Post-Panoptic Surveillance through Healthcare Rating Sites: Who's watching whom?

This article examines websites where patients rate and evaluate healthcare services as mechanisms for transforming citizens into surveillers of public services in order to generate knowledge about the everyday performance of professionals and institutions. Using post-panoptic theories about the use of information and communication technologies in daily life, it questions how such sites, and the knowledge they generate, relate to existing surveillance structures. It begins with a review of current surveillance literature before turning to the empirical case of the Dutch website Zoekdokter. It situates the site in its specific national health and policy context, which enables not only an analysis of the site, but also the existing rules, norms and structures for monitoring performance and the dynamic between multiple types of surveillance that occur simultaneously in practice. Zoekdokter.nl is one of six cases in this research project and is the only case where patients are encouraged to evaluate individual professionals identified by name and location. I analyze website texts and 15 stakeholder interviews using the post-panoptic concepts of sousveillance, coveillance and infoveillance. In the discussion, I use the case to reflect on several assumptions made in current post-panoptic theory and, more specifically, on the transferability of these ideas to specific sectors, such as healthcare.

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