#MODESTY
A study on the experiences of social media surveillance among female Dutch-Moroccan students in higher education
Emma Elisabeth van der Meulen
s1756338 24-06-2016
Supervisor: Dr. W. Boender Second reader: Dr. C. Strava
Acknowledgments
This thesis is the result of innumerable interactions with people online and offline, and is dedicated to all who took time to share their thoughts and inspired me to write something I am very proud of.
I would like to thank the following individuals, without whom all of this would not exists:
Welmoet Boender, my advisor, for keeping my thoughts structured and enthusiasm about the
topic.
The students interviewed for this study, whom I promised not to mention their real names.
Thank you for your stories, fears, and excitements about social media, and life in general. I am looking forward to meet a few of you in Egypt this summer.
Harmien and Melchior, who never lost their trust in me, even when I forgot to save a chapter
and had to retype 3000 words.
Camiel, who made a very wise decision to move to Switzerland during the writing-phase of
this thesis. Thank you for keeping me sane.
Peperwortel, the best restaurant in Amsterdam where I work in the evenings. Thank you for
List of figures
Figure 1. Privacy settings Facebook
Figure 2. Screenshot discussion forum Marokko.nl Figure 3. Screenshot discussion forum Marokko.nl Figure 4. Screenshot discussion forum Marokko.nl Figure 5. Screenshot private conversation ‘Slim-Shady’
Abstract
Recent studies on social media have begun to unravel how these sites pave the way for a new type of surveillance: social media surveillance (Trottier 2012). Compared to conventional understandings of surveillance as top-down and hierarchical, social media surveillance is mutual: users watch and are watched. Most studies on the practice of watching and being watched on social media are based on the experiences of ‘white’ North-American students and tend to overlook the experiences of a more diverse global population. This qualitative study aims to contribute to a broader understanding of social media surveillance, by examining the experiences of fifteen female Dutch-Moroccan students in higher education. Findings from the interviews suggest how the students engage with social media surveillance in ways that represent their personal, cultural and religious values of modesty. This study argues that the students’ emphasis on online modesty can be explained in two-fold: (1) as a general effect of institutionalized disciplinary techniques on social media, and (2), as online pious micro-practices, conceptualized in this study as ‘virtual piety’. In doing so, this study not only contributes to a broader understanding of social media surveillance, but also contributes to studies investigating the way everyday practices are part of the process of becoming a pious Muslim subject (Jouili 2009).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title page I
Acknowledgements II
List of figures III
Abstract IV
1. INTRODUCTION 8
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 12
2.1 Social media 12
2.1.1 Social media as “networked public” 14
2.1.2 Social Media(s)? 15
2.2 Social media as surveillance 16
2.2.1 Social media surveillance 18
2.3. Diverse Digital Worlds 19
3. METHODOLOGY 22
3.1 Sample 22
3.2 Findings respondents 23
3.2.1 Online interviews 23
3.2.2 Offline interviews 26
3.3. Conducting the interviews 27
3.4 Content analysis 28
4. RESULTS 30
4.1 Research question part I: ‘Do female Dutch-Moroccan students in higher 30
education experience social media surveillance?’
4.1.1 Interpersonal surveillance among female Dutch-Moroccan students 31
4.1.1.a. ‘V.I.P.’ surveillance 31
4.1.1.b. ‘FAN’ surveillance 37
4.1.1.c. ‘STAR’ surveillance 41
4.1.2 Suspicion of being watched 43
4.1.2.a. Social Media Horror Stories 43
4.1.2.b. Social Control 45
4.3 Research question part II: ’How does social media surveillance influence the 49
students’ social media behavior?’
4.3.1 Online visibility management 49
4.3.2 Audience Management 50
4.3.2. a. Audience organization: your parents on SnapChat? 50 4.3.2.b. Audience construction: no brothers allowed? 51 4.3.3 Content Management: “no-go’s” and “just smiley-pictures” 52 4.3.4 Interpersonal surveillance and social media behavior 55 4.3.4.a. ‘V.I.P.’: “You just know how to behave” 55
4.3.4.b. ‘FAN’: “You never know” 57
4.3.4.c. ‘STAR’: “Avoid jealousy!” 57
4.3.5 Suspected surveillance: ‘better safe then sorry’ 58
4.3.6 Conclusion II 58
4.3.7 Control group 59
5. DISCUSSION: The ‘Islamic-ness’ of not sharing bikini-pictures. 60 5.1 Restatement research questions and key findings 61 5.2 Findings control group: are we all disciplined? 62
5.3 Social media as Disciplinary institution 63
5.3.1.a. Social media and hierarchical observation 64
5.3.1.b. Social media and normalizing judgment 65
5.3.1.c. Social media and examination 66
5.4 Challenging the sharing-norm by inhabiting the religious norm 67
5.5 Online piety: how not to think 68
5.6 ‘Virtual Piety’: a brief introduction 69
5.6.1 ‘Virtual piety’: online pious micro-practice 70
5.6.1.a. ‘Virtual piety’ as bodily practice 70
5.6.1.b. ‘Virtual piety’ as collective practice 73
5.6.1.c. ‘Virtual piety’ as resistance 74
5.6.2 ‘Virtual Piety’: a struggle of the everyday? 76 5.6.3 ‘Virtual Piety’: performing and over-performing 78
5.7 Conclusion III 80
6. CONCLUSION 81
6.1 Summary 81
6.3 Limitations 82
6.4 Further research 83
6.5 Incidental findings 84
Appendix A – Social Media Jargon 85
Appendix B – Personal social media account 86
Appendix C - Respondents 87
Bibliography 88
Do you know who looks at your Facebook profile? Who scrolls through your Instagram account or LinkedIn page? Considering the 3 billion people who use social media1 on a daily
basis, you probably have no idea2. While writing this thesis, I uploaded 2 new profile pictures
on Facebook and uploaded 25 pictures on Instagram. As I have a public account, what I
share3 on social media can be seen by all 3 billion users. Besides being an active producer of
content, I was an even more active watcher of content. Facebook pictures, Instagram stories, SnapChat videos from friends, friends of friends, and unknown others; anything and anyone could have been watched by me. In the meantime, my profile picture received 89 ‘likes’, 22 friends ‘commented’ on my Instagram posts and 3 friends ‘shared’ personalized birthday videos on my Facebook-‘wall’: friendly reminders that I am watched as well4.
This thesis is about watching and being watched on social media. Although much research has been conducted on the way social media has revolutionized the life of many people, academics have only just begun to unravel the way the everyday practice of spying, stalking, monitoring or watching social media content gives rise to a new type of surveillance, referred to as lateral surveillance (Andrejevic 2005), social searching (Ellison, Lampe and Steindfield 2007), participatory surveillance (Albrechtslund 2008), social
surveillance (Joinson 2008; Tokunaga 2011; Marwick 2012), or, as used in this study, social media surveillance (Trottier 2012).
