Behavioral targeting, freedom of speech and privacy in the age of electronic

surveillance: A value-based approach to defining privacy in transnational context

Lemi Baruh
Faculty of Communications, Kadir Has University, Kadir Has Caddesi, Cibali 34083 Istanbul TURKEY
lbaruh@gmail.com

Mihaela Popescu
Department of Communication Studies California State University, San Bernardino 5500 University Parkway San
Bernardino, CA 92407-2397 USA
popescum@csusb.edu

Keywords: Privacy, Surveillance, Data-mining, Interactive Media

Abstract: As tempting as it is to subscribe to the celebratory rhetoric of the political empowerment potential of social
media and web 2.0 generally, recent discussions on the limits of interactivity argue that, dramatic changes
notwithstanding, power relations constraining political participation are still intact. The ideal of democratic
political participation assumes not only free access to information, but also the formation of reasoned public
opinion that the free speech principle is supposed to guarantee. This paper argues that the current practices
of online behavioral tracking and targeting whereby individuals are provided with “useful” content based on
their recorded history of online activity has detrimental effects on interactive media's potential to enhance
participation in political discourse and consequently on the functioning of pluralistic democracies. The
purpose of this article is to develop a value-based conceptualization of privacy in global context that can
potentially withstand the urge to dismiss privacy as a red herring when balanced against other social goals
as security, efficiency or convenience in interactive media. In so doing, the article establishes an ethical and
normative framework that connects a criticism of the “new regime of control” characterized by current
dataveillance practices to the free speech values necessary for a healthy transnational public sphere.

1 INTRODUCTION the face recognition system that identified Mr.

Hanging up the phone, Mr. Greene decided to wait
for the B3 train that would arrive in 20 minutes so
that his fiancée, who was running late, could take the
same train with him. He was very anxious. After all,
today’s job interview was an important one for him
and it certainly did not go as he hoped it would. As
other trains arrived in the station, Mr. Greene started
pacing back and forth, sometimes coming very close
to the edge of the platform to see if his train was
coming. His mind was too occupied to notice the
officer who approached him from behind and
tackled him. Facing the floor, Mr. Greene had no
idea what was happening. Maybe the updated
camera surveillance system (Chromatica) that
alerted operators to suspicious behavior prompted an
alarm when Mr. Greene skipped several trains,
paced back and forth anxiously and came very close
to the edge of the platform. It was also possible that
Greene assigned him to a high-risk group when it
retrieved credit card data revealing that he had
recently purchased a self-help book about dealing
with depression.
While this hypothetical incident may seem like a
script for a low-budget science fiction movie, it
underlines an important characteristic of current
trends in institutional utilization of personal
information collected from dispersed databases: As
many commentators have noted, contemporary
surveillance systems increasingly rely on behavioral
information in order to make inferences (and
predictions) about individuals (Nissenbaum, 2004;
Phillips, 2002). Increased utilization of behavioral
information in different domains often comes with
promises such as heightened or greater efficiency.
Especially in the commercial domain, collection of
real-time data about consumption patterns and
behavioral targeting are often framed as the next

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best thing to convenience and liberate consumers.
This is the promise of interactivity, evidenced by the
celebratory welcoming of the future "Web 3.0"
which tells the consumers that the web browser "will
act like a personal assistant. As you search the Web,
the browser learns what you are interested in. The
more you use the Web, the more your browser learns
about you and the less specific you'll need to be with
your questions" (Strickland 2008).
At the same time that interactivity is touted as
liberating individuals, the trade-literature on
consumer surveillance and behavioral targeting
paints a very different picture within which
interactivity is seen by institutions as an
"opportunity for enhanced control, hyper-targeting
of advertising, and the ... rationalization of the
marketing process" (Andrejevic, 2009: 42). Thus, as
tempting as it may be to subscribe to the celebratory
rhetoric of the political empowerment potential of
interactive media (e.g. Barry, 2001) generally, recent
discussions on the limits of interactivity argue that,
dramatic changes notwithstanding, power relations
constraining political participation are still intact
(Jarrett, 2008). This paper argues that the current
practices of online behavioral tracking and targeting
whereby individuals are provided with “useful”
content based on their recorded history of online
activity has detrimental effects on interactive
media's potential to enhance participation in political
discourse and consequently on the functioning of
pluralistic democracies. The purpose of this paper is
to develop a value-based conceptualization of
privacy in global context that can potentially
withstand the urge to dismiss privacy as a red
herring (Turow 2005a) when balanced against other
social goals as security, efficiency or convenience in
interactive media. In so doing, the article establishes
an ethical and normative framework that connects a
criticism of the “new regime of control”
characterized by current dataveillance practices
(Lovink, 2005) to the free speech values necessary
in contemporary democracies.
