Creep: The Growing Surveillance of Students’ Online Activities

Recently there has been a growth in the surveillance of students’ online activities. This has been facilitated not only by the increasing numbers of digital devices, but also through surveillance creep (Marx, 1998). Drawing upon this concept and associated ideas, including data creep, policy creep and concept creep, this paper explores the digital monitoring of students via classroom management software, social media surveillance and education apps. It is concluded that driven by commercialisation, commodification and normalisation surveillance creep is problematic insofar as it results in over-blocking, undermines digital rights, invades privacy, appropriates personal property and proprietorially harvests data.