Social media surveillance differs from conventional understandings of surveillance as “hierarchical, dualistic and controlling” (Lyon 2007, 14) in three ways. First, social media surveillance is mutual: watching and being watched are interchangeable (Trottier 2012). Second, social media surveillance is multidimensional: multiple distinct audiences in one’s social network become part of a singular group, a phenomenon referred to as the ‘context-collapse’ (Vitak 2012, 452). Third, power in social media surveillance practices is not something possessed by an authority to “modify, use, consume, or destroy (Foucault 1977, 786)”, but something that flows between users as they have access to the same tools and are able to mutually watch each other (Marwick 2012).
1 Some studies prefer the term “social networking sites” or “new media”. I choose to use the term “social media” throughout the thesis as it is the term the respondents and I use when discussing social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and SnapChat.
2 Digital in 2017: global overview https://wearesocial.com/special-reports/digital-in-2017-global-overview
3 See Appendix A, for social media jargon.
Inspired by the Snowden Leaks5, previous research on social media surveillance is
mainly about the way government agencies and marketing businesses monitor social media to collect data about citizens and individuals ‘of interest’ (Brown 2015). Research suggests the rise of a ‘surveillance society’: a society where state surveillance is a condition of everyday life and becomes normalized by its citizens (Dencik and Calbe, 2017). The normalization of surveillance results in what studies refer to as the so-called ‘privacy-paradox’: people are concerned about their privacy, but due to an awareness of a lack of control on who is watching and desire to connect, people continue to provide a great deal of personal information through social media (Barnes 2006; Taddicken 2014, Hargittai and Marwick 2016). Inspired by Marc Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-owner, who claimed that “privacy is no longer a social norm6”, some studies even explain the lack of online privacy practices as “the
end of privacy (John and Peters 2017).”
Although academic interest in how people deal with watching and being watched on social media is emerging, research is mainly focused on the experiences of ‘white’ North-American students (Horst and Miller 2013). Without neglecting the significance of these findings, this study argues that it is problematic if theoretical insights and understandings of social media surveillance reflects only ‘white’ North American views and experiences, thereby excluding the possibility of more diverse readings (Barendregt 2012). The importance of more diverse readings of social media surveillance has already been addressed by Pearce and Vitak (2015) and Vieweg and Hodges (2016), who focus on experiences of social media surveillance among Azerbaijani and Qatari females. Both authors point at the way cultural norms, like family-honor, influence privacy expectations and the way those women engage with the possibility of being visible to a large online audience (Pearce 2015). Within the Dutch context, a similar conclusion is drawn by Janssen (2012), who, based on an analysis of police cases handled by Haaglanden Police, argues that for some females from the Dutch-Moroccan community, the possibility of being watched on social media asks for strict reputation management in order to avoid gossip that could damage their reputation.
Motivated by the work of Pearce and Vitak, and Vieweg and Hodges, the overall aim of this study is to contribute to a broader understanding of how social media surveillance is 5 In 2013, Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and former contractor for the United States government, copied and leaked classified information from the National Security Agency without authorization, which revealed numerous global surveillance programs (Wiki, 2016).
6 At a conference in 2010, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that as Internet users had become more comfortable sharing more information online with more people, privacy was no longer a social norm (Johnson 2010).
experienced among social media users. More specific, the goal is to move beyond the judicial context analyzed by Janssen (2012), and explore the more everyday experience of social media surveillance among young female second-generation Moroccans in the Netherlands. Therefore, this study’s main research question is: ‘Do female Dutch-Moroccan students in
higher education experience social media surveillance? And, if so, how does this influence their social media behavior?’
In order to answer this question, fifteen semi-structured interviews with female Dutch-Moroccan students in higher education were conducted between October 2016 and January 2017. Respondents were found during weekly Arabic and Qur’an reading lessons I participated in at two Dutch institutes of higher education: Hogeschool van Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. During the interviews, the students were asked about five topics: (1) the positive and negative aspects of social media, (2) online privacy, (3) online content, (4) influence of parents on social media use, and (5) influence of culture and religion on social media behavior. In order to understand the significance of the findings, but to avoid underestimating or overestimating cultural and/or religious particularity, five interviews with higher educated female students of Dutch descent were held in February 2017.
The thesis is structured as follows. In the theoretical framework, insights from the fields of Media Studies and Surveillance Studies are brought together in order to discuss the two main theoretical concepts of this study: social media, and social media surveillance. To narrow down the scope, a strong attention is paid on the social of social media. It is argued that this thesis is written from two main positions. First, social media is defined as content (Miller, 2015) and as a “ networked public” (boyd7 2014). Second, while introducing the
concept social media surveillance (Trottier 2012), a middle-ground approach towards surveillance practices on social media is used, as it both can be empowering (Albrechtslund 2008) and determining (Andrejevic 2005).
In chapter three, the main method of data collecting is discussed. Strong attention is paid on how data for this study is collected in two ‘worlds’: online and offline. With Carmen Becker’s online fieldwork report ‘Ervaren en ervaren worden (2012)8’ as a point of reference,
the main difficulties of online research are outlined, and it is discussed why most data was collected in offline settings.
In chapter four, while following the structure of the main research question, the results of the fifteen semi-structured interviews are outlined. In the first part, the students’ actual 7 She prefers to decapitalize her name.
experiences of social media surveillance are divided into three subcategories, which I labelled as ‘V.I.P.’ (relatives), ‘FAN’ (unknown others) or ‘STAR’ (watching others) surveillance9. The
students’ suspicion of being watched is outlined by elaborating upon two influencing factors: ‘Social Media Horror Stories’, and the mechanism of social control within the Dutch-Moroccan society. In the second part, the influence of both an experience of social media surveillance and a suspicion of being watched on the students’ social media behavior is outlined. This is done by splitting the students’ online visibility management into two: audience management, and content management. Then, the way the students’ online visibility management was influenced by the previously introduced experiences of ‘V.I.P.’, ‘FAN’, ‘STAR’ and suspected surveillance is discussed. Findings from the control group interviews are outlined in the concluding paragraph.
In chapter five, the significance of the key findings is discussed in two ways. Motivated by the strong resemblances between the findings from control group interviews and finding from the interviews with the Dutch-Moroccan students, the study’s key findings are position within an Foucauldian framework of disciplinary power (1977). This suggest how the students’ suspicion of being watched, and interrelated efforts to represent a modest self on social media can be explained as a general effect of social media’s disciplinary techniques. Second, while shifting away from this general approach, and by following the work of Schielke (2009) and Jouili (2009), the students’ suspicion of being watched, and interrelated efforts to represent a modest self on social media are understood as online pious micro-practices, referred to in this study as ‘virtual piety’.
