[ICTs-and-Society] relation between political economy of the media and cultural studies

[Ekaterina Petrovna]

That's a very good point actually,as the analysis from the perspective of
political economy does not preclude the micro-analysis and actually any
good study of the media today should focus on the political economy aspect.
My point was that there seems to be a great division today between critical
approach: focussing on exploitation mostly and 'celebratory cultural
studies'. My point was that both pluses and minuses have to be taken into
account, both macro and micro and the analysis of popular culture (again I
refer to works of Fiske) seems to me to be a good example where there is a
serious analysis of the critique of exploitation and the response of
ordinary people to this exploitation. I quote Fiske:
"Until recently, the study of popular culture has taken two main
directions. The less productive has been that which has celebrated popular
culture without situating it in a model of power....The other direction has
been to situate popular culture firmly withing a model of power, but to
emphasise so strongly the forces of domination as to make it  appear
impossible for a genuine popular culture to exist at all...Recently,
however, a third direction has begun to emerge...It, too, sees popular
culture as a site of struggle, but, while accepting the power of the forces
of dominance, it focusses rather upon the popular tactics by which these
forces are coped with, are evaded or are resisted." (Fiske, 1989, p. 20)
My point was that we should maybe look more into this third direction.
Looking at facebook's users as passive dopes misses an important fact about
Facebook: it does do something in our lives, people love it (in their
majority) and while it is a capitalistic organization, it actually did
start as project in a student dormitory...Why, in fact, would people do a
massive exodus to something else? Why? And how alternative mediums would
sustain themselves?

Thank you for the reference to the book about surveillance, - i will
certainly read it!

Ekaterina Netchitailova

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 2:18 PM, Jernej Prodnik <
jernej.prodnik at fdv.uni-lj.si> wrote:

