Cultivating vigilant drivers through TV: On the cultural work of dashcam videos and normalization of surveillance

Abstract

This paper explores the cultural work of surveillance through the emerging YouTube genre of videos that feature footage from in-car video data recorders. South Korea's ‘Han Moon Chul TV’ (HMC TV) exemplifies this genre, inheriting and extending beyond the traditions of public service television for traffic safety. The analysis shows how HMC TV operates as a cultural technology that merges the previous goals of public service television with the visual language of automotive vision while also promoting the idea of self as a node of safety responsibility. The paper situates HMC TV within broader discussions on traffic safety, technological change, and surveillance normalization in the South Korean context, interrogating its role in shaping defensive rationality and vigilant driving behaviors. By incorporating surveillance technologies into regimes of safety, these representations help legitimize surveillance as a self-protection tool and a guarantor of truth, positioning it as a necessary defense against potential future threats.