Alongside a brief summary of the chapters’ main points, the concluding chapter outlines the thesis’ main limitations, suggestions for further research, and unexpected findings.
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
This study is about the experience of social media surveillance among female Dutch-Moroccan students in higher education, and how this affects their social media behavior. In the following, the study’s two main theoretical concepts are introduced: social media, and social media surveillance. The amount of research on social media and (social media) surveillance is extensive and ever growing. In this chapter the focus on the discussion of social media and surveillance related to social media is elaborated from an anthropological perspective. This means a focus on the ‘social’ of social media, instead of a focus on its technological features10. The theoretical concepts are outlined first, followed by a discussion
of the positions that are taken in during this study. 2.1 Social media
In recent years, the term ‘social media’ has become popular for describing types of World Wide Web applications like blogs, microblogs, social networking sites, and video-/image-/file-sharing platforms (Fuchs 2017, 5)11. In research literature on social media,
general definitions are, for example, given by Shirky (2008, 23), who refers to social media as “tools that increase our ability to share, to co-operate, with another, ant to take collective action, and all outside the framework of traditional institutional institutions and organizations.” Hunsinger and Senft (2013, 40) argue that social media means “networked information services designed to support in-depth social interaction, community formation, collaborative opportunities and collaborative work.” Finally, danah boyd (2014, 8) uses the term social media to refer to “the sites and services that emerged during the early 2000s, including social networking sites, video-sharing sites, blogging and microblogging platforms, and related digital tools that allow participants to create and share their own content.”
All three approaches described above share an emphasis on social media as platforms, as intrinsically social and characterized by creation, sharing, interaction, and co-operation. Without questioning the value of these definitions, this
10 This does however not mean to say that the technological features of social media platforms cannot be understood from an anthropological perspective. See, for example Arturo Escobar (1994) or Manuel Castells (2011).
11 For a detailed account on social media’s historical trajectory, see for example Fuchs. C. Social Media: A
study follows a slightly different approach, developed by Miller (2015), who defines social media as ‘content’.
According Miller, from an anthropological perspective, it makes more sense to think of social media as ‘content’ (i.e. the reason why people post particular kinds of content), rather then as a platform: “it is the ‘content’ rather than the platform that is most significant when it comes to social media (Miller 2015, 1).” A focus on content when discussing social media enables researchers to see what people communicate through postings and what this says about their everyday life. For example, in a study on social media use among young professional females in Trinidad, the content they shared on Facebook displayed global influences: fancy cuisine served in high-class restaurants and photographs of international holidays (Miller 2015, 137). In a study on social media use among wealthier locals in India, the sharing of articles on Facebook, often in English and produced by international media outlets such as The Guardian or The New York Times, reflected social divisions (Miller 2015, 138). According Miller, social media becomes meaningful through the content people share.
However, different forms of social media exist, continue to be developed, and are used by different people in different ways. In earlier work by Miller and Madianou (2013) they approach this phenomenon as ‘polymedia’. ‘Polymedia’, means that different social media platforms cannot be understood in isolation from each other because the meaning and use of each one is relative to the others. Due to the free accessibility of different kinds of platforms, people use a variety of specific platforms for particular genres of interaction (Miller and Madianou 2013). As a result, choosing a particular platform for a particular genre of interaction becomes a social act. For example, Gershon (2010) examines relationship break-ups among US college students and suggest that people who end a relationship may be judged as much for the medium they employ as for the decision to break up. Social media not only becomes meaningful through the content people post, but also through personal motivation for choosing one particular platform over another.
A focus on the content people share and why they choose particular platforms for particular kinds of communication, does not mean that the companies behind the platform, the way the platforms work or the specific features of the platforms are less important. However, for an understanding of the ‘social’ of social media, Millers’ approach is most useful. In the following, it becomes clear how Miller’s approach opposes earlier views of the Internet as a ‘world’ that eludes social and cultural categories.
2.1.1 Social media as “networked public”
Previous understandings of the Internet as an online sphere that eludes offline social and cultural categories (Reid 1991), has shifted towards an understanding of the Internet as an online sphere where practices are situated in relation to peoples’ daily life in a concrete cultural context (Miller and Slater 2000). This is outlined briefly below.
In 1996, new media advocate John Perry Barlow wrote A declaration of the
Independence of Cyberspace and argues “ours is a world that is both everywhere and
nowhere, but it is not where bodies live”. In Cyberspace, he continues “we are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth (Barlow in Leurs 2012, 41).” In a similar manner, Tapscott argued that kids growing up in the digital would “find racism, sexism and other vile remnants of bygone days both weird and unacceptable (1998, 305).” These utopian views of the digital space were quickly opposed by studies that points towards the re-embodiment that takes places online in ways that resonate offline exploitative neo-liberal, default whiteness, masculine and heterosexual normative ways of being (Leurs 2012, 44). For example, Nakamura, points towards the way one’s identity in digital space is often “menu-driven” (Nakamura 2002, 104), as one has to choose from a restricted set of facial and bodily features, creating a “normative virtual body”, which is “generally white, conventionally physically attractive, as well as traditionally gendered, with male and female bodies extremely different in appearance (Nakamura, 2010, 338).” Donnelly argues that in the digital space, “Western standards of beauty” are ubiquitous and, similar to offline space, digital space is “dominated by patriarchal, heteronormative belief, fueled by heterosexual masculine fantasy (2011, 174).” This thesis acknowledges both the ‘utopian’ and ‘dystopian’ nature of the ‘Internet’, and takes in a middle-ground position. This is elaborated upon while following the work of danah boyd (2014).
danah boyd (2014) describes social media as a “networked public”. The “networked public”, like unmediated parks and malls, is used to gather and socialize with peers (2014, 120). However, this ‘socializing’ differs from face-to-face public life in four ways. First, it is ‘persistence’: the durability of online communication is ‘end-less’ and content does not expire. Second, it is ‘visible’: people can easily share with broad audiences and access content from greater distances, which increases the potential visibility of any particular
message. Third, it is ‘spreadable’; conversations are easy ‘shared’ or ‘repost’. Finally, communication in the “networked public” is searchable: since the rise of search engines, people’s online content is easily searched and found by unexpected audiences.
boyd argues however, that none of these features are new: writing letters is persistent, printed messages have long been visible, gossip is spread like wildfire through word of mouth and the practice of asking after others is not new. What is new however, are the technical features that people can use to engage in these well-established practices (boyd 2013, 13). Characterizing for this “networked public” is the way it supports sociability, just as unmediated public spaces do.