2 BEHAVIORAL TARGETING
AND CONTEMPORARY
SURVEILLANCE
2.1 From Foucaldian discipline to
Kafkaesque rationalization:
working metaphors of
surveillance
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Since Michel Foucault’s Discipline & Punish: The
Birth of the Prison (1977), Bentham’s unrealized
plan for a panopticon–a prison design that would
facilitate constant monitoring of prisoners' behavior
from a central tower–has been a dominant frame of
reference for many scholars studying surveillance
systems. In Foucaldian sense, disciplinary power has
a corrective function in that it trains "moving,
confused, useless multitudes of bodies" (170) so as
to align them with the needs of those in power.
Within this context, the panopticon exemplifies the
ideal way of surveillance characterized by perfect
and permanent visibility that ensures constant
conformity.
In a highly influential study of surveillance and
personal information in contemporary societies,
Gandy (1993) used the panopticon metaphor to
characterize the continuous collection of data about
everyday behavior of individuals and sorting
populations as a form of rationalization of
inequality. An important characteristic of this form
of data intensive surveillance is that it relies on a
machine based, automated collection of personal
information. Even the most innocuous transactions
leave data trail that can be stored for later analysis
and stratification through "data mining" procedures
that utilize algorithms for the automatic detection of
patterns that can be used to predict future behavior
and risk (Gandy, 2002; Zarsky, 2002, 2004).
That the data collection and interpretation
process is automated has important consequences in
terms the uncertainty that surround individuals’
interaction with contemporary surveillance. Clearly,
uncertainty was an important component of the
disciplining function of the panopticon envisioned
by Bentham. Whereas guards can observe prisoners
at any time, prisoners have no way of knowing when
they are being observed and consequently had to be
on their best behavior at all times. With respect to
freedom to express ideas, the concept “chilling
effect of surveillance” underlines an important
consequence of this uncertainty regarding when one
is being monitored. Accordingly, an individual will
be less likely to express her controversial opinions in
public if she suspected that any behavior she
engages in can be recorded (Marx, 1988).
However, it is at this point that the panopticon
metaphor may not sufficiently describe the
informational asymmetry between contemporary
dataveillance regimes and their subjects. That is,
whereas in panopticon the disciplinary power was
partly due to the uncertainty that it introduced
regarding the timing of the presence of surveillance
(i.e. the prisoner has no way of knowing when a
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guard is present at the central tower), the prospect of
fully automated analyses of data about individuals
introduces additional uncertainties (Lyon, 2001).
The new surveillance does not target suspected
individuals. It is carried out superficially, with an
intention to closely investigate later (Marx, 2004).
According to Bogard (2007), not efficiency but
prefficiency-being able to prevent the problem
before it happens-is the driving rationale of this form
of control. As such, surveillance systems that rely on
automated data mining are akin to a fishing
expedition that starts by comparing each data-point
to the population base. This comparison, done
without human interpretation or prior hypotheses
about what constitutes risk, has the potential to
signal any deviation as risk, which could then invite
further scrutiny (Andrejevic, 2007).
Take into consideration, for example, the
promise of Video Motion Anomaly Detection
(VMAD) systems that not only store and digitally
catalog images captured but also can learn to
distinguish normal from abnormal behavior and
trigger human intervention only for the latter. The
trade advertising of the VMAD system developed by
Roke Manor System (2006) reads, "Unlike
conventional video motion detectors which require
manual programming ... VMAD learns the ‘normal’
movements in a scene and triggers an alert when
unusual activity occurs." If so, the object of
surveillance, such as Mr. Greene in our hypothetical
example, will not know-and will only have the
chance to develop retrospective hypotheses
regarding-why his/her behavior was interpreted as a
threat.
