The Facebook Gaze: Disciplining Action in Online Interpersonal Space

Facebook as the most widely used social media site in the world has lead the way in using interface technologies to shape user behavior by turning online interaction into algorithms that engineer specific kinds of performances and render others invisible.   Like Foucault's Panoptican, the Facebook Gaze is deployed through the architecture of the site itself.  Facebook has created an online space that allows users to enter their information into generic templates which make managing and mining large amounts of data easier but constrains the users participation to those things allowed by the template.  Creating a uniform normativity  through the technical structuring of a way of being, users must adjust their behavior accordingly in order to participate.   EdgeRank, Facebook's algorithm for structuring the flow and visibility of information and communication, further disciplines user behavior by through the threat of invisibility (Bucher 2012).  Photography plays a key role in social media identity staging and interaction as images are a prime means of increasing your EdgeRank score.  Similar to the hermeneutic circle of the tourist gaze (Urry 1990) which disciplines performative travel photography, this same dynamic is at work on Facebook as users learn to construct images that echo those shared and positively received by others.  Images that generate a large number of responses provide a model for expected and accepted contributions.  Neuroscientists have also found that receiving 'likes' activates the reward center in the brain and these approval responses predict future Facebook use (Meshi et al. 2013).  This informal, but immediate, feedback lets the individual know how well their performances are being received and assists them perfecting and refining their presentation to remain visible and included in this new form of sociality.