internet prosumption in contemporary...

Internet Prosumption in Contemporary Capitalism

Christian Fuchs

Chair Professor in Media and Communication Studies Uppsala University, Department of Informatics and Media Sweden

[email protected] http://fuchs.uti.at http://www.im.uu.se

Sociologists, please tweet! #ESA2011

1. Remarks on Some Conceptual Approaches on Prosumption

* Fuchs, Christian. 2011. Foundations of critical media and information studies. New York: Routledge.

* Fuchs, Christian. 2008. Internet and society. Social theory in the information age. New York: Routledge. Paperback 2011.

* Fuchs, Christian, Kees Boersma, Anders Albrechtslund and Marisol Sandoval, eds. 2011. Internet and surveillance. The challenges of web 2.0 and social media. New York: Routledge.


Karl Marx: Introduction to the Critique of the Political Economy

dialectic of production – circulation – consumption of commodities:

* Consumption – Production: Consumption is the production of new needs, it creates production of commodities (MEW 13, 623). Consumption is the (re)production of the human mind and body. Consumption also involves the production of meanings and ideologies.

* Production – Consumption: Production “supplies the material, the object of consumption [...] therefore, production creates, produces consumption” (MEW 13, 623). Production is a consumption of means of production and labour power.


* Production – Circulation:

Production is based on the circulation of two commodities: labour force and means of production.

Production creates commodities that circulate on markets.

* Circulation – Production/Consumption:

Commodities must circulate on markets in order to be consumed by end consumers and as resources and labour force commodity in the production of new commodities.

Circulation involves the production of meanings and ideologies that are inscribed into commodities (advertising, marketing). These meanings are decoded in certain ways by consumers.


Alvin TofEler (1980) – The Third Wave:

“We see a progressive blurring of the line that separates producer from consumer. We see the rising signiMicance of the prosumer“ (267).


Esther Dyson, George Gilder, George Keyworth and Alvin TofEler (1996/2004): Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age

“DeEining property rights in cyberspace is perhaps the single most urgent and important task for government information policy“ (39)

The “Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age” contradicts what TofMler wrote in 1980 about the character of knowledge in “The Third Wave”, where he said that the third wave advances a

“trans-market civilization” that is “able to move on to a new agenda” and advance the “end of marketization” (TofMler 1980, 287).


George Ritzer, Douglas Goodman and Wendy Wiedenhoft (2003):

Sociology of consumption is Mlourishing, but “remains greatly subordinated to thinking on production“ (425)

Prosumption as inherent feature of McDonaldization:

“Instead of having employees do things for consumers, much of consumption now involves consumers doing many things for themselves, and for no pay“ (424)

= “putting consumers to work“ (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010, 18):

fast food restaurant: consumer is her/his own waiter self-‐service gasoline stations etc.


Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010): web 2.0 facilitates the emergence of “prosumer capitalism“, capitalist economy “has always been dominated by prosumption“ (14)

criticism:

overestimation of the role of prosumption in capitalism

prosumption is one of several tendencies in capitalism, but not the only quality of capitalism:

Minance capitalism, imperialistic capitalism, informational capitalism, hyperindustrial capitalism (oil), crisis capitalism, etc.


Castells, Manuel (2009) Communication power

mass communication => mass self-communication

“It is mass communication because it can potentially reach a global audience, as in the posting of a video on YouTube, a blog with RSS links to a number of web sources, or a message to a massive e-‐mail list. At the same time, it is self-‐communication because the production of the message is self-generated, the deMinition of the potential receiver(s) is self-directed, and the retrieval of speciMic messages or content from the World Wide Web and electronic networks is self-selected” (55).


Network-making power is the “paramount form of power in the network society” (Castells 2009, 47).

“power in the network society is communication power” (p. 53)

“communication networks are the fundamental networks of power-‐making in society” (p. 426).

Claims about “communication power” can also be found in contemporary politics.


