Data surveillance that becomes commonplace in the phantasmagoria of consumption through online behavioral advertisements

The radical change and transformation brought about by digitalization and digital transformation processes in society and everyday life has also extended to the concept of surveillance, especially the validity of panopticon-based surveillance narratives has begun to be questioned. In this context, the post panopticon, which was put forward in order to reveal the state of mind of the digital technology society, where data rather than the body is the subject of surveillance, has become a dominant concept that directs current surveillance discussions. With the increasing value of data as an economic raw material, this new form of digital surveillance, which has begun to be implemented within the framework of the logic of surveillance capitalism based on the online behavioral advertising model, corresponds to consumption-oriented post-panoptic surveillance. In light of all this, the first starting point of this thesis study is that surveillance capitalist platforms use personal and behavioral data collected by manipulating attention for purely commercial reasons to serve online behavioral ads that can create instant/hedonic purchasing behavior by triggering weaknesses, and this serves the purpose of creating a community of passive consumers who have accepted surveillance, rational thinking, free decision-making, and privacy rights have been taken away. The second point of departure is that despite their current concerns about privacy and data security, individuals do not know enough about the functioning of digital data surveillance, its actors and behind the scenes, and they remain extremely passive in learning and exploring. Therefore, this thesis aims to read and discuss the tendencies of individuals whose attention is exploited and whose data are processed like a raw material in the hands of surveillance capitalist companies, whose decisions and choices are directed, whose free will and privacy are threatened, to make surveillance commonplace despite all this, through the concepts of consumer culture and attention economy in the context of online behavioral advertising. Keywords: Digital Data Surveillance, Online Behavioral Advertising, Surveillance Capitalism, Consumption Culture, Attention Economy.