>  Hi,****
>
> ** **
>
> just a short observation: both exploitation and commodification actually
> have little do to with playfulness or having fun on the Facebook or Twitter
> (or anywhere else, where these processes might occur). It’s not what
> political economy analyzes and it’s actually not that important question,
> because it’s simply not its subject matter. Which doesn’t mean it’s not
> important. This is a common misunderstanding that has been retained in
> cultural studies for decades now, for reasons unknown to me. But I guess it
> stems from another misunderstanding - of what is actually the goal of
> critique of political economy. It's definitely not to transparently
> moralize about an ongoing world-situation and corruption of the ugly
> capitalists (focusing on bad apples in an otherwise perfectly working
> system is, quite on the contrary, approach of the non-critical economy),
> but to try to give an explanation of an objective fact through means of
> abstraction (even if this can, indeed, be fundamental ground for people's
> moral outlook and political action, which was of course the underlying goal
> of Marx). Abstraction in the given example meaning: if the system were in
> fact to function perfectly, would capitalists still need exploitation? Of
> course, how else would they extract surplus value? Both concepts,
> exploitation and commodification, are therefore quite “technical” and don’t
> focus on the good and the bad (... historically, conditions in the
> production process were of course terrible, but Marx could’ve easily
> omitted these examples  there are plenty - from Capital and the argument in
> the abstract would be no different).****
>
> ** **
>
> These are quite different levels of critique you’re mentioning, with
> different epistemological presuppositions, and there weren’t so many
> authors that would successfully bridge this divide (Vincent Mosco in his
> Digital Sublime being one of the celebrated exceptions). There has been a
> huge debate in the nineties regarding these questions and I guess most of
> the people, participating in it, simply got tired of it. But cultural
> studies and political economy are not necessarily differentiated when it
> comes to the macro/micro questions ... Neither commodification nor
> exploitation are for example ‘macro questions’, they develop and happen in
> everyday-life situations that actually need to be analyzed on the
> micro-level, at least in the beginning, to construct a viable macro-theory
> (besides, why joyful exploitation so easily occurs could be critically
> analyzed on another, ideological level).****
>
> ** **
>
> So, to put it shortly: people can be exploited in the production process
> even if they crazily enjoy what they’re doing at the same time. Neither of
> these processes preclude people from rejecting these processes if they find
> them worth struggling against  - for example through making fun out of
> Facebook in different Facebook groups. How effective the latter is should
> be quite obvious though: it’s not. To put it in Marx’s terms: they’re just
> writing about Facebook, but the point should be to change it (if these
> people are so “critical” about it). And the only way to stop exploitation
> by Facebook is probably a mass exodus from the Facebook to another platform
> or to give as little information to FB as possible. Making fun of Facebook
> in groups can actually even increase passivity and be quite cynical.****
>
> ** **
>
> I’m just finishing my review of the volume “Surveillance on the Internet”,
> which includes some very good chapters from the perspective of critique of
> political economy. You might find it interesting, especially considering
> the fact these chapters mostly focus on the micro-level to demonstrate how
> exploitation is carried out on social networks (mostly through surveillance
> and data mining).****
>
> ** **
>
> Michael, I guess you’re not talking about Marxist understanding of
> materialism in this case?****
>
> ** **
>
> Best,****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* discussion-bounces at lists.icts-and-society.net [mailto:
> discussion-bounces at lists.icts-and-society.net] *On Behalf Of *Ekaterina
> Petrovna
> *Sent:* Monday, February 13, 2012 1:45 PM
> *To:* Goddard Michael
> *Cc:* discussion at lists.icts-and-society.net
> *Subject:* Re: [ICTs-and-Society] relation between political economy of
> the media and cultural studies****
>
> ** **
>
> Hello,****
>
>  ****
>
> why Fiske would not be appropriate? While it is somewhat outdated, he gave
> an excellent oveview, I think, of the relationship between domination (and
> culture industries used for the purposes of indoctrination and domination)
> and popular culture, where people engage in making culture industries
> 'their own'. Engaging in a playful way on Facebook can be seen as an art of
> making everyday life, and some instances of trickery on Facebook (like
> numerous pictures making fun of Facebook as corporation) are an example of
> excorporation (Fiske, 1989). The main point is that while political economy
> of the media is very important, how users use the media in everyday life
> and what they think of it, should also be taken into account. The problem
> with engaging only with critical approach and political economy of the
> media is that the focus becomes too much on the macro, ignoring the
> micro...Boyd's studies (2008, 2010), on the other hand, focus, for
> instance, only on the user, ignoring totally the aspect of the bigger
> picture (as David Beer rightly pointed out in one of his articles in 2008),
> - shouldn't we try to go somewhere in the middle?****
>
>  ****
>
> I am not familiar, I have to admit, with materialist approaches towards
> the media, - could you, please, Michael, give me some examples?****
>
>  ****
>
> best regards,****
>
> Ekaterina Netchitailova (PhD student at Sheffield Hallam)****
>
> On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 10:21 AM, Goddard Michael <
> M.N.Goddard at salford.ac.uk> wrote:****
>
> Hello, ****
>
> ** **
>
> While in agreement with Ekaterina that a diversity of approaches,
> addressing ICTs and their users on a number of scales, is desirable, I
> would question whether 1980s cultural studies, especially in the work of
> Fiske is the best resource for this diversity (Stuart Hall is a somewhat
> different case since he actually engaged with information theory in such as
> a way as to leave something salvageable for thinking ICTs at Matt Fuller
> has argued).****
>
> ** **
>
> Other productive lines of inquiry might include materialist media
> theories/media archaeology, which while depoliticising in some instances,
> nevertheless provides useful resources for a materialist account of media,
> media ecological approaches of the post-Guattarian/Matt Fuller variety at
> least, that go well beyond concerns with e-waste to engage with how
> specific media generate and interact with a variety of milieux or, on a
> more pragmatic level some of the approaches developed in the recent *Transgression
> 2.0 *collection which to engage with network phenomena like the use of
> social media during the Arab Spring but also problematise easy assumptions
> about what this means.......interventions that in some cases might be
> understood as continuing the perspecitves of autonomous Marxism and to
> strongly critique the more normative Frankfurt School version of Marxist
> cultural critique that still seems dominant in many political economy
> approaches.....just a few suggestions for pre-conference  discussion,****
>
> ** **
>
> Michael Goddard****
>
> ** **
>
> Dr Michael N Goddard ****
>
> Lecturer in Media Studies****
>
> School of Media, Music and Performance****
>
> University of Salford****
>
> MediaCityUk****
>
> Salford****
>
> M50 2HE****
>
> UK****
>
> ** **
>
> Reviews editor of *Studies in Eastern European Cinema* (SEEC)****
>
> Co-Editor of *Reverberations: Noise, Affect, Politics, *Continuum, 2012***
> *
>
> ** **
>    ------------------------------
>
> *From:* discussion-bounces at lists.icts-and-society.net [
> discussion-bounces at lists.icts-and-society.net] on behalf of Ekaterina
> Petrovna [epetrovna at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* 12 February 2012 21:21
> *To:* discussion at lists.icts-and-society.net
> *Subject:* [ICTs-and-Society] relation between political economy of the
> media and cultural studies****
>
> Hello,****
>
> by looking at the abstracts for the conference in May in Uppsala, I see
> that the main focus so far is on the political economyc of media (or
> critical studies of media), which is actually the topic of the conference,
> but shouldn't we also look at the theme of the relationship between the
> political economy of media (more, macro-context from studies so far) and
> cultural studies (so, far, as Christian Fuchs rightly points out it has
> been more 'celebratory cultural studies of media" (2011). However, by
> focusing on both macro and micro at the same time and by incorporating such
> works as John Fiske (1989), maybe we could have a new perspective on media
> studies today? Fuchs (2008, 2010, 2011) proposes abolishment of capitalism
> (quite an old proposition) or searching for alternative media. The
> question, however, is:  would the users of Facebook actually switch to
> anything else (the answer is no...at least from my ethnographic studies)
> and shouldn't we look at facebook itself for these kind of alternatives?
> After all, recent examples (Arab Spring) show that facebook can be used
> effectively for organising popular protests, - could Facebook be used for a
> good cause also in other cases? And another question: by abolishing
> capitalism, - which society do you envision? ****
>
>  ****
>
> Graham Murdock says:  "where users labour in their leisure time to boost
> corporate profits" (from paper abstract, 2012) by looking at the use of
> digital media. If we focus only on this perspective, aren't we in danger of
> missing an important part of popular culture, as elaborated by John Fiske
> (1989) and many others (Stuart Hall, etc)? The problem with focusing only
> on marco context is that we can totally misunderstand the perspective of
> the user (something which Christian Fuchs discussed in one of the articles
> with Dwayne Winseck (2011). Users don't consider that they work for free
> for facebook when they use it, - if anything they have fun and engage in
> many ways in 'trickering' Facebook (by organising many groups either
> against Facebook or by making fun of it, on Facebook itself). Also what
> about the fact that many users use Facebook actually at work (it was banned
> as a result in many workplaces, but the application to use facebook through
> phones, somehow, overpassed this problem)? Isn't in some way a kind of
> sabotage to capitalism in a trickery sort of way?****
>
>  ****
>
> Ekaterina Netchitailova (PhD student at Sheffield Hallam)****
>
>
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