A related component of such uncertainty
regarding what constitutes the automated risk
categorization is the violation of the contextual
integrity of information (Nissenbaum, 1998; Rosen,
2000). The importance of contextual integrity of
personal information becomes all the more evident
when we consider the multiplicities of selfhood that
we assume during different interactions (Goffman,
1959). As Herbert Mead (1934, 142) observed,
"There are all sorts of different selves answering to
all sorts of different social reactions. It is the social
process itself that is responsible for the appearance
of the self; it is not there as a self apart from this
type of experience." Whereas individuals face
different interactions within which different
components of one's multifaceted identity may
apply, automated processing of information about
persons removes the self from the experience within
which it was revealed (or became relevant): "A
collage created from hundreds of independent
snapshots of the same person will probably not
contain factually incorrect information. Each bit of
data is actually about the subject. However,
depending on how the independent photographs are
rearranged, the person may look overweight,
underweight or right on scale" (Baruh and Soysal,
2009: 398).
Considered from the perspective provided above,
contemporary surveillance can be considered as
Kafkaesque as it is Foucaldian (Bogard, 2007; Lyon,
2001; Solove, 2001). In Kafka’s The Trial (1937)
the main character, Joseph K. is subjected to a long
judicial process without ever knowing what he was
accused of. In The Trial Joseph K’s circumstances
are particularly illustrative of two characteristics of
the new form of surveillance. First, the subject will
not know when she is being surveilled, who uses the
data, who wants the information, and what or who
distinguishes acceptable behavior from risky
behavior (Lyon, 2001; Solove, 2007). Second, data
mining rationalizes surveillance (in both senses of
the word) by removing humans from the
interpretation process. In many respects, this maybe
the next step in the progression from what
Andrejevic (2007) refers to as the “stoic neutrality of
the social scientist and the dehumanizing character
of bureaucracy” (p.68) within which the “figure of
the vicious tyrant is replaced by that of the
indifferent bureaucrat” (p. 69). Rather than a
potentially biased individual, sets of procedural rules
govern the proper set of responses to an individual.
Then, the risk (and the responsibility) associated
with making a decision that may harm an individual
is externalized to the bureaucratic processes. On the
other hand, rather than dehumanizing, automated
data mining removes humans and the traces of the
so-called human bias from the interpretation process.
At this point, it is also important to note the ensuing
knowledge derived from the automated process of
data mining is also afforded the status of a
seemingly dispassionate and objective "scientific"
method due to its reliance of quantification of
information. As Roszak (1986, 19) has satirically
suggested with respect to the status that statistical
inference attained in contemporary lives, quantified
information "smacks of safe neutrality; it is
simple, ... After all, what can anyone say against
information?" Being touted for its potential to guide
theoretical research, algorithmic thin-slicing, within
which machine learning is used to predict future
behavior on the basis of a short sample of previous
behaviors, gets promoted to the league of social
scientific research (e.g. Ahn, Jabon and Bailenson,
2009). Ironically, at the same time that algorithmic
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thin-slicing rises to the league of "social sciences" in
terms of its "objective aura" it is usually not
subjected to the rigorous oversight that a typical,
theory driven social scientific inquiry would likely
be subjected to and often does away with theoretical
foresight. As such, the automation of the analytic
and interpretative components of dataveillence
projects an aura of objectivity and unassailability on
the process, consequently making it hardly possible
to to challenge its premise and its interpretations.
Thinking in terms of Foucault’s (1980) discussions
concerning the genealogy of the self in Christianity,
the similarities between the authority afforded to the
interpretations of the spiritual master and the
authority afforded to the conclusions reached by the
contemporary surveillance is worth noting.
So far, we argued that contemporary surveillance
belies the metaphor of the panopticon in regards to
the targets of surveillance, the processes whereby
ubiquitous surveillance is achieved, and the uses for
the data thus produced. However, contemporary
surveillance further departs from the metaphor of the
panopticon in two other important respects. Whereas
the panopticon assumed a centralized organization
and a unifying, all-observing gaze, modern,
decentralized surveillance systems act through
linkages and overlaps. In the words of Haggerty and
Ericson (2000), modern surveillance systems are
“surveillant assemblages” that articulate different
spheres of data collection and control. As the
metaphor of the assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari,
1987) suggests, the surveillant assemblage links
different, institution-specific data-gathering
practices that come together in “moments of
interdependence” (Hier, 2003) to capture snapshots
of the present in order to control the future.
