New Media and the Loss of Individual Sovereignty

Manahari Adhikari 1 *
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1 Northern Illinois University, USA
* Corresponding Author
Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, Volume 6, Issue 3, pp. 121-133. https://doi.org/10.29333/ojcmt/2561
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ABSTRACT

This article explores the impact of new media on authentic existence. It argues that technology has reshaped humanity in inconceivable ways, but it is taking away individual sovereignty by facilitating and enhancing power for regimes both democratic and dictatorial. With its design and sophistication that make it possible to listen in on, record, and funnel content produced in the digital realm to locations of power,new media may lead contemporary society towards an era of centralized control and coercion. The likelihood of new media being used as an instrument of power, a devicefor monitoring the masses, begets an atmosphere of fear, which compromises cognitive habits, inhibits the capacity to engage society on a critical level,and gives birth to a culture of singularity. With our ontology reconstituted by the technological and with our growing reliance on new media,we are losing our authenticity assovereign individuals.
Keywords: (in) authentic existence, identity, monkey mind, singularity, subjectivity, technoregime, and techno-totalitarianism

CITATION

Adhikari, M. (2016). New Media and the Loss of Individual Sovereignty. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 6(3), 121-133. https://doi.org/10.29333/ojcmt/2561

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