Revolution in Egypt, 25.1.-‐11.2011

Wael Ghonim: “revolution 2.0“ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWvJxasiSZ8

“if you want to liberate a society, just give them the Internet“ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/11/egypt-facebook-revolution-wael-ghonim_n_822078.html

Iran, June 2009: blogger Andrew Sullivan – “The Revolution Will Be Twittered” http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2009/06/the-revolution-will-be-twittered/200478/


UK riots, August 2011

“Twitter mobs“, “Blackberry mobs“

“Thugs used social network Twitter to orchestrate the Tottenham violence“ (The Sun, Aug 8, 2011)

“Gang members used Blackberry smartphones [...] to organise the mayhem“ (The Telegraph, Aug 8, 2011)


Technological determinism that ignores the political economy of events

Vincent Mosco (2004):

digital sublime = “eruption of feeling that brieMly overwhelms reason“ (22)

“Today, cyberspace has become the latest icon of the technological and electronic sublime, praised for its epochal and transcendent characteristics and demonized for the depth of the evil it can conjure“ (24)


Fuchs, Christian. 2009. Some reMlections on Manuel Castells‘ book “Communication Power“. tripleC: Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 7 (1): 94-‐108.

* Castells‘ approach is not a social theory

* The Weberian concept of power as asymmetric power that beneMits one at the expense of others is for Castells “the most fundamental process in society” (10) => uncritical naturalization of coercive power, power fetishism

Isn’t the phenomenon of altruism in love the practical falsiMication of the claim that coercive power is the most fundamental process in society?


* Fetishism of computing:

Technocratic language, expression from computer science used for describing social relations:

program, meta-‐programmers, switches, switchers, conMiguration, inter-‐operability, protocols, network standards, network components, kernel, program code, etc. as aspects of power in society

the differentia speciEica of society in comparison to computers and computer networks – that society is based on humans, reMlexive and self-‐conscious beings that have cultural norms, anticipative thinking, and a certain freedom of action that computers do not have – gets lost.


* Network society = new society (Castells, 2000a, p. 371)

“power in the network society is communication power” (p. 53)

Has the Internet brought about a new society?

Continuity of capitalism, But: new qualities of capital accumulation

Capitalism is a complex Eield that is shaped by multiple interacting tendencies such as communication power, Minance power, imperial power, hyperindustrial power, etc.

1. Theories

A

2. Participatory web as ideology

Alan Warde (2002):

sceptical view on “cultural economy” approach:

Cultural goods “comprise a small proportion of household expenditures, sectoral employment and capital investment. […] the vast bulk of household expenditure remains devoted to other categories of item” (Warde 2002, 198)


Henry Jenkins argues that increasingly “the Web has become a site of consumer participation” (Jenkins 2008: 137) and sees blogging as “potentially increasing cultural diversity and lowering barriers in cultural participation”, “expanding the range of perspectives”, as “grassroots intermediaries” that ensure “that everyone has a chance to be heard” (Jenkins 2006: 180f).

Axel Bruns says that “open participation” (Bruns 2008: 24, 240) is a key principle of produsage.

Clay Shirky (2008: 107) says that on web 2.0 there is a “linking of symmetrical participation and amateur production”.


Tapscott and Williams argue that “the new web” has resulted in “a new economic democracy […] in which we all have a lead role” (Tapscott and Williams 2007: 15).

Yochai Benkler (2006) says that due to the emergence of commons-based peer production on the Internet, “we can say that culture is becoming more democratic: self-‐reflective and participatory“ (Benkler 2006: 15).

Is the web participatory?

Answering this question requires an understanding of the notion of participation.


Participatory democracy theory

A participatory economy requires a “change in the terms of access to capital in the direction of more nearly equal access” (Macpherson 1973: 71) and “a change to more nearly equal access to the means of labour” (Macpherson 1973: 73).

“Genuine democracy, and genuine liberty, both require the absence of extractive powers” (Macpherson 1973: 121).

A participatory economy furthermore involves “the democratising of industrial authority structures” (Pateman 1970: 43).


Claim that social media are participatory is also the claim that the Internet is a public sphere. Habermas: limits of the bourgeois public sphere (=public sphere in capitalist society):

* limitation of freedom of speech and public opinion:

persons do not have same formal education and material resources for participating in public sphere (Habermas 1991, 227)

* limitation of freedom of association and assembly:

big political and economic organizations “enjoy an oligopoly of the publicistically effective and politically relevant formation of assemblies and associations” (Habermas 1991, 228),

3. Limits of Prosumption on the Internet

Examples

* Google

* Facebook

* YouTube

* Twitter

* Wikipedia

* WikiLeaks


Google

Video – The Google Toilet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrontojPWEE


Google has 900 million users and 20 000 employees


Table. Google’s ranking in the list of the largest public companies in the world (data source: Forbes Global 2000, various years; the ranking is based on a composite index of proMits, sales, assets and market value)


Table. Stock ownership shares and voting power shares at Google, 2010, data sources: Google Minancial data: Google Proxy Statement 2010


* page rank algorithm is secret

* Google searches privilege well-known economic and political actors because they have high reputation

* Google exploits and monitors users by selling user data to advertising clients that target users with ads


“political news“ (google.com, Aug 19, 2011)

1. politico.com (corporate, Allbritton Communications) 2. cnn.com (corporate, Time Warner) 3. foxnews.com (corporate, News Corporation) 4. msnbc.com (corporate, NBC Universal) 5. realclearpolitics.com (corporate, RealClear Holdings (51% share owned by Forbes) ) 6. nytimes.com (corporate, New York Times Company) 7. www.reuters.com (corporate, Thompson Reuters) 8. www.bbc.co.uk (public service) 9. politics.co.uk (corporate, Adfero) 10. abcnews.go.com (corporate, Walt Disney)


Facebook

ProMit: 2009: $US million 800 2010: $US billion 1.86

Video

Problems

-‐ Complex and long privacy policy

-‐ Intransparent data collection and usage

-‐ Lack of user involvement in decisions

-‐ Surveillance and selling of user data for advertising purposes


Most popular Facebook groups? Source: http://statistics.allfacebook.com/ Aug 19, 2011 1. Facebook, 50.7 million fans 2. Texas Hold‘em Poker, 48.6 million fans 3. Eminem 45.4M 4. YouTube 43.6M 5. Rihanna 43.4M 6. Lady Gaga 42.4M 7. Michael Jackson 39.7M 8. Shakira 39.0M 9. Family Guy 36.4M 10. Justin Bieber 34.8M ... 41. Barack Obama 22.4M Michael Moore: 495 866, Noam Chomsky: 325 325, Karl Marx. 186 722


Facebook is:

-‐ dominated by entertainment,

-‐ politics on Facebook are dominated by established actors,

-‐ alternative political views are marginalized


YouTube

owned by Google most accessed websites: #3 (alexa.com; Aug 19, 2011)

YouTube can use all uploaded videos for its business activities

some political uses in civil society and protests:

protests in Iran: Neda Soltani YouTube video (2009);

YouTube video about the death of Ian Tomlinson at the London anti-‐G20 protests (2009)


Most viewed videos of all time on YouTube (August 19, 2011)


YouTube

Politics? News & Politics is one of 15 browsing video categories, News & Politics: most viewed video ever: “If you are happy”, 68 026 353 views (Aug 19, 2011)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrsM9WggCdo

children song: “If you happy, and you know it, clap your hands”.


Twitter

Can meaningful political debates be based on 140 character long short messages? Short text invites simplistic arguments and is an expression of the commodiMication and speed-‐up of culture

Most accessed websites: #9 (alexa.com; Aug 19, 2011)

Most popular Twitter topic in June 2011, Data source: http://mashable.com/2011/06/30/top-‐twitter-‐trends-‐june/


A http://mashable.com/2010/12/22/top-‐twitter-‐trends-‐2010-‐charts/


A


Twitter and other social media have a certain potential to support political mobilizations

role in protests and revolutions in countries like Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Yemen

These potentials should not be overestimated.

Rebellions and revolutions are made by people living under certain social conditions and power relations, not by technology.


Wikipedia

* knowledge commons * co-‐operative knowledge production * non-‐proMit oganization * funded by donations

Most edited articles: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TableRankArticleHistoryByTotalEdits.html

most frequently edited articles are pages about Wikipedia policies and guidelines, but also political pages (Barack Obama, George W. Bush)


December 2010 – most edited articles:

1) WikiLeaks 2) Julian Assange 3) Deaths in 2010 4) United States Diplomatic Cables Leak 5) Tron: Legacy 6) Richard Holbrooke 7) Harty Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Milm) 8) GFAJ-‐1 9) Bradley Manning 10) 2022 FIFA World Cup

Source: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm


WikiLeaks

* non-‐commercial Internet whistle-‐blowing platform that is online since 2006 * founded by Julian Assange * Non-‐proMit, funded by online donations * Alternative online medium: provides critical knowledge to the public