Increasingly efficient technologies enable not only
more granular data gathering and data mining
algorithms, but also the exchange of data among
different agencies, both commercial and non-
commercial. Such practices are “rhizomatic” - that
is, interconnected but dispersed (Haggerty and
Ericson, 2000).
Second, modern surveillance practices legitimate
themselves as ideologies by exalting individual
choice, individual difference and individual comfort,
rather than punitive conformity. Unlike the panoptic
organization of surveillance, contemporary
surveillance is no longer addressed to normalizing
behaviors by controlling deviant cases. No longer
the “disciplinarian” organization of power of the
panopticon, whereby social control was defined by
the ability to forcefully secure individual compliance
to norms, contemporary surveillance practices
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achieve social control by creating disembodied and
disempowered hierarchical aggregates (Simon,
1988), preferably with the full cooperation of the
targets of surveillance themselves. On the one hand,
contemporary surveillance practices are increasingly
directed at individual bodies, which are broken
down into categories of data flow and reaggregated
according to the principle of actuarial calculus into a
“data double” of the individual. It is this very
disembodiment that further justifies privacy
invasions, insofar as the individuals need to prove
their identity via “tokens of trust” in the form of
personal data in exchange for access to resources,
services or security (Lyon, 2007; 2009). On the
other hand, the potential of interactive media to
infinitely customize individual access to such
resources, services or security based on individual
profiles invites consumer cooperation in surveillance
and data gathering as a means of self-expression and
exercise of individual choice (Andrejevic, 2004).
2.2 Behavioral tracking and
targeting
Behavioral advertisement, the practice of serving
customized ads to consumers as a function of their
past buying behavior, illustrates many of the features
of contemporary surveillance. The principle of
behavioral targeting is not native to the online
context – consider the brick-and-mortar store
rewards card – but it has been made easy and
ubiquitous by the use of technologies to collect data
on users’ behavior online, and match those records
with users’ profiles. Additionally, online ad
networks such as those owned by the online giant
Google, offer a lucrative environment for data
transactions with companies interested in serving
ads function of real time user behavior. The
contemporary ability of commercial companies to
collate offline and online consumer data in order to
create more efficient ways of targeting consumers
makes behavioral advertisement particularly
troublesome from the point of view of consumer
privacy.
In order to understand how behavioral
advertisement works, it is useful to compare it with
other forms of online advertisement, such as the
contextual content targeting promoted by Google’s
AdWords and AdSense services. With AdWords,
advertisers bid to match their ads to desired
keywords. When customers use one of the keywords
to search the web using Google’s search engine,
these ads appear as “sponsored links” above or to the
right of the search panel, with the listing ordered
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determined by the highest advertiser bids. In 2003,
Google introduced their AdSense system which
matches ads to the content of the webpages users are
on and to their geographical location and other
characteristics. Thus, contextual content
advertisement uses consumers’ choice of content
and consumer’s static data to provide ads matched to
a user’s profile. Essentially, contextual
advertisement online is not qualitatively different
from traditional media advertisement, where media
content is used by advertisers as a proxy to
determine the desired type of consumer to be
targeted by their ads. The advantage of online
technologies over legacy media is to allow both
media content and user characteristics to determine
which ads get served.
Unlike contextual advertising, behavioral
advertising determines which ads get served to
consumers based on consumers’ interested expressed
over time. To a certain extent, many popular
websites engage in behavioral tracking and
advertisement. For example, Amazon uses a
customer’s browsing history and past purchases
records to recommend new books. Similarly, Netflix
uses customers’ past renting/streaming patterns to
recommend new movies. However, new
technologies enable recording users’ behavior across
websites, and collating online behavior records with
offline behaviors. Known as “reality mining” (see
e.g., Pentland, 2008), such technologies enable
correlations of behavior data with other user data
(such as medical or banking records), as well as
patterns of spatial user movement mined from GPS-
enabled mobile phones. For example, in 2008
Google integrated with DoubleClick, a company that
developed cookie technology to track users across
websites. With DoubleClick, Google extended its
AdSense program by, on the one hand, segmenting
the users along 20 categories and more than 600
subcategories and, on the other hand, by tracking
users across all the sites employing AdSense
services and matching those behavior records to user
categories (Helft, 2008). Technologies such as
AdMob (acquired by Google) and Quattro (acquired
by Apple) use location-based advertisement to
match users’ behaviors across online social networks
with users’ geographical location. Advertisers are
thus able to acquire information not only on the
customers’ friend network online, but also on
customers’ location and favorite offline places.