What is important for this study about boyd’s concept of the “networked public”, is her emphasize on the way offline cultural boundaries maintain visible on social media, in both empowering and determining ways. Body argues that on the one hand, for teens who are facing cultural oppression and inequality, connecting online along a line of race and ethnicity can help teens feel a sense of belonging and enhance identity (166), but, on the other hand, it also reinforces social division as people consistently reproduce networks that reflect the segregated realities of everyday (171).
Although this study aims at following boyd’s concept of “networked public” to characterize social media as a place were people continue to socialize in cultural specific ways, a general side note needs to be made. At the time boyd’s study was written, other social media platforms were popular then at time writing this thesis. boyd focuses on platforms like Friendster (2002), MySpace (2003) and Facebook (2004). Nowadays, sites like SnapChat and Instagram are gaining popularity. Compared to the platforms discussed by boyd, these platforms are not especially searchable, persistent or spreadable (Miller 2015). However, as becomes clear in the following paragraph, one important feature continues to be a central aspect: ‘visibility’.
2.1.2 Social Media(s)?
As discussed above, this study approaches social media as ‘polymedia’, that recognizes our inability to understand any one platform or media in isolation. Nevertheless, for the sake of clarity, a brief introduction to the platforms mentioned in the upcoming chapters are outlined below.
Facebook (2004) is a free social networking website that allows registered users to
family, and colleagues. Within each members’ personal profile, there are several key networking components. The most popular is arguably the ‘Wall’, which is essentially a virtual bulletin board. Messages left on a member’s Wall can be text, videos, or photos. Launched in 2009, Facebook has seen enormous growth. According to usage statistics, the service has 1.15 billion daily active users, with an increase of 23 percent every year. In the Netherlands, 4.3 million people use Facebook, of which 0.3 million on a daily basis12.
Instagram (2010) is a social photo sharing service. Instagram includes dedicated
mobile applications that allow users to take and manipulate photographs by adding filters and frames, and to share them online, where other users can react through ‘comments’ and ‘likes’. Launched in October 2010, Instagram has seen enormous growth. According usage statistics, the service has 200 million registered users who have posted over 20 billion photographs, with an average of 60 million photographs per day. In the Netherlands, 2.1 million people use Instagram, of which 992.000 on a daily basis13.
Snapchat (2011) is a rather unique instant messaging service as it is exclusively a
smartphone app. Therefore, it is not possible to use it with a browser (unlike Twitter, Instagram or Facebook Messenger). Another unique feature is that after the messages are viewed, the pictures and videos sent are not just deleted from the recipient’s phone, but also from Snapchat’s network. According usage statistics, the service has 166 million daily active users. In the Netherlands, 1 million people use Snapchat, of which 541.000 on a daily basis14.
2.2 Social media as surveillance
As discussed in paragraph 2.1 and illustrated by the description of Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat above, social media is about ‘visibility’: users reveal (personal) information online to become visible and to connect with others. Although a lot of scholarly attention has been paid on the way social media is a new place for self-expression (Mitra and Watts 2002, Georgiou 2002, Albrechtslund 2008), academic interest in the way online visibility paves the way for new forms of surveillance has only just begun (Lyon 2007; Fuchs 2013; Brown 2015).
The available works on surveillance practices on social media can be split into two trends: first, surveillance practices on social media understood as empowering, 12 Newcom social media research 2017
13 Newcom social media research 2017
conceptualized as social searching (Lampe, Ellison, and Steindfield, 2006), participatory
surveillance (Albrechtslund 2008) social surveillance (Joinson 2008; Tokunaga 2011;
Marwick 2012), or, surveillance practices on social media understood as just another form of hierarchical surveillance focused on control, conceptualized as lateral surveilllance (Andrejevic 2005). A brief description of both trends is outlined below.
The concepts social searching (Lampe, Ellison and Steindfield 2006), participatory
surveillance (Albrechtslund 2008) and social surveillance (Joinson 2008, Marwick 2012),
focus on the empowering aspect of people watching each other on social media. Social
searching (Lampe, Ellison and Steinfield 2006) points towards the way people use Facebook
to learn more about the people they meet offline, which helps to maintain relationships. Albrechtslund (2008) argues that due to the fact users can choose to watch others, as well as to make themselves visible, this adds an empowering dimension to this kind of surveillance. Finally, Joinson (2008), Tokunaga (2011), and Marwick (2012) argue that social surveillance competes with hierarchical notions of surveillance in three ways: first, it takes place between individuals rather then structural entities and individuals, second, and in a similar trend like Albrechtslund (2008), people who engage in social surveillance also produce content online that is surveilled by others, and finally, social surveillance assumes a model of power flowing through all social relationships (Marwick 2012,).
This positive ‘participatory’ approach towards surveillance practices on social media is opposed by Andrejevic (2005) who argues that online surveillance is just another form of hierarchical, and top-down surveillance:
“The participatory injunction of the interactive revolution extends monitoring techniques from the clostered offices of the Pentagon to the everyday spaces of our homes and offices, from law enforcement and espionage to dating, parenting, and social life. In an era in which everyone is to be considered potentially suspect, we are invited to become spies – four our own good.” (480)
Although Andrejevic’s work is published in 2005, shortly after Facebook made his entrance in the digital world, his line of thought is followed in recent studies. For example, Christian Fuchs (2011), argues that corporate monopolies exploit and appropriate user participation, in order to add economic value to the products the industry offers them. Zittrain (2008) refers to this ‘fake’ feeling of “participatory surveillance” as “walled gardens”.
Although Albrechtslund (2008) and Andrejevic (2005) differ in opinion whether surveillance on social media has empowering potential or is another form of ‘top-down’ surveillance, all concepts point towards the way social media enables forms of surveillance that challenge conventional understandings of what it means ‘to be watched’. However, the majority of the works is theoretical, and lacks any qualitative nuance. In the following paragraph, the term social media surveillance (Trottier 2012) is introduced. Trottier’s work is based on first hand ethnographic research with a variety of personal and professional social media users in Canada, which helps to get a general understanding of how social media surveillance is experienced.
2.2.1 Social Media Surveillance
In this study, the term social media surveillance is used in the way that was first proposed by Daniel Trottier (2012) in his ethnographical account using Facebook as a case-study. Trottier’s work differs from other works on social media surveillance, which focus on either peer-to-peer surveillance or state surveillance, as it points towards the way different forms of surveillance co-exist on single social media platforms: interpersonal surveillance (individuals watching over one another), institutional surveillance (institutions watching over a key population), marketing surveillance (businesses watching over their markets) and,
investigating surveillance (investigators watching over populations).
