[ICTs-and-Society] What is Critical Media and Communcation Studies Today?

[astrid mager]

Dear all,

this is a highly interesting discussion! I totally agree with the 
importance of the (Marxist) political economy of Google & co.
My own work has become increasingly political over the last years 
showing how the capitalist spirit gets inscribed in search engines by 
way of social practices, which similarly applies to Facebook and other 
corporate platforms of course.. I call it the "algorithmic ideology" in 
the talk I proposed for the Uppsala conference:

http://www.astridmager.net/?p=1810

Concerning this line of work I find approaches from critical theory very 
useful since they allow for understanding how capitalism materializes in 
search technologies, how users get involved in Google's capital 
accumulation cycle, how technologies spread and solidify hegemonic power 
etc. Despite the relevance of these aspects for contemporary internet 
research - especially because of the celebratory accounts dominating  
the field, as someone pointed out earlier - I see a paradox that 
increasingly disturbs me:

How do we - critical internet researchers - and our own self-promoting 
online practices fit into the picture? Google, Facebook, Twitter and 
other services have become useful tools for promoting our own (critical) 
work, right? Apart from researches, who just recently commited a social 
media suicide or never joined those platforms in the first place, lots 
of researchers are using these services and hence increasing & 
stabilizing their power, advertising revenue and exploitation schemes.. 
while lots of internet users only unconsciously support these mechanisms 
we (and I deliberately include myself here) DO know/ even write about 
those dynamics etc.. BUT still use the services, which raises a number 
of questions:

Why do we use Facebook and not Diaspora.org and other non-profit tools & 
alternative technologies? (with all their drawbacks Christian pointed out)
Could we escape Facebook & co. in an age of (academdic) self-promotion 
where being known/ having followers and friends/ being talked about/ 
being read has become almost more important than doing research itself?
Didn't we turn into commodities long before Facebook & Google started 
their businesses? (Or is it a phenomenon they co-produced?)
And if users matter (and I do agree on that since my background is in 
STS as well), how do critical internet researches/ we matter in terms of 
supporting/ stabilizing those tools? (and other ones like Google 
Analytics enabling us to participate in and even benefit from the 
surveillance culture they perpetuate)
Or could we think of our activities as (ab)using those tools to advocate 
against them? In fact, where else could we reach people & raise 
awareness about new media and their negative facets if not on the 
platforms themselves?
But could we then ever overcome their power and monopolies?
And how could we avoid Google if there is no better non-profit search 
engine available?
...

I wonder what the list thinks about those aspects! (and if people 
totally disagree with me because they never joined those platforms and 
thus think of me as weak, cynical and commercialized? - but how do they 
search then?)

Thanks for the discussion!! I'm really looking forward to the conference 
(where I probably "won't shake my head about the stupidity of 90% of 
what I hear" ;) )

