bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Prefiguring Floridi’s Theory of Semantic Information
Authors: Mingers John
Published: May 2018

Abstract: Luciano Floridi has been very active in helping to develop both the philosophy of information as a discipline and an actual theory of the nature of semantic information. This paper has three purposes. First, to demonstrate that Floridi’s information theory was largely prefigured by work carried out by Mingers and published some ten years earlier. This is simply a matter of setting the record straight, although the degree of commonality may provide some support for the theory. Second, to point out that there appears to be a degree of equivocation, or even contradiction, within Floridi’s theory concerning the ontological status of information – is it objective, independent of the receiver, or is it subjective, constructed by the receiver from the data they access? The paper argues strongly for an objective interpretation. Third, to point out extensions to Mingers’ theory in terms of the social and pragmatic aspects of language, the processing of information into meaning through embodied cognition, and the relation between information and different forms of knowledge
Ideology, Critique and Surveillance
Authors: Herzogenrath-Amelung Heidi
Published: May 2018

The 2013 revelations concerning global surveillance programmes demonstrate in unprecedented clarity the need for Critical Theory of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to address the mechanisms and implications of increasingly global, ubiquitous surveillance. This is all the more urgent because of the dominance of the “surveillance ideology” (the promise of security through surveillance) that supports the political economy of surveillance. This paper asks which theoretical arguments and concepts can be useful for philosophically grounding a critique of this surveillance ideology. It begins by examining how the surveillance ideology works through language and introduces the concept of the ‘ideological packaging’ of ICTs to show how rhetoric surrounding the implementation of surveillance technologies reinforces the surveillance ideology. It then raises the problem of how ideology-critique can work if it relies on language itself and argues that Martin Heidegger’s philosophy can make a useful contribution to existing critical approaches to language.
Opening the Dissertation: Overcoming Cultural Calcification and Agoraphobia
Authors: Troll Covey Denise
Published: May 2018

This article places the struggle to open access to the dissertation in the context of the crisis in doctoral education and the transition from print to digital literacy. It explores the underlying cultural calcification and agoraphobia that deter engagement with openness. Solving the problems will require overhauling the curriculum and conventions of doctoral education. Opening access to dissertations is an important first step, but insufficient to end the crisis. Only opening other dimensions of the dissertation – the structure, media, notion of authorship, and methods of assessment – can foster the digital literacy needed to save PhD programs from extinction. If higher education institutions invested heavily in remedying obsolete practices, the remedies would reverberate throughout the academy, accelerate advancement in the disciplines, and revolutionize scholarly publishing. The article ends with a discussion of the significant role librarians could play in facilitating needed changes given appropriate institutional commitment.
All that is Solid: Writing, Reading and Publishing in Postmodern Capitalism
Authors: Agger Ben , Luke Timothy W.
Published: May 2018

This paper is a reflection on the publication practice of the journal Fast Capitalism, an open-source, electronic journal founded by Ben Agger and Timothy Luke in 2005. It also presents thoughts on writing, reading and publishing in postmodern capitalism.
Defining Algorithmic Ideology: Using Ideology Critique to Scrutinize Corporate Search Engines
Authors: Mager Astrid
Published: May 2018

This article conceptualizes “algorithmic ideology” as a valuable tool to understand and critique corporate search engines in the context of wider socio-political developments. Drawing on critical theory it shows how capitalist value-systems manifest in search technology, how they spread through algorithmic logics and how they are stabilized in society. Following philosophers like Althusser, Marx and Gramsci it elaborates how content providers and users contribute to Google’s capital accumulation cycle and exploitation schemes that come along with it. In line with contemporary mass media and neoliberal politics they appear to be fostering capitalism and its “commodity fetishism” (Marx). It further reveals that the capitalist hegemony has to be constantly negotiated and renewed. This dynamic notion of ideology opens up the view for moments of struggle and counter-actions. “Organic intellectuals” (Gramsci) can play a central role in challenging powerful actors like Google and their algorithmic ideology. To pave the way towards more democratic information technology, however, requires more than single organic intellectuals. Additional obstacles need to be conquered, as I finally discuss.
A Seeping Commodification: The Long Revolution in the Proliferation of Communication Commodities
Authors: A. Prodnik Jernej
Published: May 2018