According Trottier, these formerly discrete surveillance practices ‘augment each other’, influenced by the fact that they share the same interface, information, potential of being watched and social media’s ever-growing popularity (2012). This results in the fact that the content people share on social media is surveilled by a growing variety of groups.
Like boyd, Trottier (2012) understands social media as a kind of “dwelling” where people live and continue to socialize. However, alongside the ‘socializing’ features, online ‘dwellings’ constitute of specific features that increase the collecting of personal information and enhances surveillance practices. Five features of social media platforms that enhance surveillance practices are outlined below. General tactics and approaches towards surveillance practices expressed by Trottiers’ respondents are included.
First, social media enables collaborative identity construction, in the form of ‘walls’, ‘photos’, ‘tags’, and ‘comments’. In short, this means that when someone uploads a picture of a friend on his wall and tags his or her friend in this picture, this information is shared with both users’ network of friends. With this reflection in mind, users are tactical about the
content that they post on their friends’ walls and are careful in how they portray their friends (Trottier and Lyon 2012, 94).
Second, online ‘friendships’ provide unique surveillance opportunities as users often engage with a particular audience in mind. As indicated in the introduction, social media are sites of ‘social convergence’, where different social groups are brought together into one singular audience. However, when uploading information, users only identify a small part of their audience. Other watchers can intervene in ties between, for example a Facebook user and that user’s intended audience. Trottier argues this quasi-public status troubles some students, as they find it difficult to represent themselves in a way that is consistent to all different groups (Trottier and Lyon 2012, 98).
Third, corresponding with boyd’s argument (2013), the construction of a personal social network means social ties become visible, measurable, and searchable. Not only are users’ social ties visible, but others can also make inference about private information on the basis on friends’ publically accessible information. For the students in Trottier’s study, too few friends and too many friends are both seen as a cause for concern (Trottier and Lyon 2012, 98).
Fourth, an ever-changing interface and privacy controls alter users’ visibility through the site. Due to social media’s every changing privacy settings, users treat their engagement with Facebook as an ongoing project and are met with a degree of distrust. The students in Trottier’s study said to frequently revise their personal content; either modifying or removing content as well as pruning ties with their peers (Trottier and Lyon 2012, 100).
Finally, social media content is easily re-contextualized. Due to social media’s privilege of ‘sharing’ and ‘publishing’, information leaks become a standard feature for information exchange in social networks. The students in Trottiers’ study were very aware of the fact that a ‘party-picture’ is easily leaked into contexts were it may harm their reputation (Trottier and Lyon 2012, 101).
The specific features of social media that increase surveillance practices like monitoring the amount of friends a specific user has, or an awareness of the different groups present on a single platform, results according Trottier in a need for ‘a care of the virtual self’, reflected in for example strict privacy settings (2012, 81).
If we consider social media to be a “networked public” or “dwelling” where people socialize and hang around, ways of ‘hanging around’ and ‘socialize’ may vary across people and groups. boyd and Ellison argue that although the key technological features of social media are fairly consistent, the “the cultures that emerge around social media are varied (2008, 210).” However, scholars are only just beginning to consider context-specific cultural dynamics of these platforms (Leurs 2012; Grasmuck 2009). In a literature review by Zhang and Leung (2015) on North-American research on social media in the period from 2006 to 2011, it becomes clear that ‘white’ North-American students are the major sampling targets for investigation. As already briefly indicated in paragraph 2.1.1., recent academics have pointed towards the need to focus on more diverse digital worlds, an understanding that focuses on a cultural context away from ‘white’ western societies (Barendregt 2012). Among the few exceptions are Horst and Miller (2005), with a study on Jamaican phone practices and Pertierra (2010), with a study on new media use in the Philippines.
The lack of qualitative data of a more diverse population is a gap within the field of studies on social media surveillance as well. In ‘Surveillance Studies Need Gender and Sexuality’ Kirstie Ball and Nicola Green (2009) argue that within surveillance studies, “perspectives concerning the local, the discursive, the performative, and the embodied are deeply lacking.” They aim at challenging the normative statement of “nothing to hide: nothing to fear”, a response which is often cited in media coverage of the surveillance society. As Beauchamp and Walby (2009) highlight, in the Anglo-American north, what is ‘hidden’ is often associated with what is ‘shameful’, an association problematic for, for example, transgender and queer communities. Trottier argues that research should focus on a more diverse population that is settling into social media and its condition for intervisibility (2012, 82).
However, studies on the effect of social media surveillance on more diverse groups are emerging. These studies are mainly conducted in communities where surveillance is the norm and consequences of non-compliance to behavioral codes are severe. Pearce (2015) focuses on the Azerbaijani context, a dominantly Muslim and oil-rich former Soviet republic, where honor culture influences how young adults balance between wanting to connect, create, and interact, and adhering to behavioral codes. Pearce concludes that impression management strategies by Azerbaijanis reveal many parallels to strategies in non-honor cultures. However, the motivation for engaging in these strategies and the potential consequences of mis-managing one’s online identity are significantly different. For example, classmates of Pearce’s respondents expressed their disapproval of social media posts by
leaving ‘comments’ that threatened with a loss of honor. The students blocked their classmates to avoid this kind of harassment (Pearce 2015). Al-Hunaiyyan and Al-Hajri (2015) studied the use of Instagram among Qatari nationals, enriching knowledge on social media use in the Middle East beyond their role during the Arab Spring uprisings. Contrary to Pearce, they challenge conventional notions of surveillance by showing how surveillance has the potential to be empowering. They argue that Qatari females, like the Azerbaijanis, navigate on social media sites with a constant need to reinterpret existing features to fit expectations, particular as those expectations relate to a sense of preserving tradition.
In the Dutch context, Janssen (2012) examines how in the Dutch-Moroccan community, family-honour codes have found their way onto social media. Based on an analysis of police files handled by Haaglanden police, she shows how in particular cases social media was used by family-members to control or threat female relatives. For example, when a father finds out on Facebook his daughter has a boyfriend, he keeps on threatening her through private messages. However, examples like this are based on situations where the police had to play a role. Janssen highlights the fact that there is a majority of citizens in this community who do not commit violence, who do not threaten their family members, and who at the same time respect important family values (2012, 291). Therefore, this study focuses on the more everyday experience of social media surveillance among Dutch-Moroccan girls.
This literature overview is not comprehensive due to space limitations and because much work on social media and social media surveillance is still in the process of being published. Nevertheless, it provides an introduction to the thesis’ position towards two central topics. While following Miller (2015), social media is understood as content, rather then as a platform. Moreover, social media is understood as being a “networked public” where people continue to hang around and socialize in cultural specific ways (boyd 2013). Social media surveillance is understood as not only performed by peers, but by a growing variety of groups that have access to the data we share online. Therefore, it can be both determining (Andrejevic 2005) and empowering (Albrechtslund 2008).
