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Effect and Significance of Surveillance Cameras for Individuals and Society
- 1 Shanghai Weiyu High School, Weiyu Road, Shanghai, China
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Abstract
With the advancement of the times, surveillance cameras have been detached from their inherent functions, which currently bring society different kinds of impacts. The Panopticon theory raised by Jeremy Bentham and Michel Foucault is the main one that describes the role of surveillance. This paper aims to provide an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the impact and significance of surveillance devices. First, individuals’ behaviors are corrected under surveillance, thus enhancing individual behavior norms and productivity while preventing the pursuit of one’s true self. Besides, mass surveillance brings discrimination and marginalization to society, leads to conflict between social classes, and only increasing the number of surveillance does not fundamentally improve social security. Moreover, the article describes the impact of surveillance as a symbol of power in society. The powers that use surveillance cameras to enhance their control over society invariably create oppression for people. Various theories from different sociologists are interspersed throughout the paper to explain such social phenomena, which has shown it impossible to make society more “surveilled” to improve the community as a whole.
Keywords
Surveillance, Panopticon, self-regulation, social tension
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Cite this article
Chen,T. (2023). Effect and Significance of Surveillance Cameras for Individuals and Society. Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media,5,80-86.
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Volume title: Proceedings of the International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies (ICIHCS 2022), Part 4
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