The main goal of this paper is to conceptualize a seeping commodification. The author of the paper claims we are in the midst of a considerable qualitative transformation in the processes of commodification that is, in large part, owed to an overwhelming capitalist enclosure of the wider communicative field. The key reason for what seems to be an important qualitative transformation in the commodification process lies in the fact that communication and information flows today run through most social relations and spheres – which non-critical approaches often explain with the concept of the ‘mediatization of society’. A materialist approach, distinctive of (critical) political economy of communication, enables an apt critique of these processes. In an epoch, in which capital has enclosed the wider field of communication, mediatization is in fact nothing else than a continuing commodification of our everyday lives. The author of the paper claims that commodification of communication and informational resources must be seen as a long-term process, which has accompanied the rise of capitalism. A considerable proliferation of the economic importance of communication, information, and culture has – to be precise – been enhanced in a large part by political interventions occurring in the last decades (which were a response to the economic tendencies and crises of the time). While the immediate results are observable especially in the proliferation of the new information and communication technologies and the global role of intellectual property rights, the wider social consequences of these developments have been much broader and more influential. This study proceeds from the perspective of historical materialism and adopts dialectics in an attempt to grasp contradictory social changes. The analysis is done through different methods of historicizing: firstly, by observing long-term changes in communication, information, and culture, as they have been slowly transformed into commodities produced for market exchange since the emergence of capitalism; and, secondly, by defining fundamental political and economic processes occurring in recent decades that help with an explanation of the rise in the influence of communication and information (as peculiar types of commodities) in the current epoch.
The Coming Revolution of Peer Production and Revolutionary Cooperatives. A Response to Michel Bauwens, Vasilis Kostakis and Stefan Meretz
Authors: Rigi Jakob
Published: May 2018

This article agrees with Meretz (2014) that the peer producing cooperatives which are proposed by Bauwens & Kostakis (2014) will become parts and parcels of the capitalist economy. Further, it argues that the so called Peer Production Licenses (PPL), originally designed by Dmitry Kleiner (2010), which is the basis of their proposal is a rent seeking instrument. Contra Bauwens & Kostakis, it argues that, from the perspectives of both reform and revolution, GPL is profoundly anti-capitalist. The article critiques Meretz`s understanding of exchange and reciprocity, on the one hand, and his underestimation of GPL`s communist aspect, on the other. On the positive side, the article, explicating the communist nature of GPL-oriented peer production, speculates about the general contours of a society where peer production is the dominant mode of production. The technological basis of this society, the article suggests, will be digital copying and automation. Spatially, it will be based on localities that transcend the current division between the city and country, synthesising agriculture with industrial, affective and symbolic production. The rise of a globally unified revolutionary social struggle which adopts peer production as its platform is indispensible for the transformation of capitalism into such a society.  A global network of revolutionary peer producing cooperatives which break with market and reduce their relations to it to an absolutely unavoidable necessary minimum can be a significant component of this social struggle. The building of these revolutionary cooperatives requires a massive exodus from the city to the country.
The Flâneur, the Badaud and Empathetic Worker
Authors: Netchitailova Ekaterina Petrovna
Published: May 2018

In this paper, based on the development of the ‘empathic’ badaud in France at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, I draw some parallels with a Facebook user. The experience of Facebook’s users is explored through the juxtaposition of two terms: the flâneur and the badaud, and a third term is proposed, the one of an empathetic worker, by applying critical media/cultural studies.
Sexualized Branded Entertainment and the Male Consumer Gaze
Authors: McAllister Matthew P. , DeCarvalho Lauren J.
Published: May 2018