3. Methodology
For this qualitative study, the main method of data collecting were semi-structured interviews. Semi-structured interviews are optimal for collecting data on individuals’ personal histories, perspectives, and experiences (Gibbs 2007), which is the main aim of this study. 3.1 Sample
During the fieldwork period, fifteen semi-structured interviews with female Dutch-Moroccan students were conducted15. The question of what constitutes an appropriate sample size in
qualitative research, is only answerable within the context and scientific paradigm of the research being conducted (Marshall 2013). For example, in constructivist or in-depth qualitative research, a single example can already be highly informative (Boddy 2005). In the current study, data saturation was achieved after fifteen interviews as no new information or themes were observed, implying a sufficient sample size (Guest, Bunce and Johnson 2006).
The students were selected by purposive sampling, which means that when designing the study, it was decided which people, with certain characteristics, are included as informants (Oppong 2013). For this study, the selection characteristics were female, aged between 18 and 30, higher education (HvA, VU, and UvA), from a Dutch-Moroccan background, and experience with social media16. This selection allowed for a focus on people
who would be most likely to experience, know about, or have insights into the current subject of study: social media surveillance (Tongco 2007).
One of the main disadvantages of purposive sampling, is that it can be highly prone to researchers’ bias. However, the subjective component of purposive sampling can only be a clear problem when judgments are not based on theoretical or empirical evidence. For this study, selecting higher educated and female Dutch-Moroccan students as informants is based 15 See Appendix C, for a detailed description of the students.
16 ‘Experience with ‘social media’, in this sense, means that the respondent should have SNS account(s) and has experience with uploading content and viewing the content of others.
on the previously discussed study by Janssen (2011) who argues that within the Dutch-Moroccan community, female social media users are most likely to experience online surveillance by their (male) relatives. Selecting informants between the age of 18-30 is based on the general assumption that the younger generation is the most acquainted with social media platforms (Neelamalar 2015). Selecting informants enrolled in higher education is motivated by the idea that a shared educational background with the researcher, can reduce power differences during the interviews (Karnieli-Miler, 2009).
3.2 Finding respondents
The respondents were found in two contexts: online (5) and offline (15). The initial plan was to find all respondents within online communities, but getting access to those communities proved more difficult then expected. The main difficulties were anonymity (of both the respondents and, in return, the researcher), and the text-based format. Like in the study of Carmen Beckers (2009), who investigated Salafi activism on Dutch online discussion forums, text-based interviews proved to be slow (depending on how fast the respondent responded), and provided limited information. Respondents had the tendency to provide relatively short text-based answers, compared to the long, more detailed answers given in face-to-face conversations. Additionally, text-based interviews gave the respondents the opportunity to, for example, delete or reformulate answers before sending, which affected the ‘spontaneity’ of the interview. As a result of the difficulties of conducting online interviews, the interviews in this study were predominantly done offline. A more thorough outline of the research process is given below.
3.2.1 Online interviews
On 12-10-2016, I created the topic “How do you use Social Media” on ‘Yasmina’, the ‘women’s-only’ section of the online forum ‘Marokko Community’. This particular forum was chosen because it is considered to be one of the most popular forums among Dutch-Moroccans, with over 231.000 members17. In order to encourage discussion, I
introduced myself as a Middle Eastern Studies student and explained my thesis topic in more
17 Several other studies have analyzed Marokko.nl, see for example Midden (2016), Serkei and Bink (2011) and Leurs, Midden and Ponzanesi (2012).
detail. In the days after, users SheilaLove, QueenOfSheba, and Al-Malika responded to this introduction.
Figure 218.
Figure 319.
18 Translation: “Go away, even online those ‘cheese-heads’ are bothering us with questions”.
19 Translation: “I think this ‘’Emma’’ is a Moroccan man who wants to know the Instagram pages of Moroccan
Figure 420.
These three negative ‘comments’ on my thesis topic illustrate the feelings of mistrust among the forum members in social media, and in me, the researcher. The speed in which the discussion escalated (22 ‘comments’ were placed within a day) and short duration of the debate (the discussion ended 3 days later) made clear how easy it is to say ‘whatever you want, whenever you want’ within an online and perhaps even more importantly, anonymous setting. Becker (2012) experienced a similar attitude during her online fieldwork, as she was banned on two forums after introducing herself as a researcher. Becker argues that although this can be frustrating, sometimes forum members act as ‘personal advisors’ and guide you on who to trust and who no to trust within a particular forum. During the present study, a similar trend was experienced, as one forum member, ‘Slim-Shady’, contacted me via a private message and apologized for the other members’ behavior: “they see ghosts everywhere” (Figure 5).
20Translation: “Well done, Miss Amira. That’s how you treat fan’s online. You never known what kind of sick
shit is behind this account. It can be Emma the student, or maybe a Moroccan bear who is looking for access to amira’s accounts. Hmmm I don’t know”.
Figure 521.
The online conversation with ‘Slim-Shady’ lasted for 3 days, in which she told me that she only had time to answer me after work, and when her children had gone to bed. I made an online appointment with ‘Slim-Shady’, to make sure we were online at the same moment. It became clear that when conducting an online interview, offline activities of your conversation partner are
not visible, which
could affect the conversation (Becker 2012). Although the conversations with ‘Slim-Shady’ were engaging, she stopped replying after three days.
Although the response so far was a bit disappointing, it was an informative introduction to the key topic of this study: experiences and attitudes towards watching and being watched on social media. Because of these difficulties that were encountered with online communication, the strategy was changed from online to offline respondents.
3.2.2 Offline interviews
21 Translation: “Hello, I saw your post about your thesis. I have an Instagram account and would like to help
you with the questions you have. I am a woman, although my name is Slim-Shady. If you have any questions, you can send me them, and I will try to answer them. Anyways, good luck with your study. I hope for a good result. Do not let the other forum members upset you. They see ghosts everywhere and think everybody is against them. Greetings”.
Despite the encountered difficulties of online communication, the search for offline respondents again began online, but this time in a more familiar setting. On 25-11-2016, I uploaded a public message within the HIKMA (Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Student
Association at Leiden University) Facebook group, asking if there were any HIKMA
members with a Moroccan background who could help me with my research. A group member invited me to join the ‘Arabic for beginners’ class she taught at the HvA (Hogeschool van Amsterdam). At the first meeting, while having lunch with the students, I asked who were of Moroccan descent and would like to help me with my thesis. Two students were of Dutch-Moroccan descent and met with me for an interview after class. Meanwhile, a colleague of the HvA professor was informed about the research and invited me to join her class as well, which resulted in another respondent. I met with the students in the public canteen, which resulted in three conversations of around 45 minutes. Because the students and I participated in an activity together, the atmosphere was ‘easy-going’ during the interviews.