Submission by all users possible: http://wikileaks.ch/Submissions.html


WikiLeaks Most accessed web sites: #867 (alexa.com; Dec 26, 2010), #28 016 (alexa.com; August 19, 2011)

=> depends on corporate mass media for news distribution (NY Times, Guardian, Spiegel, etc), which are prone to manipulation and (political and economic) censorship. Mainstream news media (alexa.com, Aug 19, 2011): #39 BBC Online #53 CNN Interactive #84 HufMington Post #88 New York Times #115 Daily Mail #148 Spiegel Online #150 The Guardian


WikiLeaks self-deEinition:

mainly government watchdog, making government power transparent => “good governance“

lack of focus on corporate crime and corporate irresponsibility

Potential for acting as critical online medium


SUMMARY

The web is dominated by corporations that exploit users and the logic of consumption, advertising and entertainment.

Political uses are observable, but not dominant.

Wikipedia and WikiLeaks are two exceptions from the rule of the corporate domination of the Internet

=> “Participatory social media/web 2.0“ = ideology

=> “Digital public sphere“ = ideology

=> alternative theorization of the Internet is needed

4. Class and the web

Dallas W. Smythe (1994, 258):

called for a “Marxist theory of communication” (Smythe 1994, 258)

Graham Murdock and Peter Golding (2005, 61):

“Critical Political Economy of Communications” is critical in the sense of being “broadly marxisant“

Marx’s analysis of capitalism: The expanded reproduction process of capital, capital accumulation


Karl Marx said that as a consequence of the globalization of capitalism

“institutions emerge whereby each individual can acquire information about the activity of all others and attempt to adjust his own accordingly” and that these “interconnections” are enabled by “mails, telegraphs etc” (Marx 1857/58:161).

Isn’t this a good description of the Internet?


A


Marx’s theory: “The theory of surplus value is in consequence immediately the theory of exploitation” (Negri 1991: 74)

Rosa Luxemburg (1913: 363) argued that capital accumulation feeds on the exploitation of milieus that are drawn into the capitalist system.

Marxist Feminism: unpaid reproductive labour can be considered as an inner colony and milieu of primitive accumulation of capitalism. (Bennholdt-‐Thomsen, Mies & Werlhof 1992, Mies 1996, Werlhof 1991)

Antonio Negri uses the term “social worker” for arguing that there is a broadening of the proletariat that is “now extended throughout the entire span of production and reproduction” (Negri 1982: 209).

=> Hardt and Negri (2000, 2004): multitude

Erik Olin Wright’s class model as foundation


Over-exploitation means that goods are produced in a way that the “individual value of these articles is now below their social value” (Marx 1867: 434).

c (technologies, infrastructure) M - C . . P1 . . P2 . . C‘ - M‘

(social media services) v1 (paid) v2 (unpaid work:

1) WWW content production, 2) service use)

C‘ = Internet prosumer commodity (user-generated content, transaction data, virtual advertising space and time) most social media services are free to use, they are no commodities. User data and the users are the social media commodity.


proEit rate p = s / (c + v) = surplus value / (constant capital + variable capital)

Exploitation of labour by Internet Mirms:

p = s / (c + v1 + v2),

s … surplus value, c … constant capital, v1 … value of work by waged employees (wages), v2 … value of the work by users

v2 => 0, v1 => v2 (v2 substitutes v1) outsourcing of labour


Produsage in a capitalist society can be interpreted as the outsourcing of productive labour from wage labour to users who work completely for free and help maximizing

the rate of exploitation:

e = s / v, = surplus value / variable capital

proMits can be raised and new media capital can be accumulated.

e = s /v: v=>0 => exploitation=>inEinity


Dallas Smythe (1981/2006) suggests that in the case of media advertisement models, the audience is sold as a commodity to advertisers (audience commodity):

“Because audience power is produced, sold, purchased and consumed, it commands a price and is a commodity. (….) You audience members contribute your unpaid work time and in exchange you receive the program material and the explicit advertisements” (Smythe 1981/2006: 233, 238).

=> Internet prosumer commodity

active, creative prosumption activity is the heart and source of exploitation on the Internet

5. Alternatives?

“renaissance of Marxist political economy” (Callinicos 2007, 342)

Göran Therborn: the “new constellations of power and new possibilities of resistance” in the 21st century require retaining the “Marxian idea that human emancipation from exploitation, oppression, discrimination” (Therborn 2008, 61).