This article applies the “male consumer gaze” – integrating work influenced by Erving Goffman and Laura Mulvey – to two branded televised events: the 2011 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and the 2012 Hooters International Swimsuit Pageant. Critiqued elements include gendered body positioning, televisual and narrativizing techniques, social and integrated media, and branding strategies that combine to create a flow of consumption-based male gazing. Such trends may intensify with changes in media economics and niche marketing.
The Imperial Republic and Pax-Americana: State Formation, Inequality, and the New American Way of War
Authors: Timcke Scott
Published: May 2018

This article plots the complex historical interplay between state formation and militarized technology. What emerges is a portrayal of distributional consequences of particular means of rule and particular modes of warfare. I apply this framework to the New American Way of War, demonstrating that it structurally contributes to the widening economic inequality currently being experienced in the United States. In state formation literature, inequality is partly caused by how key technologies are militarized and deployed by the state for internal and/or external state building. Thus, inequality is the result of how the employment of particular kinds of military technologies affects the emergence and distribution of economic resources under different political regimes. By inference, the degree of inequality is a by-product of a state’s means of rule. Hence, prior to the redistribution of wealth and economic chances by various state institutions, particular kinds of states are historically endowed with a predisposition to create and solidify social stratification. I offer a critical engagement with the new American Way of War through the lens of the means of rule. In my case study, I argue that due to technological choices, the American state no longer needs to be accountable to citizens or its subject population as a whole. In short, the American state can afford to disengage itself from wider negotiation and bargaining with its subjects. From the state’s perspective, there is nothing these subjects offer to accent the current military capacity attuned to a particular military strategy. Simply, there is very little these subjects have that the state requires. Subsequently, if the current American Way of War continues, it is likely that arbitrary rule, militarization, and wide inequality will be the order of the day irrespective of who the particular governors happen to be.
From the Communism of Capital to Capital for the Commons: Towards an Open Co-operativism
Authors: Bauwens Michel , Kostakis Vasilis
Published: May 2018

Two prominent social progressive movements are faced with a few contradictions and a paradox. On the one side, we have a re-emergence of the co-operative movement and worker-owned enterprises which suffer from certain structural weaknesses. On the other, we have an emergent field of open and Commons-oriented peer production initiatives which create common pools of knowledge for the whole of humanity, but are dominated by start-ups and large multinational enterprises using the same Commons. Thus we have a paradox: the more communist the sharing license used in the peer production of free software or open hardware, the more capitalist the practice. To tackle this paradox and the aforementioned contradictions, we tentatively suggest a new convergence that would combine both Commons-oriented open peer production models with common ownership and governance models, such as those of the co-operatives and the solidarity economic models.
Will Work For Free: The Biopolitics of Unwaged Digital Labour
Authors: Brown Brian
Published: May 2018

