scholarly journals Auto-biography: On the Immanent Commodification of Personal Information

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 46-53
Author(s):  
Kenneth C Werbin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Information Ethics ◽  
Deep Web ◽  
The Political ◽  
Shed Light

In the last years, a series of automated self-representational social media sites have emerged that shed light on the information ethics associated with participation in Web 2.0. Sites like Zoominfo.com, Pipl.com, 123People.com and Yasni.com not only continually mine and aggregate personal information and biographic data from the (deep) web and beyond to automatically represent the lives of people, but they also engage algorithmic networking logics to represent connections between them; capturing not only who people are, but whom they are connected to. Indeed, these processes of ‘auto-biography’ are ‘secret’ ones that for the most part escape the user’s attention. This article explores how these sites of auto-biography reveal the complexities of the political economy of Web 2.0, as well as implicate an ethics of exposure concerning how these processes at once participate in the erosion of privacy, and at the same time, in the reinforcement of commodification and surveillance regimes.

Read only: The persistence of lurking in Web 2.0

First Monday ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Kushner
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Web 2.0 ◽  
User Participation ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
The Political ◽  
Corporate Social

Social media is supposed to be all about participation. But most users don’t participate very much. This essay argues that lurking poses a threat to the prevailing logic of corporate social platforms. It explores the leading discourses of participation and lurking in order to theorize how this threat functions, contributes to the political economy of communication in order to account for both user generated content and lurking, and examines strategies that platforms deploy in order to combat lurking and stimulate steady user participation. Finally, it speculates that platforms may be planning for a future where participation figures less centrally, thereby blunting lurking’s threat.

Social-media-weaponised populism and community development

2020 ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
Jacques Boulet
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Community Development ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Development Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Economic Background ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter assesses the resurfacing of populism and its much-discussed and documented adoption and enactment by leaders and citizens. More specifically, it discusses reasons for this (re-)emergence and its effects on people's daily lives and their participation in community life against the wider political-economic background, two areas central to much community development theory and practice. The first question posed is: what is going on with and around people — especially their modalities of 'being' and 'relating' — rendering them more 'prone' to being influenced by populisms and become populisms' 'accomplices'? Second, what role does social media play in this imposition/complicity dialectic? Indeed, social media powerfully invades and interpenetrates all levels and processes of the political economy, of people's everyday experiences and their subjective-affective lives, and they infest the mediating institutions operating 'between' the virtual global and the imperceptible here and now. Finally, a third question is posed: what is the effect of such socially mediated populism on communities and on efforts to (re)develop and maintain them? The chapter concludes with some ideas about ways to resist the (combined) assault of populism and social media and restart the project of democracy.

Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Studying Digital Feminist Activism

2019 ◽  
pp. 24-41
Author(s):  
Kaitlynn Mendes ◽  
Jessica Ringrose ◽  
Jessalynn Keller
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Approaches To Studying ◽  
Critical Technology ◽  
Key Terms

In this chapter, we outline our conceptual framework, addressing key theories that underpin our analysis, including, affect and related concepts, including affective solidarity, networked affect, and affective publics. We also introduce key terms from critical technology studies, including platform vernacular and other concepts relevant to the political economy of social media. After providing further information on the six case studies described in the Introduction, including their reason for selection and methods used, the chapter details our unique methodological approach, which draws insights from a range of interdisciplinary tools, including feminist ethnographic methods, thematic textual analysis, semi-structured interviews, surveys, and online observations.

scholarly journals The threat of surveillance capitalism

Teknokultura ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-276
Author(s):  
Chris H. Gray
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
21St Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Important Addition ◽  
The Early 21St Century

Using Shoshana Zuboff’s 2019 book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, the essay explores this latest form of capitalism and Zuboff’s claims about its organization. Her arguments are compared and contrasted with David Eggers novel, and the movie that came out of it, called The Circle, as well as other perspectives on capitalism (Marx, Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger) and the current dominance of social media companies (especially Alphabet/Google, Facebook, and Amazon) from Evgeny Morozov, Natasa Dow Schüll, Zeynep Tufekci, Steve Mann and Tim Wu. Zuboff’s description and critique of Surveillance Capitalism is a convincing and important addition to our understanding of the political economy of the early 21st Century and the role of giant monopolistic social media companies in shaping it.

