‘That’s Problematic’: Tracing the Birth of Call-Out Culture

The word ‘surveillance’ finds its etymology in 19th century French, meaning literally to ‘watch over’ (Harper, 2017), yet is now defined by Sociologists as the ‘focused, systematic and routine attention to personal details for purposes of influence, management, protection or direction’ (Lyon, 2007: 14). This can include observation, supervision, inspection, recording, and monitoring, in which the information is produced for the use of others; in that one person in this definition is the surveiller and one is the surveilled, it presupposes a power relation.