According to some analysts, the ad sales through
AdMob will top $45 million in 2010 (Temple,
2010). Phorm, a global advertising company with
headquarters in the United States, approached ISP’s
in both United States and United Kingdom with
technology to record users’ complete browsing
habits and target adware accordingly. By late 2007,
Phorm deals in England generated data on two-thirds
of Britain’s broadband household (Auletta, 2009, p.
188). A similar plan by Charter in the United States
to try out an “anonymized” ad-delivery system using
NebuAd hardware that allows the monitoring of the
URL’s visited by Charter customers came under
congressional review in 2010.
For advertisers, the marketing "mass
customization" (Andrejevic, 2004) afforded by
behavioral tracking and targeting have immediate
commercial advantages couched in the discourse of
overall benefits and customer freedom. Thus,
advertisers argue that behavioral advertisement is
beneficial for consumers because it reduces ad
clutter by offering relevant services. Additionally,
behavioral advertisement online is supposed to
support free content online, such as free access to
social networking services. Behavioral targeting is
allegedly favorable for the online environment at
large by providing more revenue for online
companies, thus supporting the development of
consumer-beneficial services. Finally behavioral
targeting and advertisement are even said to promote
free speech, insofar as it supports free blogging
services (Drumond, 2007). For privacy advocates,
behavioral tracking and targeting are problematic
because of the lack of transparency for consumers,
the lack of a comprehensive framework for online
privacy (at least in the United States) and because of
potential troublesome partnerships such as those
between ISP’s and third-party technologies for
ubiquitous tracking. In the following, we present
additional arguments against contemporary
surveillance practices. Specifically, we argue that
contemporary surveillance practices and privacy
violations, such as those promoted by behavioral
tracking, disempower consumers by eroding the
political potential of the online public spheres.
3 PRIVACY AND POLITICAL
PARTICIPATION
3.1 Privacy as a Buffer for Access to
Information
A central tenet of Jurgen Habermas'
conceptualization of public sphere is that a properly
functioning participatory democracy will only be
possible with informed citizenry. According to
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Jerome Barron, this calls for the protection of not
only the right to "speak" and associate without being
subjected to coercion (or threat of coercion) but also
the right to to have access to information that is free
from bias (particularly corporate bias) (cited in
Baker, 1992, p.2176).
The use of predictive technologies by
corporations often means that the information a
citizen receives will be largely determined by the
estimates of the views she would be more likely to
accept rather than the information she needs in order
to make an informed decision. The implication of
this tendency is that individuals with certain political
convictions will be increasingly exposed to authors
with similar views and they will only find
information that is in support of their existing
convictions (Sunstein 2007). Such a uniform flow
of information will deprive the individuals of the
ability to make critical evaluations of their existing
opinions.
Considered from this perspective, automated
dataveillance and its utilization for behavioral
targeting of messages may threaten access to
information in two interrelated forms: First, the
diversity of information any individual receives is
likely to decline. Second, the information that
individuals do receive will be selected strategically
with the purposes of leading them toward accepting
a particular view rather than informing them about
relevant options. Whether the vice comes in the first
form, the second form or both, the result is usually
the same: the decision maker is deprived of the
ability to make decisions according to “careful
analysis, relevant knowledge, study and testing”
(Edelman, 2001, p.53).
It is on the basis of these concerns that we can
argue that privacy rights should function so as to
protect individuals from becoming the targets of
dataveillance and related practices that help create
profiles that are used to segment people into more
manageable and manipulable groups. It is only in
this space, outside the circle of the automated
dataveillance and segmentation practices, where an
individual has a chance to be exposed to the
information and ideas she might otherwise miss.
