İktidar ve İnternet: Dijital Denetim ve Gözetim Mekanizmalarına Siberetik Yaklaşım

Abstract

In this study, ethical problems arising through the Internet, which is a part of the technology phenomenon, one of the most important issues of today, and especially the phenomenon of digital surveillance as an ethical problem, are tried to be discussed. The 20th century was a century in which scientific and technological developments took place very rapidly. The “world wide web” phenomenon that has been on the agenda, especially since the beginning of the 90s, has led to developments and changes/transformations at different levels and platforms (especially as a phenomenon marked by the concept of web 2.0), beyond being a purely technical/technological breakthrough. Therefore, developments, opportunities, changes and problems that have arisen in the Internet and other digital contexts have become a field of research that attracts the attention of communication scientists, sociologists, business people, advertisers and philosophers, and opens the door to interdisciplinary studies, going beyond the interest of computer/software engineers. Although there are uncertainties about the concept in various sources or some other nomenclature for the same field of study, the ethical problems that have arisen in this context have created a field of applied ethics that is conceptualized as cyberethics. In the first part of this study, which consists of two parts, it is tried to discuss the concept of surveillance, based on the concept of Panopticon by Jeremy Bentham and the views of philosophers and researchers thinking on the philosophy of technology and the ideological structure of mass media, and based on the framework of the theory of power and the disciplinary society developed by Michel Foucault. In the second part, information philosophy and information ethics and the historical foundations of cyberethics, which is a sub-discipline of this ethics, the concept of “digital rights” emerging through the Internet and the changes and transformations occurring in the concept of surveillance in the digital age upon the development of these phenomena, and the phenomenon of digital surveillance as an ethical problem have been discussed. In the conclusion part, highlighting that digital surveillance is the main factor that enables the technology-power integration, it is emphasized that although digital surveillance is an ethical problem, it is an economic-political problem that goes beyond being an ethical problem, and efforts have been made to assess the possibilities of a struggle against this problem in the focus of ethics and human rights.