This paper begins with a survey of the literature regarding a particular, yet ever more consequential and profitable, typology of digital labour: ‘free labour’ (Terranova, 2000, 2004), ‘unwaged immaterial labour’ (Brown and Quan Haase, 2012; Brown, 2013), and/or immaterial labour 2.0 (Coté & Pybus, 2007), to name a few of the more common terms. It then moves on to proffer a critical synthesis of this body of work so as to conclude with a much more theoretically nuanced definition of unwaged digital labour than that which has thus far been provided. In sum, the author argues that there are five central facets to unwaged digital labour that defines and differentiates it from its waged brethren. The first is that unwaged digital labour is fundamentally and inherently autonomous. Free of management oversight, the cooperative and creative capacities of content-generators produce massive amounts of digital artefacts that in the majority of cases also yield massive amounts of profit for the owners of Web 2.0 sites and services. The surplus value produced by this first facet refracts into the second. Following the work of Fuchs (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), unwaged digital labour is (in the majority of circumstances) hyper-exploited. As has been argued elsewhere (Brown, 2013), this hyper-exploitation is the primary cause for recurrent ‘user’ uproar on Web 2.0 sites and services. This kind of exploitation, then, is met with the third facet of digital labour considered herein: resistance or struggle. Facile recourse to nebulous conceptions regarding the invasion of one’s privacy on eminently social networks no longer suffices in explaining these instances of ‘user’ uproar. Thus, a more nuanced consideration of the forms of resistance that occur on social media sites and services is offered. Similar, yet different, to its waged genus, the fourth facet of unwaged digital labour is that it is intrinsically collaborative, cooperative, and generative of social relationships. The differences that obtain between the orientation of the social relationships constituted by waged and unwaged digital labour respectively are indicative of political potentials that have up until this point been under-theorized. Thus, building on the four aforementioned facets, as well as the arguments put forth by Hardt and Negri regarding the biopolitical dimensions of ‘immaterial labour’ (2000, 2004, 2009), the fifth and most theoretically provocative facet is that this kind of labour is inspired, guided, and regulated by a radically different amalgam of biopolitical power relationships that point to the potentials of a commons-based political economy existing beyond the hyper-exploitative dimensions of capital.
Constructing (Il)Legitimate Democracy: Populism and Power Concentration in Newspaper Discourse on Venezuela
Authors: Abalo Ernesto
Published: May 2018

Despite scholarly consensus about the importance of the media for democracy, scant attention has been paid to what democracy means to journalistic discourse and how discourses on democracy are interrelated with legitimacy. The aim of this paper is to explore how (il)legitimate democracy is constructed in newspaper discourse. By using critical discourse analysis, this paper examines foreign news items about Venezuela, a country that under the presidency of Hugo Chávez has challenged the hegemonic global political and economic orders. The analysis section focuses on two main findings about the Venezuelan government: the constructions of populism and power concentration, which serve to mark deviance from what is perceived as legitimate democracy. This paper argues that a liberal perception of democracy constitutes a central framework for the construction of (il)legitimate democracy, which is revealed not least by news discourse’s focus on what is morally unacceptable political conduct according to liberal democratic norms. In this sense, such constructions serve to denounce potential governmental power abuses but also to legitimize the hegemonic economic and political orders.
The (A)Political Economy of Bitcoin
Authors: Kostakis Vasilis , Giotitsas Chris
Published: May 2018

The still raging financial crisis of 2007–2008 has enabled the emergence of several alternative practices concerning the production, circulation and use of money. This essay explores the political economy of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Specifically, we examine the context in which this digital currency is emerging as well as its nature, dynamics, advantages, and disadvantages. We conclude that Bitcoin, a truly interesting experiment, exemplifies "distributed capitalism" and should be mostly seen as a technological innovation. Rather than providing pragmatic answers and solutions to the current views on the financial crisis, Bitcoin provides some useful and timely questions about the principles and bases of the dominant political economy.
The Work of Raymond Williams
Authors: McGuigan Jim
Published: May 2018

