The Reverse Panopticon Metaphor: The Autocratic State's Fear of Being Recorded

In the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake that occurred in the Chinese province of Sichuan in 2008, the artist and activist Ai Weiwei launched an independent ‘citizen investigation’ movement that challenged the government’s failure to gather accurate data on the number of deaths, especially the deaths of schoolchildren who had fallen victim to shoddy school building construction. Through a case study of this movement and its suppression by the Chinese State, this paper aims to analyze how new media facilitate the power dynamics between the autocratic state and social movement actors.

To analyze this campaign, the paper uses David Whiteman’s ‘coalition model’, developed to evaluate the impact documentary film affect social movement actors, and redefines this model. First, activist documentary film that is disseminated via the internet and makes use of the internet at various stages of the creative process does not merely influence the dominant public sphere, but, rather, it creates new public spheres, including a local ‘grievance community’, as well as an activist community. It creates new internet spaces to discuss issues addressed by the documentary. Second, the documentary film production and distribution become key processes of movement mobilization in this context. Third, various state agencies’ responses to social movement actors illustrate a pattern of the autocratic state’s fear of being recorded. The prison Panopticon metaphor is therefore reversed in the process: the governor who is monitoring all members of the autocratic society, becomes the subject of all-pervasive observation by its prisoners in the new public spaces created by new media technologies.

This study signifies discursive social movements in the digital century in a party-state with multiple strict controls and heavy censorship on expression and association.