Digital media communication, intellectual property, and the commodification of language

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-266
Author(s):  
Joseph Sung-Yul Park
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Media Communication ◽  
For Profit ◽  
A Site ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract Focusing on fansubbing, the production of unauthorized subtitles by fans of audiovisual media content, this paper calls for a more serious sociolinguistic analysis of the political economy of digital media communication. It argues that fansubbing’s contentious position within regimes of intellectual property and copyright makes it a useful context for considering the crucial role of language ideology in global capitalism’s expanding reach over communicative activity. Through a critical analysis of Korean discourses about fansubbing, this paper considers how tensions between competing ideological conceptions of fansub work shed light on the process by which regimes of intellectual property incorporate digital media communication as a site for profit. Based on this analysis, the paper argues for the need to look beyond the affordances of digital media in terms of translingual, hybrid, and creative linguistic form, to extend our investigations towards language ideologies as a constitutive element in the political economy.

scholarly journals Screening for Erdoğanism: Television, post-truth and political fear

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-354
Author(s):  
Burçe Çelik
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Global South ◽  
The Political ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Security Threats ◽  
Production Dynamics

The majority of current political communication studies focuses on digital and social media, and overlooks the centrality of television for the production and endurance of strongman politics in the Global South. By focusing on the journalistic television productions aired during the June 2018 election period in Turkey, this article unpacks the televisual logic that is incarnated in different modalities of telling and narrating of televisual genres. I propose two main themes: the ‘political fear’ of physical and social security threats, and ‘post-truth communications’ as the main televisual idioms for a vision of the future that is either secure or chaotic, that is, with or without Erdoğan. By combining political economy, content and textual analysis, I scrutinise the production dynamics of the televisual economy and the control and content of factual segments.

Global Standards and Social Contracts: The Political Economy of Bibliographic Description

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant D. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Semantic Web ◽  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Contracts ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
Global Standards ◽  
The Web

This paper compares information description in library cataloguing, the Semantic Web and the Web 2.0. It relates them to three separate but related principles in classical political economy: Thomas Hobbes’s state of nature, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s social contract, and Adam Smith’s invisible hand.Cette communication compare la description de l’information dans les catalogues bibliographiques, le Web sémantique et le Web 2.0. Ces pratiques sont mis en relief avec trois principes distincts, mais connexes de l’économie politique classique : l’état de la nature de Thomas Hobbes, le contrat social de Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la main invisible d’Adam Smith.

An everyday glimpse of the nation: NHK’s morning drama (asadora) and rituality

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Scherer
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Unity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Broadcaster ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Shed Light

NHK’s morning drama (asadora) has been an important institution on Japanese television since the 1960s and is also known as ‘national drama’. This article discusses this media format in the context of rituals and nationhood: watching asadora has become an everyday ritual that can convey a sense of national unity, and the series functions as a ‘media ritual’ that naturalizes the concept of the Japanese nation, thereby also strengthening the symbolic power of the public broadcaster NHK. As the example of Hiyokko (2017) shows, the producers of this series evoke collective memory and nostalgia by depicting everyday culture and large, nationally charged events such as the 1964 Olympic Games. Reflecting on asadora can shed light on the political and ideological dimensions of seemingly ‘banal’ media products as well as provide more general insights into the development of television in times of social media and the disappearance of the ‘national’ TV audience.

scholarly journals Commodification, Spatialization, and Structuring in Instagram (Vincent Mosco's Descriptive Political Economy Study on Instagram Anies Baswedan Related to Covid-19)

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rifka Hanifah ◽  
Vinda Fauzia Hamdani Putri ◽  
Ajeng Setia Utari
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
New Media ◽  
Descriptive Study ◽  
The United States ◽  
Internet Technology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Economy Of Media ◽  
Exchange Value ◽  
Use Values

Instagram is one of the social media that is widely used by Indonesians. Instagram users in Indonesia are under Instagram users from the United States, Brazil and China. The emergence of social media Instagram is a new and interesting dynamic to research based on Vincent Mosco's descriptive study of the political economy of the economy. One way to see and analyze an issue or phenomenon of communication is through the descriptive study of Vincent Mosco's political economy and economy. In theory, Mosco refers to the globalization of the political economy of media which explains where there is a transition from old media and when new media emerge. Thus the formulation of the problem of this research is how the political economy practice of communication in the use of Instagram social media during the Covid-19 pandemic which was observed from Anies Baswedan's Instagram account. This study uses a descriptive research method in order to provide an overview description of the political economy practice of communication on Instagram social media during the Covid-19 pandemic which was observed from the Instagram account of the Governor of DKI Jakarta, Anies Baswedan. It can be concluded that social media is a means based on internet technology (online media) such as Instagram which allows a person to interact, communicate, collaborate and share information with others. Even Instagram users can easily participate directly in it. Commodification, spatialization and structuration are three important elements in political economy because they can bring about changes in function or use values. Commodification is one of the elements that is directly related to how the process of transforming goods or services (along with their use value) into a commodity that has an exchange value in the market. Spatialization is a process when dealing with time and space. Structuring is a communication or media activity associated with social structures.

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