3.2 Dataveillance and
Disengagement
In addition to requiring informed citizenry, the
Habermasian public sphere must also be diversified
and autonomous from the influence of money
(economic system) and administrative power (public
administration) if it is to function as a socially
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integrating unit of democracy. Moreover, as Joshua
Cohen explains, the deliberation in the public sphere
should ideally be all-inclusive and pluralistic (cited
in Habermas, 1998). Plurality in the public sphere
does not only ensure a balancing of interests that
would enable the functioning of democratic
deliberation but it would also improve the
participants’ access to different point of views. As
Stuart Mill explains, unless the individual has the
ability to refute the opinions of others, indeed unless
she knows what these arguments actually are, she
would have no grounds for preferring either one
(1859/1989). Public spheres, as long as they are
inclusive and pluralistic, make it possible for
participants to have access to a variety of people and
ideas (Sunstein, 2007). Given the benefits of a
diversified public sphere that is inclusive, we would
expect that the media, as dominant actors within the
public spheres, should be equally accessible, both in
terms of providing access to information as well as
in terms of providing access to means of self
expressed (Dahlgreen, 2001).
The existing practices of dataveillance and
segmentation of public into manageable groups pose
an important obstacle to the realization of this ideal
public square. Gandy (2000) draws our attention to
the probability that the use of segmentation based on
profiles will aggravate existing disparities in
education, income and access to informational
resources between groups in society. He suggests
that this outcome is likely because these
segmentation schemes are used to facilitate the
exclusion of people who have been identified as
being less likely to support a particular view (Gandy,
2001). This process of exclusion becomes a self-
fulfilling prophecy when those who have been
deemed less likely to respond appropriately and
hence excluded from the streams of information are
most likely to be the people who need that
information the most.
According to Robert Putnam (2000) one of the
most important consequences of such exclusion is
the loss of trust among those who have been
excluded. Putnam demonstrates this tendency by
showing that thin trust – the trust in generalized
others as opposed to thick trust, which is trust in
those whom a person knows well– was significantly
lower among demographic groups that had been
excluded. The importance of thin trust stems from its
role in enhancing individual engagement in
communal life. This engagement in communal life,
even if it does not end with an agreement between
the individuals or between the individuals and the
collective, still makes it likely that people will
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identify with the decision process and thereby
embrace the government as their own (Post, 1995).
What is also important to notice, at this point, is the
claim that such engagements in communal live
follow recognized patterns of conduct (Giddens,
1984). The repetition of patterns, including not only
the physical setting but also the conventions of
interaction and gestures during co-presence, is key
to the routinization of social encounters that enable
the 'fixity' of institutions. The process of
routinization, which increases an agent’s ability to
predict her day-to-day activities and thereby
maintain her "ontological security", is also crucial
for her sense of autonomy. The vitality of routine
interactions lies not only in their being integral to
continuity of the "personality of an agent" but also
their being integral to the continuity of the social
institutions. The question then becomes what
happens when the routine is interrupted?
Potentially, the loss of social contact introduces a
new routine, in which diversity in our interactions is
the exception rather than the rule. Consequently,
excluded agents would be deprived of the
opportunities to practice and develop the valuable
conventions of interaction. Hence, the act of
interaction would become the new interrupter of
routine, at worst unwelcomed, at best an action that
the individual is not sufficiently equipped to
undertake.
3.3 Commercial Segmentation and
Political Polarization
In the preceding section, the loss of trust among
those who were excluded was explained with
references to the processes through which
individuals in certain segments lose their thin trust
as a result of not being offered the opportunity to
learn; the opportunity to associate with others; and
the opportunity to engage in democratic deliberation.
At this point, another factor that has been linked to a
fall in social trust and relatedly to behavioral
targeting and segmentation of individuals is group
polarization (Sunstein, 2007; Turner, 1991).
This process, named group polarization by both
Turner (1991) and Sunstein (2001), can be defined
as a process through which people move to accept
and express more extreme views after deliberating
with others who share similar perspectives. In other
words, the increased segmentation of individuals
which leads to their being engaged in discussions
with people who share similar views, will move the
group and the individuals within the group to a point
where group members on the average share a view
that is more extreme than the initial views of most of
the members.
