Constructing Digital Identity and Surveillance Culture in Dave Eggers’ The Circle: A Literary Representation of Social Media in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

The digital world and social media have changed how people communicate, express themselves, and interact socially, and have raised new awareness of privacy and surveillance. This research analyzes how the novel The Circle (2013) by Dave Eggers presents digital identity and surveillance culture as a literary representation of 21st-century social media. The study explores how discourse functions at three levels: textual, discursive, and sociocultural levels in light of Norman Fairclough's (1995) three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to influence the concept of identity, transparency, and power. This study uses a qualitative research design and purposive sampling to select text extracts, dialogues, and corporate slogans in the novel that discuss the problems of digital participation, self-representation, and surveillance. The analysis shows that the novel constructs digital identity through discourses of transparency, connectivity, and participation, and that for this to happen, the individual must become visible online in order to be accepted socially and validated as an individual. In addition, the results reveal ways in which surveillance is culturally normalized by redefining privacy and secrecy as moral offences via ideological and linguistic means. The present study also underscores the importance of corporate discourse in institutionalising power and reinforcing hegemonic power relations in digitally mediated environments. The research places these discourses in the wider sociocultural contexts, which challenges the emergence of surveillance capitalism and reveals the ideological aspects of the current social media culture. In conclusion, the study helps to enrich literary and discourse studies by highlighting the usefulness of Fairclough's CDA in the analysis of contemporary fiction and its response to current social and technological issues.