[ICTs-and-Society] Plenary 7: “The Internet and Critical Theory Today” (Mark Andrejevic, Andrew Feenberg)

[Mark Andrejevic]

Thanks Christian,
I'm looking forward to the conference -- and have greatly appreciated the
pre-conference discussions. I'm very interested to see that there are at
least a couple of talks that focus on the question of exploitation. The
term has become an important one for me because I'm trying to come up with
a formulation other than privacy to explore areas of concern about the
collection and use of personal information in the digital era. Recent
events in Europe and the US related to Google and Facebook's handling of
personal information demonstrate how powerful the privacy "frame" is for
talking about the wholesale capture of personal data for commercial
purposes is -- and yet, in many cases we are talking about processes of
information capture that do not violate conventional expectations of
privacy (such as looking at aggregate patterns without attempting to drill
down and identify individuals) and in other cases we are talking about
forms of privatization (the capture and proprietary use of particular types
of data) that rely on conventional understandings of the relationship
between privacy and property.

The notion of exploitation looks like a useful one to me because it points
to the underlying patterns of commercial ownership and control of
communication infrastructures that are coming to colonize an increasing
range of social interactions and behavior. The seemingly "free" and
ubiquitous character of services provided by Google and Facebook has led to
our treating them as if they are public utilities, when of course they are
private, for-profit, commercially driven companies whose decisions play an
important role in shaping the information environment upon which we are
becoming increasingly reliant. When I started studying the mass media --
then considered to be primarily TV, newspapers (magazines), and radio (with
some cinema and sound recording thrown in) -- there was a strong critical
emphasis on "media monopoly" and the political economy of those industries
that shape our information environment. The advent of the World Wide Web
and attendant forms of techno-enthusiasm seems to have had the perhaps
temporary effect of sidelining such questions as core elements of media
studies, and one of the reasons I am looking forward to this conference is
that it brings together people who have been challenging this tendency from
the start.

I have been taken to task on occasion for enlisting a term traditionally
associated with critical approaches to the analysis of human suffering and
immiseration in the realm of production to critique apparently voluntary
forms of  behavior that take place outside the realm of production "proper"
-- intriguingly such challenges have, on occasion, come from people who
have otherwise worked to destabilize these oppositions (by highlighting the
convergence of consumption and production, etc.). I am sensitive to the
observation that providing data for Facebook is qualitatively different
from laboring under sweatshop conditions, and yet, I continue to think that
the notion of exploitation usefully points to the structured relations of
power that allow for the capture and use of personal information -- often
as a tool that can be turned back upon those who generate it. I also think
that it is important to note the ways in which the online economy is not
isolated from the broader economy that continues to rely on more brutal
conditions of exploitation, shored up by the very same relations of
ownership and control.

As part of the lead up to the conference I'd be interested in hearing
people's thoughts about the potential and limitations of the critique of
exploitation as a way of thinking about the forms of value production that
take place in the context of social media.

As a side note, Facebook's reframing of its privacy policy as a "data use
policy" is perhaps a suggestive one -- privacy advocates I know saw it as a
move by Facebook to attempt to distance itself from privacy concerns. To
me, this looked to like an opportunity to focus on the question of data use
and perhaps sidestep the way in which the commercial sector has been
working to exploit the ambivalence of the notion of privacy.

I'd be interested in people's thoughts.
best,
Mark



On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 5:18 PM, Christian Fuchs <christian.fuchs at uti.at>wrote:

> Friday, May 4th, 2012
> * Mark Andrejevic (University of Queensland, Australia): Social Media:
> Surveillance and Exploitation 2.0
> * Andrew Feenberg (Simon Fraser University, Canada): Great Refusal and
> Long March: How to Use Critical Theory to Think About the Internet.
> Chair: Christian Fuchs
>
> Mark's and Andrew's talks will bring up questions like the following ones:
> How do corporations use social networking sites? What is exploitation 2.0
> and how does the exploitation of labour work on social media? How is online
> life commercialized, branded, and monetized? What is the role of
> surveillance in online exploitation? How can critical theory adequately
> reflect and criticize these developments?
> How relevant is Herbert Marcuse's thinking and critical theory today? What
> is an adequate strategy for transforming the Internet? Does it require a
> "Great Refusal" (Marcuse) or a "Long March through the Institutions"
> (Dutschke, Marcuse)? Does Critical Theory require a blanket condemnation of
> the Internet? Does Critical Theory need a long march strategy that assesses
> the Internet's reality against its potentials? What is the essence of the
> Internet? What is the existence of the Internet? Is there a difference
> between essence and existence of the Internet? What is a true Internet?
> What a false Internet?
>
> Pre-conference discussions on these and related questions are welcome over
> the mailing list.
>
> ***
>
> MARK ANDREJEVIC
> University of Queensland, Australia
>
> Social Media: Surveillance and Exploitation 2.0
>
> ABSTRACT: This presentation explores the ways in which social networking
> technologies are being taken up by the commercial sector as ways for
> integrating social and work life. Thanks to the popularity and ubiquity of
> social network technologies in some sectors of the population, companies
> are finding ways to exploit the social connections of their employees,
> customers, and clients, leading to start-up companies that seek to monetize
> social network data by linking it with consumer relations databases and
> other technologies for target marketing. When important aspects of people’s
> social lives migrate onto commercial platforms these become subject to
> marketing imperatives, self-branding becomes a new (or updated) form of
> employee asset. The goal of the presentation is to develop a theoretical
> approach to the commercialization and monetization of online social life.
> To what extent might the critique of exploitation be updated and brought to
> bear upon the productivity of social networks? What aspects of this
> critique help illuminate the wholesale commodification of social
> relationships, and what are the implications of relying upon a privately
> owned commercial infrastructure for their development? The critique of
> exploitation directs us back to these questions. It urges us to consider
> the ways in which the commercialization of the platform turns our own
> activity back upon ourselves in the service of priorities that are not our
> own, and it reminds us of the double duty done by the privately controlled
> interactive infrastructure. This infrastructure might serve as a platform
> for new forms of creativity, deliberation, communication, interaction, and
> consumption. At the same time, though, it works to assemble the most
> comprehensive system for mass monitoring in human history. The accusation
> associated with the critique of exploitation reminds us of the ways in
> which new forms of marketing driven surveillance help turn our own
> productive activity back upon ourselves in the service of ends that are not
> our own.
>
> SPEAKER INFO: Mark Andrejevic is a media scholar at The University of
> Queensland, Australia. He writes about surveillance, new media, and popular
> culture. In broad terms, he is interested in the ways in which forms of
> surveillance and monitoring enabled by the development of new media
> technologies impact the realms of economics, politics, and culture.
>
> ***
>
> ANDREW FEENBERG
> Simon Fraser University, Canada
> Great Refusal and Long March: How to Use Critical Theory to Think About
> the Internet
>
> ABSTRACT: Herbert Marcuse suggested two different strategies at different
> points in his career. The Great Refusal implied a strategy of non-cooptable
> demands. This notion stemmed from a dystopian sense of the total
> systematization of society and was in harmony with the uncompromising
> opposition of the early New Left. But in the later period of what Marcuse
> called the “preventive counter-revolution”, he adopted Rudi Dutschke’s
> slogan of “the long march through the institutions”. The choice at this
> time was between withdrawal, terrorism and participating critically.
> Marcuse advocated the latter.
> I want to think about our critical stance toward the Internet in terms of
> these two strategies. Does Critical Theory require a blanket condemnation
> of the Internet? This seems to be the conclusion drawn by many observers.
> Hypothetically, this could lead one to a Great Refusal of the Internet and
> all its works, withdrawal to an Internet-free zone of some sort. I will
> argue that we need a long march strategy based on a much more nuanced
> critique. We need to measure the Internet against its real potentials and
> defend it against real dangers rather than condemning it unqualifiedly.
>
> SPEAKER INFO: Andrew Feenberg holds the Canada Research Chair in
> Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser
> University, where he directs the Applied Communication and Technology Lab.
> His main areas of research are Critical Theory and philosophy of technology.
>
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