In order to expand my knowledge of Arabic, and to pursue this way of approaching respondents, I decided to enroll myself in another ‘Arabic for beginners’ class at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. The ‘Arabic for beginners’ course was facilitated by Islamic
Student Society Amsterdam and took place every Monday evening, from mid-October 2016
until mid-January 2017. The class consisted of 27 students: 3 males and 25 females. Most of the participants were of Moroccan and Turkish descent and - myself included - three girls from Dutch descent. The course was organized by an Islamic Student Society, with the Qur’an as main study book, and the religious affiliation of all participating students was Islamic22. The two students from Dutch descent recently converted to Islam, which made me
the only non-Muslim participant. This raised a lot of questions (“Do you want to convert?”), but never made me feel like an outsider. In fact, I was of great help, as I could turn the page when the students did not perform ablution (wudhu) and had to recite a certain verse, or could eat their candy after they found out it was made of pork jelly.
During the course, friendships were built during group assignments and before-class rehearsal sessions. At first, it felt uncomfortable to ask the students for an interview. Influenced by the negative ‘comments’ on the discussion forum, I intentionally did not explain my thesis topic during the introduction round of the first class meeting. I introduced myself as a master student Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University. When I started to 22 Of course, the level of ‘religiousness’ differed per student. Only four girls wore a headscarf and during the interviews it became clear that they lived their religion in different ways.
feel more comfortable around the students, and got the idea that they were comfortable with me as well, I asked if they could help me with my thesis. This resulted in 5 interviews with classmates, and one interview with a friend of a classmate. Interviews took place on several locations: before class, during their work breaks or in a café. Similar to the HvA respondents, the interviews were ‘easy-going’ as we saw each other as ‘classmates’.
One respondent was found within my own network, as she is the girlfriend of a friend. She invited me to her home and after we finished the interview she gave me the e-mail addresses of five Dutch-Moroccan friends who could help me out. This resulted in four e-mail interviews, as most of these girls cancelled our offline meeting due to ‘exam-stress’. Unlike my conversation with ‘Slim-Shady’ and other members of the online forum, we had a friend in common, which helped to decrease feelings of mistrust that characterized previous online communication.
Finally, the respondents for the control group were also found in the researchers’ own network. The control group consisted of five female students of Dutch descent (aged 19-26). Although the researcher discussed the topic with a wide range of people, these five interviews are recorded and included in chapter three. Like the Dutch-Moroccan girls, the selection was based on gender, age, cultural background and active use of social media.
3.3. Conducting the interviews
As mentioned above, the interviews were conducted on campus, during lunch breaks, at students’ homes, or through e-mail conversations. After the students gave permission, the interviews were recorded on my phone or saved on my computer. Most students expressed to feel uncomfortable the moment the recording started, which was partly remedied by placing the phone underneath a magazine during the interview.
Five topics were discussed during the interviews. First, the students were asked to elaborate on some general positive and negative aspects of social media use (i.e. “we use it too much”, “we are always on our phone”). After this, four specific topics were discussed: privacy (“How do you protect your privacy online?”), content (“What do you, or do you not post”), culture and religion (“What is the influence of your cultural and religious background on social media use”), and family (“What is the influence of your family on your social media use”). As mentioned in the outline of the sample, these particular topics were chosen as it was assumed these could provide an understanding of how an experience of social media
surveillance is influenced by personal, cultural, and religious values. The questions in the e-mail conversation interviews were the same as in the face-to-face interviews.
All interviews were conducted in Dutch. Therefore, all quotes in the reminder of this paper are translated from Dutch to English.
3.4 Content analysis
In order to make an accurate assessment of relationships, patterns, trends and contradictions, the first step in the analysis was a thorough reading of the interviews. A thorough reading of the interviews enabled me to observe the main reoccurring themes, such as self-discipline and modest behavior. After thoroughly reading the data, the findings were organized in a finding-matrix. Reading the answers given to a single question one after another enabled me to see overlap and contradictions. Although the answers given through e-mail conversations were much shorter than in the offline interviews, the content appeared not to divert too far from the offline interviews. Therefore, I decided to not take the difference in interview format into account when analyzing the data23.
In the upcoming chapter, the results are structured by employing the labels I created while organizing the interview data. Although most labels are directly linked to a quote in the text, two need more introduction. First, the students’ experiences of social media surveillance are grouped as either ‘V.I.P.’, ‘FAN’, or ‘STAR’. This categorization is inspired by my encounter with Yasmina member ‘Al-Malika’ (Figure 3.), who called me a ‘fan’ after introducing my thesis topic. According the Oxford Dictionary (2017), a ‘fan’ is “a person who has strong interest in or admiration for a particular person or thing”. In the context of this particular study, a ‘fan’ is understood as someone who closely follows a particular person on social media without knowing them in real life. While following this definition, the admired person becomes the ‘STAR’ and the people important to the ‘STAR’ the ‘Very Important Persons’, the ‘V.I.P.’. Second, I employ the label ‘Social Media Horror Stories’ to mark the influence of negative stories about social media on their social media behavior. ‘Horror’ is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “an intents feeling of fear, shock or disgust”, which suits the students’ response to those stories.
In chapter five, the results are explained in two-fold: first, the key findings are understood by situating them within the Foucauldian framework of disciplinary power 23 This does however not mean I am not aware of the fact that e-mail interviewing raises questions about adequacy, representativeness, data fraud and the elimination of the need for transcription (See for example, Hamilton 2006).
(1975), and second, while following among others, Jouilli (2009), Schielke (2009) Jacobsen (2011) and Deeb (2013), the key findings are understood as being a pious micro-practice, conceptualized in this study as ‘virtual piety’.
4. Results
This chapter reports on the findings from fifteen semi-structured interviews with female Dutch-Moroccan students, held between October 2016 and January 2017. The main question of this study ‘Do female Dutch-Moroccan students in higher education experience social
media surveillance, and, if so, has this experience influenced their social media behavior?’
effect thereof on social media use. In the upcoming chapter both parts are discussed separately, before being brought back together in chapter five. In the concluding paragraph, findings from the control group interviews are presented.
Findings in this study show that social media surveillance is experienced among the students, predominantly in the form of a general suspicion of being watched. This suspicion of being watched appears to be influenced by the circulation of ‘Social Media Horror Stories’, and early familiarity with the mechanisms of social control within the Dutch-Moroccan community. Both ‘real’ social media surveillance and suspected social media surveillance influenced the students’ social media activity, reflected in a strict self-imposed online visibility management. Characteristic for this self-imposed online visibility management is the students’ emphasis on a modest representation of the self. The findings are outlined in more detail below.
