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

[Jan Nolin]

Mark,
This is a very important discussion. For some of the reasons you
mentioned, I find "exploitation" to be a bit misleading for these
phenomena. I think we need to develop new and more specific concepts for
the things that we analyze. One concept that has some promise is
"digital sharecropping", suggested by Nicholas Carr. This creates a
parallel to the traditional forms of sharecropping where the farmers
worked the land while the land owners reaped the profits.
 
/Jan

 
..........................................
Jan Nolin, PhD 
Professor 
Bibliotekshögskolan/Institutionen för biblioteks- och
informationsvetenskap
Högskolan i Borås
501 90 Borås
 
http://www.hb.se/wps/portal/forskning/forskare/jan-nolin

Telefon: + 46 (0)33 435 43 36
Fax: +46 (0)33 435 40 05
>>> Mark Andrejevic <markbandrejevic at gmail.com> 2012-04-11 03:11 >>>
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 w
ays 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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