Surveillance Society Discourse in Russian Social Media

In 2018, Harvard professor Shoshanna Zuboff put forward the theory of surveillance capitalism, which has become one of the most controversial topics in modern society. In her acclaimed popular science paper "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (2019), Shoshanna Zuboff described a new economic paradigm that utilises human experience as a source of untapped commercial potential, including the extraction, prediction and sale of such experience. Zuboff explained the operational mechanism of surveillance capitalism. She stated that our online activities, including visiting websites, buying goods and posting on social media, are subject to being tracked, stored and analysed. This information is then used to predict future behaviour and sell products or services that are likely to be demanded by the consumer. The professor demonstrated that the practice of surveillance generates billions of dollars in revenue for world-renowned corporations such as Google, Amazon and Meta. Furthermore, he emphasised that all our online decisions are pre-calculated by third parties. What were the consequences of making the truth public in 2018? Did people stop using their mobile devices, refrain from accessing the internet or boycott Internet of Things systems? That hasn't happened. The population is becoming increasingly susceptible to the pervasive influence of surveillance capitalism, which is creeping into our lives more and more every year. The companies that make our smartphones, develop popular apps, and control search browsers have vast amounts of information about us. In fact, we actively provide this data to them. We download popular apps, simplify our lives with smart devices, and do so without reading user agreements that we cannot refuse because then we cannot use the desired product. The aim of this research is not to explore the algorithms of surveillance capitalism or to analyse the activities of global corporations. The purpose of this study is to identify discourses related to surveillance capitalism in contemporary Russian society. Furthermore, the aim of the study is to understand how Internet users perceive the phenomenon of surveillance capitalism and themselves in it. The object of the study is memes from Russian social media - VKontakte, Pikabu and Dzen, dedicated to surveillance capitalism. The author of the paper performs a semiological analysis of 15 popular memes and describes the discourses of surveillance capitalism spread through these memes in society. The study of memes reveals society's fears and protest thoughts, user self-perception in the contemporary digital environment and common myths about the politics of surveillance capitalism. The most common statements about surveillance capitalism identified in the study were companies' undue intrusion into users' personal space, companies' panoptic policies, companies' omnipotence and impunity, humiliation and threats against customers, unethical treatment of "sensitive" personal data, and mockery of users' privacy and defencelessness. The subjects depicted in the memes indicate that Russian users feel a sense of dependence on companies, but at the same time express concerns about insecurity.