This podcast is a recording of Jim McGuigan's talk "The Work of Raymond Williams" that he presented in the CAMRI Research Seminar at the University of Westminster on October 15, 2014.In the talk, Jim McGuigan surveys Williams’s work and its enduring relevance to media and cultural analysis and why Williams’ 1983 book was mistakenly entitled 'Towards 2000', since it is as fresh and relevant to understanding the world now as it was when originally published. Jim has recently edited a collection of writings for Sage selected from the whole of Raymond Williams’s career, 'Raymond Williams on Culture and Society'. He has also edited and added to Williams’s 'Towards 2000', originally published in 1983, to be republished this year with the new title, 'A Short Counter-Revolution – Towards 2000 Revisited', also by Sage. Jim has also written several critical appreciations of Williams’s work, some of which have appeared in recent issues of 'Keywords', the journal of the Raymond Williams Society, and 'The Sociological Review'. His previous book publications include 'Cultural Populism' (1992), 'Culture and the Public Sphere' (1996), 'Modernity and Postmodern Culture' (1999, 2006), 'Rethinking Cultural Policy' (2004), 'Cool Capitalism' (2009) and 'Cultural Analysis' (2010). He is currently writing a book for Palgrave Macmillan to be entitled, 'Neoliberal Culture'. Until recently, Jim sold his labour power to Loughborough University. He is now a freelance scholar, writer and artist.McGuigan, Jim, ed. 2014. Raymond Williams: A Short Counter-Revolution. London: Sage.http://www.uk.sagepub.com/books/Book242744?siteId=sage-uk&prodTypes=any&q=mcguigan&fs=1McGuigan, Jim, ed. 2014. Raymond Williams on Culture and Society. London: Sage.http://www.uk.sagepub.com/books/Book234838?siteId=sage-uk&prodTypes=any&q=mcguigan&fs=1
(In)tangible Arguments about Play, Creativity, and the Political Economy of 3D Printing: The Free Universal Construction Kit
Authors: Stephensen Jan Løhmann , Hansen Lone Koefoed
Published: May 2018

With the increasing economic accessibility of 3D printers, the lessons learned and the logics cultivated on digital Web 2.0 now seem applicable to the world of material things. Released in early 2012 by the artist groups F.A.T. and Sy-lab, the Free Universal Construction Kit is a set of 3D drawings that enable everyone with access to a 3D printer to make connectors between intellectual property restricted toys like LEGO, Tinkertoys, and Fischertechnik. However, when describing this project as “reverse engineering as a civic activity”, it becomes obvious that the Kit’s greater agenda is not just to enable cross-over playing, but rather, to problematize and perhaps ultimately open up closed formats through critical appropriation. But how does that, for instance, conform with the fact that the connectors are parasitically attached to these toys, whose logic it is simultaneously defying? And which (implicit) notions of creativity and play are at stake in this project, and to what extent do they fit the more general philosophical underpinnings of this project?
A Comparative Study of Government Surveillance of Social Media and Mobile Phone Communications during Iran’s Green Movement (2009) and the UK Riots (2011)
Authors: Kadivar Jamileh
Published: May 2018

In many contexts, social media has been considered as a group of tools that facilitates people's access to freedom and democracy. But this view is challengeable. In this study, two different aspects of social media are examined. The first aspect examines social media’s use by protesters in two completely different contexts—Iran and the UK. The second aspect, on the other hand, investigates how the two governments, who have very different approaches to governance, exploited social media in an attempt to control the two protests. The main question addressed in this study is: “What are the differences and similarities between government surveillance of social media and mobile communications during Iran’s Green Movement (2009) and the UK riots (2011)?” The findings of this study suggest that social media and mobile phone communications were both important to protesters. Furthermore, this research illustrates that governments monitor the protesters on social and mobile media in different ways, and justify their actions by mainly saying that they do so in order to protect public order and national interests.
Left-Wing Media Politics and the Advertising Tax. Reflections on Astra Taylor’s Book “The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age”
Authors: Fuchs Christian
Published: May 2018

This article is a reflection on Astra Taylor’s book “The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age”. It especially focuses on the media reform suggestions the book makes and provides further thoughts and data that go beyond Taylor’s book on the question of how feasible an advertising tax and a participatory media fee are.
Like a Fraction of Some Bigger Place—The “Creative Industries” in a Peripheral Zone: Reflections from a Case Study
Authors: Matthews Jacob Thomas
Published: May 2018

