Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Surveilling Strangers: The Disciplinary Biopower Of Digital Genre Assemblages, Lauren E. Cagle

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Faculty Publications

This article identifies and names the digital visual genre of strangershots: photographs of strangers taken without their knowledge or consent and then shared online, accruing derogatory comments as they circulate through online networks. By closely describing a specific strangershot posted on Reddit and then connecting it to further examples, I aim to demonstrate that strangershots constitute a genre identifiable by the recurring social actions they accomplish by producing similar responses to recurring social situations. After identifying the genre, I apply actor-network theory to demonstrate how this genre is produced by assemblages of humans and non-human technologies. Following that, I …