Title: Profiling online social networks users: an omniopticon tool

Authors: Miltiadis Kandias; Lilian Mitrou; Vasilis Stavrou; Dimitris Gritzalis

Addresses: Department of Informatics, Athens University of Economics and Business, 76 Patission Ave., GR-10434, Athens, Greece ' Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering, University of the Aegean Samos, Greece ' Department of Informatics, Athens University of Economics and Business, 76 Patission Ave., GR-10434, Athens, Greece ' Department of Informatics, Athens University of Economics and Business, 76 Patission Ave., GR-10434, Athens, Greece

Abstract: Online social networks (OSN) and media indicate and incorporate the shift to interpersonal, horizontal and mutual communication and, thus information aggregation. In our previous research we have demonstrated that it is possible and potentially trivial to extract personal sensitive information such as political beliefs and psychosocial about OSN users in an automated manner. Our research highlights how Web 2.0 and OSNs (YouTube and Twitter) may become a topos of participatory panopticism, an omniopticon in which the many watch the many and can reconstruct sensitive information out of seemingly anonymous data/content. We focus on the results of this type of surveillance that facilitates the exculpation of such penetrating and privacy-violating technologies and amplifies the threshold of societal tolerance towards a panopticon-like state of surveillance. Furthermore, we analyse and discuss implications of data mining as data processing with focus on the new European law and the legal framework in the USA.

Keywords: social media; profiling; YouTube; panopticon; omniopticon; ethics; Twitter; surveillance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNM.2017.091807

International Journal of Social Network Mining, 2017 Vol.2 No.4, pp.293 - 313

Received: 19 May 2015
Accepted: 14 Jul 2016
Published online: 18 May 2018 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article