“Once again the time has come to take Marx seriously” (Hobsbawm 2011, 419)

5. Alternatives?

Žižek (2010, x): crisis of capitalism => capitalism “is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point”.

Development paths:

1) it could be the emergence of a qualitatively new form of neoliberal capitalism (hyper-neoliberalism), 2) the emergence of a more regulated, neo-Keynesian form of capitalism, 3) the rise of fascist forms of capitalism, 4) a long time of conElict and global wars, or 5) the emergence of a participatory society and economy.

5. Alternatives?

Luc Boltanski (2011) – On critique. A sociology of emancipation:

critique in the era of neoliberalism: “the absence of a ‘project’ or an ‘alternative’ to the present situation” (41).

Today: time for critique to discuss capitalism’s “replacement by less violent forms of utilization of the earth’s resources and ways of organizing the relations between human beings that would no longer be of the order of exploitation. It could perhaps then restore the word communism” (159).

V = c + v + s

MULTITUDE

produces surplus value,

commons (knowledge, language, affects,

communication, education, care, technology, digital

knowledge, user-generated Internet content, Internet-

mediated communication, etc)

Marx: knowledge = part of the commons = “universal labour” that is “brought about partly by the cooperation of men now living, but partly also by building on earlier work” (Marx 1894: 199).

CAPITAL, “EMPIRE“

M-C..P..C‘-M‘

capital exploits surplus value and the commons

the multitude resists against capital

commonwealth

= actuality: necessary for capitalism = potentiality

“AUFHEBUNG“ (SUBLATION)

The Hegelian Dialectical Triad of Multitude, Capital (Empire), and Commonwealth

“a world of common wealth, focusing on and expanding our capacities for collective production and self-government“ (Hardt and Negri 2009, Commonwealth: xiii), comunism ≠ “centralized state control“, “proper meaning“ of communism=“what the private is to capitalism, what the public is to [state] socialism, the common is to communism“ (Hardt and Negri 2009: 273) => FOR A COMMUNIST INTERNET IN A COMMUNIST SOCIETY POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

5. Alternatives?

Raymond Williams (1983):

commons – communism – communication:

to communicate means to make something “common to many” (Williams 1983, 72).

Communication is part of the commons of society.

Denying humans to communicate is like denying them to breathe fresh air; it undermines the conditions of their survival.

Therefore the communicative commons of society should be available for free (without payment or other access requirements) for all and should not be privately owned or controlled by a class.

5. Alternatives?

Commons of society:

* are needed for all humans to exist * communication, nature, welfare, health care, education, knowledge, arts and culture, food, housing * basing the commons on the logic of markets, commodities, competition, exchange and profit results in fundamental inequalities of access to the commons

=> the commons should be no commodities, but freely available (without payment)

=> Strengthening the communication commons => Advancing commons-based media and a commons-based Internet in a commons-based participatory society

5. Alternatives?

Commons-based media:

* Common access for all * Common ownership * Common space of communication * Common capacity to produce and share knowledge * Common space for the co-creation of shared meanings (co-operation) * Common space for political debate * Common space for co-forming collective values and identities * Common space for struggles against the colonization of the commons

5. Alternatives?

How to start?

1) State support and funding for non-commercial Internet projects

2) Individual Einancial and academic support of non-commercial Internet projects

3) Watching the watchers and documenting their strategies of exploitation and domination: Internet watch platforms

4) Legalization of Eile sharing + basic income for cultural producers

5) Support of political struggles against neoliberalism and capitalism and for a revitalization of the commons

6) Public control of corporate Internet platforms (e.g. public search engines run by public organizations like public universities)

CONCLUSION

* Europe and the world have experienced a neoliberal accumulation of dispossession of the commons of society

* The ongoing crisis is a crisis of capitalism

* We need to think about alternatives to the logic of capital and commodities

* Political struggles against neoliberalism as struggles for the strengthening of the commons

* Internet prosumption is shaped by an antagonism between commodiMication and commons-‐based prosumption

* Wikipedia and WikiLeaks are the shining forth of a commons-‐based Internet

* Struggles for the strengthening the public sphere and commons-based media

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