The impact of changing working conditions on surveillance practices in the covid-19 pandemic: The case of the it sector

This research is about the impact of changing working conditions on surveillance practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data of the research was obtained through semi-structured interviews with 30 people employed in the IT sector who had experience of working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research aims to reveal how changes have occurred in the surveillance practices experienced by IT sector employees due to working from home and to determine the mechanisms that produce these changes. In line with this purpose, the differentiations seen in surveillance practices during the pandemic period were centered and the changing nature of surveillance was sought to be explored on the basis of these differences. It is aimed to show the causal processes that create change by focusing on the surveillance practices through which IT sector employees were supervised during the pandemic; what kind of impact these controls had on individuals and what was expected of them. Through the analysis of the research data, four main mechanisms that intensify surveillance were discovered. These are changing working conditions, digital surveillance tools, self-surveillance and contradictory surveillance position. The results of the research revealed that the participants were more intensely surveilled during the process of working from home. With the pandemic, the electronic panopticon has influenced all working processes of employees. It has been observed that the panopticon still maintains its importance in today's surveillance studies. Keywords The COVID-19 Pandemic, Remote Working, Surveillance, Panopticon