4.1 Research question part I: ‘Do female Dutch-Moroccan students in higher education
experience social media surveillance?’
In the following, the results from the first part of the main research question, ‘Do female
Dutch-Moroccan students in higher education experience social media surveillance?’, are
outlined. In the theoretical framework, social media surveillance was referred to as the practice of watching and being watched on social media (Trottier 2012). Trottier differentiates between four dimensions of social media surveillance: interpersonal
surveillance (people monitoring each other), institutional surveillance (institutions watching
over their students/employees), marketing surveillance (businesses tracking their customers), and investigating surveillance (authorities spying on technically anything). Although Trottier underscores the co-existence of the four dimensions on one single social media platform, findings in this study mainly reflect experiences of interpersonal surveillance. Other forms of social media surveillance were not mentioned, except for a 26-year-old Business Management student who expressed to be concerned about institutional surveillance, as she was applying for jobs at the time of the interview. In the following, the students’ experiences of interpersonal surveillance are outlined.
The students interviewed for this study were very aware of the fact that having social media accounts increased the possibility of being watched by (unknown) others. In general, the students thought of social media as something enjoyable due to the easy communication with friends. However, it was also argued that social media is a platform on which they spend too much time, are faced with negativity, and suspect to be watched by ‘everyone’.
As introduced in the previous chapter, the students’ experiences of interpersonal surveillance can be divided into three dimensions: (a) ‘V.I.P.’ surveillance (relatives and friends), (b) ‘FAN’ surveillance (unknown others), or (c) ‘STAR’ surveillance (watching others). Thus, ‘V.I.P.’ and ‘FAN’ surveillance cover the students’ experiences of being watched, while ‘STAR’ surveillance covers the students’ experiences as watcher, instead of being watched.
4.1.1.a. ‘V.I.P.’ surveillance
‘V.I.P.’ surveillance covers the students’ experience of being watched on social media by people who are ‘Very Important Persons’ in the students’ life, in this case: family and friends. With the exception of four students, of which two are married and two moved out of the parental home, the students lived with their parents and siblings. The students’ parents originated from different parts in Morocco, but have since built a life in the Netherlands. Most students expressed to have a ‘multicultural’ group of friends, except for a 26-year-old, recently married student, who said to have only ‘Dutch’ friends. When asked if the students had friends who could help with this research project, four students said to have no ‘Moroccan’ friends, as they felt to have no connection with them.
With regards to ‘V.I.P.’ surveillance, it is important to point out that students’ family and friends are considered as two different groups. One important difference is the generational gap. According most students, the generational gap not only causes conflicting ideas about behavioral codes in the material world, but also about online appearance and use of social media. The majority of the students expressed that most Moroccan parents did not know how to use social media, or were not able to read in Dutch, which is the main language for the students’ online communication. These factors indicate that the students’ parents are mostly absent on social media, in contrast with the large presence of the younger generation. How this influenced experiences of ‘V.I.P.’ surveillance is outlined below.
Experiences of ‘V.I.P.’ surveillance are divided in (a) nuclear family24, (b) extended
family25, and (c) friends. Findings show that most students did not experience being watched
by their parents or friends, but mainly by extended family members.
(a) Nuclear family
The majority of the students did not experience surveillance on social media by their parents, as most parents did not have social media accounts. Of the fifteen Dutch-Moroccan students interviewed for this study, only five parents had Facebook accounts. According to these students, their parents used Facebook to keep in touch with family abroad, but not to survey the accounts of their daughters. One exception was a 23-year-old Digital Marketing student, who said that her mother watched her Instagram account, and showed selfies she posted to other family members:
“I don’t like to upload selfies, because my mother uses my Instagram profile to show the whole world how her children look nowadays (R4,23).”
Thus, this student was aware that her mother watches her account for the entertainment of others and therefore was reluctant to post selfies. A 21-year-old nursing student mentioned not to worry about the online gaze of her mother, but knows her brother keeps an eye on her Facebook-page, as he questioned her about a new profile picture she uploaded:
“It never comes to my mind like, if my mother sees this, she will dislike it. But there are brothers[siblings] who want to protect you by asking why have you uploaded a new profile
picture. They say “you are beautiful the way you are, Why do you need to hear this from others?” (R6, 20).”
This student experienced surveillance on Facebook by her brother, and explained this as an act of protection. When asking the other students about experiences with interpersonal surveillance by brothers, a 22-year-old student Social Legal Services and a 23-year-old Social Work student said to know that being watched by brothers on social media happens frequently, but not in her own close circle of friends:
24 The nuclear family of the students’ interviewed for this study consist of their two parents and their children (one or more). One student (R5), did not know her father.
25 The extended family of the students’ interviewed for this study is a family that extend beyond the nuclear family, consisting of aunts, uncles, cousins.
“Yeah, I know girls are like ‘Oh shit, my brother should not see this post’ or ‘If her brother sees this, she has a big problem’. Not in my circle of friends haha, I do not have friends like
that (R2,22).”
Recognising that some brothers do watch their sisters’ account, but then arguing that this did not happen in her own local context, was a typical response during the interviews. Most students expressed to be familiar with the idea of girls being watched online by their brothers or other male relatives, but emphasized this was more common in ‘other groups’.
The small number of parents with social media accounts did not mean that the other parents were unaware of the online life of their daughters. In fact, most students expressed that their parents hold negative feelings about their children’s social media use, based on warnings ands stories told by others. In a sense, this facilitated a more indirect form of ‘V.I.P.’ surveillance, meaning that the parents watched their daughter’s account through the account of others. A 26-year-old student Business Management, who recently got married, mentioned that her aunt informed her mother about a wedding picture she had shared on Facebook. The student explained that her mother had reacted shocked and worried by the idea that everything of her daughter was now visible to ‘everyone’:
“My mother freaked out when she noticed me and my husband were on a picture online. She now thinks that everybody can see everything of me. She was like ’Now
the whole world can see you’. Yeah, that was quite a big thing for her (R8, 26).”
The student’s mother does not have a personal social media account, but was able to watch her daughter through the account of her sister. The majority of the students expressed that relatives showing online content to their parents often resulted in extreme thinking about what actually happens on social media. A 23-year-old student Urban Management, who recently moved out of the parental home, expressed her frustration about the fact that her mother sees the internet as ‘evil’, because her cousin keeps showing her videos about ‘veiled girls’ having sex in the back of a car:
“This is what my mother thinks, my mother thinks that I am into that kind of stuff as well. My cousin shows the videos to my mother and says things like ‘look what Moroccan girls do in
