BIG DATA AND SOCIAL CONTROL IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Abstract

Technological discoveries and the spread of digital technologies require social scientists to revise basic philosophical ideas about the world, society, and man. Issues related to the preservation of freedom, protection of private life and privacy of a person are becoming especially relevant in the digital society. The article considers big data as a tool of social control, supervision and as a means of predicting the behavior of individuals. With the help of big data, large platform companies can shape the core values, cultural codes and consumer behavior of users. The evolution of models of social control is considered: panopticon, synopticon, superpanopticon. While the panopticon is characterized by disciplinary power, the digital society that uses unstructured big data is characterized by instrumental power. The theory of "supervisory capitalism" by S. Zuboff is analyzed and two features of "supervisory capitalism" are distinguished: profit extraction and forecasting of user behavior. In conclusion, having considered the main models of social surveillance, the author highlights the features of social control in a digital society. Social control becomes more subtle, latent, total and indifferent towards a person. The superpanopticon is developing as a social model associated with universal observation based on big data.