[ICTs-and-Society] Fwd: Discussion post from m.andrejevic at uq.edu.au
Astrid Mager
astrid.mager at univie.ac.at
Thu Apr 12 01:32:12 PDT 2012
I also agree with Andrew's point on user agency - the field of science
and technology studies has a long tradition in showing how user groups
participate in the stabilization of technologies.. hence Google users,
for example, but also FB users and others do gain something from the
services provided.. that's why they're them; no one forces them to do
so. Corporate technologies do help users and website providers and
marketers to reach their own goals of connecting, finding information,
sharing content, advertising etc. - Theo Röhle coined Google's strategy
a "system of punishments and rewards" - a pattern I found in almost all
interviews I conducted with various stakeholders involved in the social
construction of search technology. So the question is indeed: How
appropriate are concepts like exploitation and the political economy of
new media to describe mechanisms of enacting and stabilizing powerful
actors like Google & co.? Even though I think the notion of exploitation
is a valuable tool to explain how Google and others gain money from
users' activities and marketing purposes (as Christian explained in his
work very well), it excludes other societal actors participating in
these dynamics.. In a recent article I hence tried to show that a shift
of perspective is needed from impacts new media have on society towards
dynamics/ power relations involved in the enactment and shaping of new
media co-produced by heterogneous actors including users and their
agency.. the paper was just recently put online :)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2012.676056
I'd love to hear what people have to say about this! Also, the concept
of rent has been used by Matteo Pasquinelli in his article: "Google's
PageRank Algorithm: A Diagram of the Cognitive Capitalism and the
Rentier of the Common Intellect" published in the book "Deep Search" -
where you can also find the article by Theo Röhle.. this might be an
interesting book for some readers of the list! Pasquinelli's article is
online as well:
http://matteopasquinelli.com/bibliography
Thanks for a great discussion! I'm already looking forward to continuing
it in Uppsala, Astrid
Am 12.04.2012 09:43, schrieb Christian Fuchs:
> From m.andrejevic at uq.edu.au
>
> I agree with Andrew -- an economic approach will not fully explain the
> Internet; I see what's taking place here not as an attempt to saturate
> the field of explanation with economics, but rather to try to figure
> out, from a critical perspective, just what is taking place
> economically in the realm of social media. Not trying to explain
> everything with economics, in other words, but rather highlighting
> that there is an economic bit that still needs explaining and
> understanding, precisely because there are important ways in which it
> differs from what came before. To pick up on Andrew's invocation of
> Marx, one of the bases for collection action is some understanding of
> the terms of exploitation that structure social relations. From this
> perspective to analyze and critique exploitation is not to constrain
> "agency" but rather to start to trace the outlines for the impetus and
> ends for collective action. I use scare quotes, because
> "structure-agency" talk tends to reproduce a false opposition
> (familiar in the so-called debate between political economy and
> cultural studies) -- as if pointing out the way in which power
> relations structure available options poses a challenge to the idea
> that political action is possible (rather than an incitement to it).
> To my mind wrestling with these questions and trying to update or
> reconsider our formulations is doing precisely what Andrew suggests:
> not discounting future forms/bases of collective action, but figuring
> out what form they might take, and on what basis. I'm very much
> looking forward to hearing more about these.
>
> As for Andrew's claim that there is a "notable absence of reflection
> on the agency of users in the political economy of the Internet" --
> I'd need a bit more context/explanation to know whether I agree.
> Clearly, the "agency" of users has been a central theme of the
> theoretical reception of the Internet more broadly -- and, from what
> I've seen, this has carried over into political economic analyses
> which try to make sense of the ways in which interactivity, choice,
> pleasure, sociability, etc, co-exist with forms of exploitation, the
> reproduction and exacerbation of existing power relations, and so on.
> Much of the critical political economic work followed upon the
> celebratory claims made for the empowering/democratizing character of
> the Internet -- not to write them off so much as to figure out how
> they might live up to their promise (which meant pointing out the ways
> in which they fell short, and why). But I feel I'm missing the main
> point here. I'm looking forward to hearing more about the forms of
> user "agency" that have not (yet) been reflected on.
>
>
>
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