Black Mirror series based on surveillance studies: Real life and fiction relation

The surveillance practices are still on discussion today as well as during the history. Surveillance practices which became more visible throughout the improvements of communication technologies and especially social media improvements have been developing, spreading and internalized. Today there are lots of artistic examples on surveillance; especially cinema films and television series. "Black Mirror" TV series; which firstly published in 2011 is one of these examples. Black Mirror is monitoring the effects of the surveillance and communication technologies on human life in a fictional future as a dystopia. In this study; Black Mirror series' fictional universe in which critiques of new communication technologies are made is compared with the examples of real life, contents of the series are analyzed and an analysis is made throughout themes. With this aim, surveillance studies literature is examined, concepts on surveillance and new communication technologies are researched. In the last part of the study, Black Mirror series' fictional universe is compared with the examples of real life through the determined themes. The analysis shows that fictional examples in Black Mirror are also found in the real life practices. At that point, although new communication technologies have useful effects, they also serve to the surveillance mechanism. It can be claimed that the dystopia in Black Mirror is already being lived in real life.