other times and places” (p. 1). Technologies such as video cameras and camera phones allow people to capture aspects of their behavior, which can fundamentally change one’s understanding of that behavior or event. The recorded behavior has power over the lived experience because exposure to the recorded behavior can replace or alter one’s understanding of the event based on one’s lived experience of it. Therefore, power implicitly functions within Meyrowitz’s concept of self-surveillance insomuch as new interactive technologies, such as mobile social networks, allow users to “see” things about their behaviors they previously could not perceive and changes their understanding of their own tendencies and behavior.
With the development of Smartphones phones (Android technology), social media sites, and social networking websites provide a service to the user and allows for interactive connection with others even introducing them to new websites and platforms. These social networking sites request permission from the user to access user location as well as other personal information. Facebook allows for the user to announce and broadcast, to not only their inner circle of friends but to a viewing public, the information that one has just checked in to a hotel, the name of the hotel, and the city and state where the hotel is located. Android phones also provide a “Find My Device” feature in which a person’s “real-time” location can be tracked not only by the mobile carrier but the government as well. Since the government invented the Internet, how one’s personal information is managed is part of the technology of intelligence gathering. All of this information will be fed into how it can be of service, ultimately to bureaucratic agencies and corporations.
After Bill Gates lowered the price of home personal computers and infiltrated homes with PCs where the vast majority of households could connect to the Internet, the next step in advancing technology was to streamline it so as to achieve a cyberspace panopticon. With the development of satellite, Internet technology, and global positioning systems the planet Earth has now become Jeremy Bentham’s new panopticon. Where we used to have radio and television as two separate units, we now have one handheld device (Android technology/Android cell phones) that combines them both. Our future will be no different. Technology is seeking to streamline and connect us in ways that will make us reside in one massive global surveillance prison. And if you want to use this technology, you’ll have to sacrifice your data and your personal information (including private thoughts) in order to play.
Google Play Services grants permission to Android Systems to access applications on your cell phone like body sensors, calendar, camera phone, contacts, microphone (for eavesdropping), phone, text messages, and storage. The text-to-speech application also allows for a new window in which surveillance software can be installed to eavesdrop on individuals thereby breaching their privacy. In fact, much like the CIA, private citizens can be gifted a surveillance device by someone as a way for them to be monitored, listened to, and to record their behavior. You can do this with a cell phone, a laptop, and other Internet interactive devices as a birthday, anniversary, or graduation gift. New advancing technological innovations such as the Echo have allowed for lateral surveillance as a form of asymmetrical surveillance that is a nontransparent and nonreciprocal form of watching that can be done by your neighbor, spouse, parents, and even employers.
Part of the power of surveillance is that people whose personal data are collected or observed may not know when or if they are being watched. This is how life in a modern capitalist economy is becoming known and lived through experience where information processing is used to control and coordinate citizen’s access to the goods and services that define life. It is also being used to control and direct human behavior. The most important aspect of this point is that it allows those who control the databases (often corporate or government entities) to know more about the individuals than they know about themselves. This coupling of intelligence gathering highlights behavioral and cognitive tendencies which corporate and government agencies can evaluate and discriminate against and because the use of these gifted technologies in combination with their use of social networking platforms can lead to decreased privacy because people do not have control over their personal information. The exchange is thus, people disclose personal information in exchange for use of a technological commodity, the gifted device, and/or service benefit from an online provider. This is how power has historically operated within society and it is how the majority (those with power and money) monopolizes marginalized groups (those without power and money) through manipulations and exploitations.
Gangstalking, cyber misbehavior, electronic targeting, electronic warfare were the inevitable evolution of mass communication and man’s struggle with the psychic forces that control him. From man’s primal animal aggression in the hunt-and-kill pattern where the better hunter and his family survived and reproduced. However, the study of violence among animals will leave us no wiser about human aggression. Man is surely alone in the animal kingdom in his appetite for total destruction of objects animate and inanimate. Human aggression is always in danger of running rampant in an insatiable and uncontrollable drive toward obliteration, making it possible for billions of people throughout the entire known history of the human species to be ready, at the drop of a hat, to kill unknown people and be killed by them. The neurotic aggression of man and his wars is driven by confused motivations often directed toward a fantasized enemy or an imaginary threat. It is also infused with existential guilt, which can give rise to more and more violence (Holmes, 2013).
Sources:
Andrejevic, M. (2006). The discipline of watching: Detection, risk, and lateral surveillance. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 23, 391–407.
Conaghan, J. (2019). The Essence of Rape. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 39(1),
Foucault, Michel. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York. Pantheon Books.
Gandy, O.H., Jr. (1993). The panoptic sort: A political economy of personal information. Boulder, CO. Westview Press.
Holmes, Lucy. (2013). Wrestling with Destiny: The promise of psychoanalysis. New York. Routledge; Taylor & Francis
Humphreys, L. (2011). Who’s Watching Whom? A Study of Interactive Technology and Surveillance. Journal of Communication, 61(4), This paper offers one of the most comprehensive reference listings to look toward when investigating the phenomenon of gang stalking and electronic targeting.
Meyrowitz, J. (2007). Watching us being watched: State, corporate, and citizen surveillance. Paper presented at the symposium “The End of Television? Its Impact on the World (So Far).” Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Poster, M. (1990). The mode of information: Poststructuralism and social construct. Chicago, Illinois. University of Chicago Press.
Simonson, P., Morooka, J., Xiong, B., & Bedsole, N. (2019). The Beginnings of Mass Communication: A Transnational History. Journal of Communication, 69(5),
Whitaker, R. (1999). The end of privacy: How total surveillance is becoming a reality. New York. New Press.