This article questions the notion of “creative industries” while contributing to the analysis of mediations between the cultural sphere and capitalist relations of production. Research pertaining to the “creative industries”, as well as contributions to the political economy of cultural industries, have often focused on central and metropolitan areas. By contrast, the case study that these reflections are based upon was conducted in a peripheral zone, the Shetland Isles, marked by specific socio-economic, historical, political and cultural features. This study considered the importance of local cultural policies, over the past 35 years, and how they are presently facing a significant revision. However, the rise of “creative industries” discourse, and its applications in public policy can only be understood within a wider national and supra-national context. Moreover, I argue that these evolutions are linked to an extension of cultural industrialisation and commoditisation. By analysing the adaptations and limits that the “creative industries” doctrine encounters in a peripheral zone, this article firstly completes existing critiques of the notion. Secondly, it illustrates how an apparently exceptional terrain magnifies certain key aspects of relations between ideological / cultural superstructures, and the socio-economic infrastructure of contemporary capitalism. In particular, it is concerned with the increasing artificiality of the economic basis of Western societies, and the complex ways in which this phenomenon is translated within the cultural sphere.
Communicating Protest Movements: The Case of Occupy
Authors: Kavada Anastasia
Published: May 2018

How do you communicate a protest movement? And how do communication practices shape its character and power relations?  Based on a view of communication as constitutive of protest movements, this talk considers these questions as two sides of the same coin. The focus lies on the Occupy movement and particularly on its use of digital media. Characterised by a belief in direct participation and a rejection of central leadership, Occupy emerged through a bottom-up process of organizing that spanned different platforms and physical places, from Facebook pages to public squares. The process of constructing the collective involved the creation of communication sites and foundational texts, and their interlinking. This process was influenced by the rules, affordances and proprietary character of media platforms and physical spaces, as well as the diverse cultures and strategies of the activists using them. A closer look at this process sheds light on the power relations within the movement and particularly on five sources of communication power. These range from the power to create communication sites and texts to the power to access or link them together. The picture that emerges is complex, revealing a movement with both centralizing and decentralizing dynamics. Ultimately, it was the balance between these opposing dynamics that determined both the emergence of the movement and its decline.Acknowledgement: This contribution is the podcast of a talk Anastasia Kavada gave in the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI)'s Research Seminar Series on February 25, 2015, at the University of Westminster.
Reality TV’s Embrace of the Intern
Authors: Mirrlees Tanner
Published: May 2018

In the preface to a seminal exposé of the “intern nation,” Ross Perlin (2012) writes, “reality TV truly embraces the intern” (xii). This article describes and analyzes how 20 reality TV intern job ads for 19 different reality TV studios represent the work of interns and internships in the capitalist reality TV industry. By interrogating how the job postings depict the work that reality TV studios expect interns to do, the skills that TV studios expect interns to possess as a prerequisite to considering them eligible for mostly unpaid positions, the asymmetrical power relations between studios and interns, and the studios’ utilization of “hope” for a career-relevant experience to recruit interns, the article argues that the reality TV intern is actually a misclassified worker. The study demonstrates that reality TV interns are workers whose labour feeds reality TV production and that reality TV internships are a means of getting workers to labour without pay. The conclusion establishes some grounds for a reality TV intern class action suit.
What Killed Moritz Erhardt? Internships and the Cultural Dangers of “Positive” Ideas
Authors: Costea Bogdan , Watt Peter , Amiridis Kostas
Published: May 2018

Moritz Erhardt’s tragic death as an intern at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in August 2013 provides an illustration of the cultural intensity and complexity that has come to imbue internships in higher education degree schemes. We offer an analysis of internships as part of a wider process of dissemination and proliferation of managerial vocabularies and images that underpin certain hyper-performative practices that permeate the powerful cultures stimulated by and sustained in many organizations. We analyze the cultural ground from which such practices might be seen to arise and present an interpretation of how certain “positive” themes and motifs—such as “potentiality,” “self-expression,” or “self-realization”—can become dangerous. These categories become dangerous once they are constituted as ideal measures of an unattainable level of performativity which can then become destabilizing and disorienting for any individual’s sense of self. In this sense, the paper contributes to the growing body of literature investigating the significance of internships in the new cultures of work characterizing the broader context of neoliberalism.
Exploited for a Good Cause? Campaigning Against Unpaid Internships in the UK Charity Sector
Authors: Weghmann Vera
Published: May 2018

