Questions of Method

Abstract

system of corporatized media. Concerned that interactivity has not resulted in sub stantial social movements or progressive social change, Andrejevic laments, new media mock old, while tellingly failing to deliver on promised transformative shift in power relations. . . . The result ... is not a transformed media, but rather a reflexive redoubling that amounts to an active form of self-submission.9 In iWar Andrejevic explores the interactive side of war on terror, discuss ing Department of Homeland Security's use of Web sites and information cam paigns. Such practices, according to Andrejevic, have promulgated a self-monitoring culture whereby US citizens willingly internalize structures of civic patrol and extend power of surveillance state as well as security industries that support it. Andrejevic's analysis also reveals how readily information gathering on consumers can be turned into a system of monitoring citizens whenever there is a security rationale. As he explains, [Ijnformation gathered by commercial entities can serve double purpose of consumer and citizen profiling, and ... terrorist threat can be mobilized as a response for submitting to comprehensive forms of surveillance in name of national defense.10 Ultimately, Andrejevic reveals that while technologies have resulted in new social networks, forms of commerce, and civic participation, they have also brought us more forcefully and perhaps more frighteningly into what he calls digital en closure. That is, interactive technologies position us as subject to protocols and parameters of those that design and use them for financial gain and strategic control of earth. Just as Schwoch shows that global television was designed to manage world's geopolitical tensions, Andrejevic reveals that while interfaces trade on notions of individualism and freedom, they can also operate as architectures of social management and control. In this sense, both books are crucial because they spotlight security umbrella of global mediascape. *