Analysis of the relationship between self-expression in social media and the concept of subjectification: social media as an apparatus and self-expression as practives of the self for the subjectifica

Abstract

This study aims to a theoretical analysis of the relationship between self-expression in social media and the concept of subjectification. For this purpose, the panoptical structure, which was invented by Bentham and reinterpreted by Foucault, is introduced briefly, and the panoptical structure of social media is analyzed in this study, based on the research of Jörissen(2011), Münte-Goussar(2008) and Wiedemann(2011), in which the concept of ‘inverted panopticon’ and ‘democratized panopticon’ was introduced. After that, the research trend of the concept of subjectification in German pedagogy is examined. Therefore, the research point of the concept of subjectification is discovering the process of a specific form of subjectification through the combination between specific social apparatus, norms, discourses, and specific practices of the self. On the basis of this discovery the research point, social media is understood as a social apparatus, which conducts the expression of dramatized or ideal self of each user. In addition, it is emphasized in this study that each user expresses only dramatized self intentionally as the practices of the self for the subjectification. Finally, the conclusion of this study is drawn that the subjectification for Birth of the Subject, who internalized the gaze of other people voluntarily, is constituted through the combination of social media as a social apparatus and expression of dramatized self of each user as the practices of the self.