Best wishes from Vienna, Astrid




Am 14.02.12 01:52, schrieb Christian Fuchs:
> Dear colleagues,
>
> Thanks a lot for the discussion contributions thus far. My own 
> experience is that the more intense and controversial and constructive 
> the pre-conference discussion is, the better the conference will be. 
> And what we really want to have is some good intellectual debates in 
> Uppsala, not one of the usual conferences, where you go, shake your 
> head about the stupidity of 90% of what you hear and go home again. So 
> all of you on this list are very much welcome to engage in the 
> discussion, to contradict what others are saying, to express your 
> views, etc. What we want to foster with this list and the conference 
> is a deep critical intellectual discussion.
>
> I think the issues brought up thus far require us to consider the 
> relation between:
> a) Critical Political Economy of Communication
> b) Cultural Studies
> c) Frankfurt School Critical Theory
> d) Alternative Media Studies
>
> I have myself argued that we need a synthesis/integration of these 
> approaches, but I want to be more specific because I do not think that 
> we need any kind of synthesis, but a specific dialectical unity in 
> diversity of specific expressions of these four contributions. So what 
> I want to argue is that all four of these approaches have been (to a 
> more or less extant) both much wrong and right.
>
> a) Critical Political Economy of Communciation
>
> Dallas Smythe's and Nicholas Garnham's approaches have been strongly 
> focused on aspects of capital accumulation and commodification, often 
> downplaying the importance of ideology in capitalism, although Marx's 
> Capital, Vol 1, focused on both a) commodification and b) ideology 
> critique (the commodity fethishism chapter). I adivce to re-read 
> Graham (Murdock's) answer to Dallas Smythe in the Blindspot Debate 
> because he very much pointed out the importance of ideology, which 
> builds bridges of Critical Political Economy towards both Critical 
> Cultural Studies (Williams, Thompson, Hall, etc) and Frankfurt School 
> that are both much interested in ideology.
>
> My own criticism of the approach of "Political Economy of 
> Media/Communication" is that actually there are many forms of 
> political economy (neoliberal, Keynesian, Schumpeterian, 
> institutional, Marxist, etc) and that the use of the term "Political 
> Economy of Media/Communication/Culture/Information" (as in book 
> titles, recent handbooks, etc) has obscured the term 
> "Marxist/Critical" as prefix, although the specific thinkers have had 
> much Marxist and critical intentions. I think the grounding in Marx, 
> which means the groundning in class analysis and the critique of 
> capitalism, should be visible in naming the approach, which it is not 
> if we just speak of "Political Economy of X" and not "Marxist 
> Political Economy of X"...
>
> b) Cultural Studies
>
> The works of Williams, Thompson, (partly) Hall etc were much grounded 
> in the works of Marx and were a specific critical analysis of ideology 
> in capitalism. Critical classical cultural studies shared with 
> Frankfurt School the interest in the critque of ideology. I think what 
> happened in much of recent Cultural Studies is that a) the category of 
> class was dropped, which implied a reformist cultural poltics that no 
> longer wanted to abolish capitalism and substituted class analysis by 
> identity politics instead of complementing the two and that b) there 
> was a theoretical simplification. Take a look at an arbitrary work by 
> Fiske, Jenkins et al: They do not cite Marx or Gramsci etc, they only 
> cite what Hall et al say that Gramsci said (and they anyway never cite 
> Marx or Hegel because they have not read these works, which actually 
> is my largest criticism of these thinkers - they are anti-critical 
> theory). I doubt that they have ever read Marx or Gramsci or even 
> Hegel. The Marxist roots of Cultural Studies have been destroyed, and 
> this has resulted in a reformist agenda that no longer questions 
> capitalism. In my own Uppsala conference talk, one part will be a 
> radical critique of Henry Jenkins (and Manuel Castells, who is not 
> Cultural Studies, but something that is also not very critical).
>
> c) Frankfurt School Critical Theory
>
> Frankfurt School shares with Classical Critical Cultural Studies the 
> interest in ideology. But the picture of Frankfurt School has both in 
> "Political Economy of the Media" and Cultural Studies often been very 
> simplified, ignoring its own complexities. Garnham and Smythe said 
> that Frankfurt School ignored political economy, which is wrong, if 
> you take a look at the presence of political economists like Friedrich 
> Pollock and Henryk Grossman in Critical Theory. Frankfurt School 
> understood itself always as interdisciplinary project involving 
> various aspects of Marxist thinking. Some strands in Cultural Studies 
> have argued that Frankfurt School has seen the audience as "culutral 
> dupes". Frankfurt School is much more sophisticated, one can think 
> about Adorno's analysis of re-education after Auschwitz, where the 
> media and schools have a special role, Enzensberger's and Brecht's 
> alternative media theory, and even Adorno's take on the need of an 
> alternative TV. The problems of prejudiced Cultural Studies scholars 
> is that they have never read or understood much of Frankfurt School, 
> either because of language limits (not everything has been translated 
> from German to English, so probably you have to be able to read German 
> to fully grasp Critical Theory) or because of ignorance.
>
> A second aspect is the Habermasian turn in Frankfurt School, I have 
> myself been long critical of Habermas, but think that we should 
> re-discover Habermas' Marxist and communist roots and his big 
> connection to Adorno and Marcuse. But one thing remains: You can refer 
> to Habermas without ever questioning capitalism, you can NEVER refer 
> to Marcuse in a reformist and pro-captitalist way, you can be quite 
> pro-capitalist in relation to Habermas' works (and that is why I think 
> scholars today talk so much about Habermas and much less about 
> Marcuse, which is a pity). So much in line with Andrew Feenberg's 
> works, I think we have to re-discover the importance of Marcuse for 
> Marxist Studies of Culture today.
>
> d) Alternative Media Studies
>
> I think the area of Alternative Media Studies is also crucial for 
> transforming society and the media. Cultural Studie has too often 
> focused on altenrative media usage and interpretation, but the 
> question is, if we should not start with alternative practices of 
> producing media (alternatives to Facebook, alternatives to Fox, 
> alternatives to CNN, alternatives to everything). Alternative media 
> have always been close to social struggles, they are social struggle 
> and social movement media.
>
> The problem that alternative media are facing is that a) if they 
> cannot gain material and political influence (power, money) they are 
> within capitalism based on precarious labour, voluntary 
> self-exploitative labour, lack of resources etc, which enables a 
> radical project, but results in a lack of mass availability, and that 
> b) if they accept material support either by the state (state funding) 
> or capital (advertising, marketization, etc), they may risk loosing 
> their autonomy and criticality. Alternative media in capitalism are 
> facing the antogonism between self-exploitation and autonomy. I think 
> that in alternative media studies, these kind of media are too often 
> idealised witout seeing the constraints. At the same time, it is 
> important to see how actual struggles manage to make use of media for 
> organizing themselves, but are actually facing limits at the same time 
> (state surveillance of media use by revolutionaries, etc). Autonomist 
> Marxist Theory stresses much the role of mediated class struggle 
> today, although it tends to idealise knowledge labour and to ignore 
> the constraints of ideolgoy, which we also have to take into account.
>
> e) What way to go?
>
> My proposition is is that all four approaches are failed, to different 
> extent. And I think that the lack today is the focus on Marx. Marx had 
> all of these elements - accumulation, consumption, ideology, struggles 
> and alternatives. So my first and foremost proposition is that by 
> re-orienting our analysis on Marx, and by reading Marx again together 
> with students and young people and everyone, we can gain so 
> tremendously much for establishing a truly Critical Media and 
> Communication Studies that challenges the contemporary dominance of 
> uncritical, instrumental, technological, neoliberal rationality. And 
> this is not purely abstract, it relates to the ongoing and 
> contemporary struggles that we have to fight now.
>
> So some thoughts about our conference.
>
> Good night and good luck, Christian
>
>
>
> -- 
> Prof. Christian Fuchs
> Chair in Media and Communication Studies
> Department of Informatics and Media
> Uppsala University
> Kyrkogårdsgatan 10
> Box 513
> 751 20 Uppsala
> Sweden
> christian.fuchs at im.uu.se
> Tel +46 (0) 18 471 1019
> http://fuchs.uti.at
> http://www.im.uu.se
> NetPolitics Blog: http://fuchs.uti.at/blog
> Editor of tripleC: http://www.triple-c.se
> Chair of ESA RN18-Sociology of Communications and Media Research
> ICTs and Society Network: http://www.icts-and-society.net
>
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