Turner (1991) proposes three possible
mechanisms that might lead to group polarization.
Of the three mechanisms that he proposes,
Persuasive Arguments Theory stands out as the one
that most relevantly explicates how informational
influences within a group may lead to group
polarization. According to this theory, different
members of the same group will share the same
opinions on the basis of different reasons. However,
within group deliberation works so as to expand the
initial pool of persuasive arguments that individual
members of the group held. Such an expansion in
the set of persuasive arguments that individual
members hold reinforces the members’ opinions,
thereby pushing their beliefs to the extreme. Hence,
in an environment of discussion where the same
view is based upon different (and probably
compatible) reasons, the opinions of the individuals
(and the group) will exhibit marked polarization to
the extreme (pp.64-66).
One of the most important implications of such a
process is that different subgroups will be set apart
from each other. This polarization of diverse groups
will inhibit interactions between members of these
groups and this will, as a result, lead to a loss of
mutual understanding (Sunstein, 2001, p.48), and
respect (p.49). The technological promise of the
Internet has lured many into believing that the
Internet would expand the prospects of democratic
deliberation. Kang (2000) for example, claims that
the Internet could be mobilized so as to enable
contact between racial groups, which would not
otherwise interact with each other due to geographic
and other forms of segregation. Similarly, Putnam
argues that communication on the Internet may
enable the formation of groups on the basis of
interest rather than shared space (172). Putnam also
argues contends that unlike interactions in real life
communities, individuals in virtual communities
have a greater prospect of overcoming factors such
as differences in age, race and income. Such
communities would thereby become more
heterogeneous.
While interactive media can be perceived to have
the potential to decrease the limitations posed by
geographical location, it should also be noted that
the use of information systems for the purposes of
clustering individuals into groups poses an important
threat to the realization of this potential (Gandy,
2001; 147). Indeed, cyberspace, when compared to
the real space, is a much more efficient venue in
which finely grained information about individuals
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can be collected. Unlike public spheres in real
space, an individual’s discussions in the virtual
public sphere are much more likely to be recorded
and saved. While the coding of such information
constitutes an important challenge, the political
strategists have already begun utilizing the data
generated from the virtual public spheres as a means
of segmenting the citizens (Gandy, 2001, p.151).
The implication of such use of data gathered from
the virtual public spheres is that the cyberspace will
increasingly contribute to the reproduction of the
dynamics of group polarization—a tendency that
Putnam (2000) names as Cyber-Balkanization (177).
4 CONCLUSIONS
The relationship between corporations and
individuals, in many respects, is characterized by
asymmetries of power. These asymmetries of power
often lead to a system that economically, politically
and legally favors needs of the private corporations
at the expense of individual’s rights. The
contemporary struggle of individuals to protect their
privacy rights reveals many of these asymmetries of
power. Privacy rights of citizens have been
balanced against and deemed inferior to the
economic goals of market efficiency and the so-
called convenience of the “consumer.”
As tempting as it is to subscribe to the
celebratory rhetoric regarding the political
empowerment potential of social media and web 2.0
generally, recent discussions on the limits of
interactivity argue that, dramatic changes
notwithstanding, power relations constraining
political participation are still intact. The ideal of
democratic political participation assumes not only
free access to information, but also the formation of
reasoned public opinion that the free speech
principle is supposed to guarantee. Starting with an
overview of some key features of contemporary
surveillance and behavioral targeting, this paper
argued that the current practices of online behavioral
tracking and targeting whereby individuals are
provided with “useful” content based on their
recorded history of online activity has detrimental
effects on interactive media's potential to enhance
participation in political discourse and consequently
on the functioning of pluralistic democracies.
Particularly, the paper argues that corporations’
ability to segment citizens may, first of all, mean
that individuals will increasingly be exposed to
information that is designed to manipulate, rather
Chapter Error! No text of specified style in document.
than inform them. Second, the segmentation
capabilities of corporations will also have
deleterious and discriminatory consequences for the
political efficacy of certain ‘undervalued’ groups.
Commercial segmentation of these online groups
might lead not only to erosion of group trust, but
also to a routinization of disengagement in social
interactions. Finally, segmentation of populations
might lead to an increased polarization between
factions in a pluralistic environment.
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