The Triumph of Profiling. Andreas Bernard
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The Triumph of Profiling
The Self in Digital Culture
Andreas Bernard
Translated by Valentine A. Pakis
polity
First published in German as Komplizen des Erkennungsdienstes. Das Selbst in der digitalen Kultur © S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 2017
This English edition © Polity Press, 2019
Polity Press
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3629-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3630-6 (pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bernard, Andreas, 1969- author.
Title: The triumph of profiling : the self in digital culture / Andreas Bernard.
Other titles: Komplizen des Erkennungsdienstes. English
Description: Cambridge : Polity Press, 2019. | Translation of: Komplizen des Erkennungsdienstes. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018050589 (print) | LCCN 2018051482 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509536313 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509536290 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509536306 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Self-presentation–Social aspects. | Self-perception–Social aspects. | Social representations. | Personality assessment. | Social media–Psychological aspects. | Subjectivity.
Classification: LCC HM1066 (ebook) | LCC HM1066 .B4713 2019 (print) | DDC 126–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018050589
Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Sabon Roman by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited
Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon
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1
Profiles: The Development of a Format
An old political debate reopened when, within just a few months in 2012, the United States was shocked by two mass shootings, one in a movie theatre in Denver and the other at an elementary school in Connecticut. The question was whether there might be better ways to identify potential perpetrators in advance so as to prevent similar atrocities from happening in the future. To the familiar suspicious signs – the introverted nature of the predominantly male offenders, their social isolation, and their history of psychiatric treatment – was now added an additional criterion: the reluctance of the killers to participate on social media. As reporters were quick to point out, neither James Eagan Holmes nor Adam Lanza had a profile on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Like the Norwegian Anders Breivik, who had committed a similar crime the year before, Holmes and Lanza refused to join the internet's omnipresent portals for communication and self-representation, and this refusal was being characterized as a warning sign. Recruitment managers at large companies reminded the public that it was now a common practice to look at the online profiles of job applicants and that an applicant's complete absence from social networks was highly peculiar. This opinion found support in a 2011 study conducted by the Canadian psychiatrist Richard Bélanger, who discovered a “u-shaped association” between internet activity and the mental health of adolescents: “Health care providers should thus be alerted both when caring for adolescents who do not use the Internet or use it rarely, as well as for those who are online several hours daily.”1 In today's digital culture, as this discussion makes clear, it is now a matter of irritation when people of a certain age have neglected to create a public double of themselves online in the form of profiles, status updates, comments, and so on. In the Western world, this abstinence has even become the first indication of psychiatric abnormality, perhaps of a mental illness or possibly of a latent pathological impulse that might one day be discharged in a harrowing act of violence. Conversely, the regular use of social media is now regarded as evidence of good health and normality.
My reflections in this book about the status of the self in digital culture are concerned with the methods, services, and devices that have become ubiquitous and, in light of their daily use, have increasingly come to seem like a natural disposition. In the history of the representation of subjectivity, however, they are in fact an astonishingly recent development.