THE DYNAMICS OF DIGITAL CAPTURE: HOW INDUSTRIES TIE AUDIENCES TO EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

In recent years there has been much scholarly and journalistic work about surveillance and privacy (Greenwald, 2014; Lyon, 2015; Turow, 2017). Much too has been written about the consequences of surreptitious tracking, the consequences of unchecked data collection, and the non-transparent, often discriminatory, use of information (Einstein, 2016; Ferguson, 2017; Eubanks, 2018). But while research proliferates regarding how deeply our personal and social spaces are being exploited in the name of corporate and political profits, few studies examine the forces that have guided the “digital capture” that has led audiences to be ensnared in these activities: the ways industries in key sectors of public life get people to adopt new digital technologies that on balance benefit the organizations more than the publics. (For a rare exception, see Zuboff, 2019, Chapter 10). What is needed is an understanding of the dynamics through which sets of organizations turn new digital developments into habits of everyday life that make decoupling from them extremely difficult.