In this activist report I aim to show that unpaid internships in charities need to be understood as both morally unjust and exploitative, and that we can do something about it. Together with my fellow interns and interns from another charity, I organized a campaign, NoPay?NoWay!, for a decent wage for all workers in the charity sector, including interns. After six months, we successfully managed to stop the use of unpaid internships in both workplaces. This is my story.
Reflections on Bolaño’s Culture Industry
Authors: Klikauer Thomas
Published: May 2018

Bolaño’s study of the culture industry builds on Adorno and Horkheimer’s “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” linking it to Habermas’ and Enzensberger’s work. The key to Bolaño is the working out of the double task of what might be called “media capitalism”, namely merging the circulation of commodities through marketing and advertising to the ideological task of pro-capitalist propaganda that, at least ideologically sustains capitalism. Significantly, this double task occurs through “the same channels” of communication as Bolaño argues and is, at least, institutionally set up through an interest symbiosis between corporations that manufacture and sell commodities and media corporations. Both are organisations dedicated to shareholder-value and profit-maximisation. Using the example of the most eminent technological innovation during the post World War period (televison), Bolaño shows how and why capitalism can no longer simply be capitalism but—as a structural imperative—has to rely on the media. With that, even corporate mass media become part of the system of “media capitalism”. Bolaño sets the key tasks of future theory development in the area of capitalism and communication, namely the development of the comprehensive theory of media capitalism.
Skip the (Capitalist) Intermediaries: Freedom, Democracy, and Participation in the Economy and Culture
Authors: Perry Forrest
Published: May 2018

A significant parallel can be drawn between a socialist argument about how to regulate property in the means of production and the liberal theorist Lawrence Lessig’s argument about how to regulate property in ideas. The two are particularly alike in the emphasis they place on the kind of participation—and the resulting freedom and democracy—enabled by having access to the means of production. Highlighting the parallel could help socialists and liberal theorists of intellectual property to see how they can advance each other’s causes: socialism could eliminate the threat of privatization of the means of producing culture that liberals like Lessig rightly worry about; and if the arguments about ownership of ideas made by Lessig and others like him end up gaining currency, then arguments about ownership of the means of production made by socialist theorists could have more resonance with larger numbers of people than is currently the case.
Invisible Play and Invisible Game: Video Game Testers or The Unsung Heroes of Knowledge Working
Authors: Briziarelli Marco
Published: May 2018

In this paper, I examine video game testing as a lens through which exploring broader aspects of digital economy such as the intersection of different kind productive practices—working, labouring, playing and gaming—as well as the tendency to conceal the labour associated with them. Drawing on Lund’s (2014) distinction between the creative aspects of “work-playing” and the constraining/instrumental aspects of “game-labouring”, I claim that video game testing is buried under several layers of invisibility. Ideologically, the “playful”, “carnivalesque”, quasi-subversive facets of this job are rejected because of their resistance to be easily subsumed by the logic of capitalism. Practically, a fetishist process of hiding human relations behind relations among things (elements in the video game environment) reaches its paradoxical apex in the quality assurance task of this profession: the more the game tester succeeds in debugging games higher is the fetishization of his/her activity.
Class Struggle in Contemporary Films: "Hunger Games" vs. "Arrow, The Ultimate Weapon"
Authors: Jin Dal Yong
Published: May 2018

By critically engaging with Marxist notion of class struggle in contemporary films utilizing the bow and arrow as their signifier, this paper textually analyzes two films in order to find distinctive characteristics of Western movies and non-Western movies. Since the textual analysis becomes very important to understanding how media texts might be used in order to make sense of the world we live in—meaning it is significant to contextualize it within our life and/or society, this paper investigates the ways in which the major themes have developed and what their representations are. It therefore compares and contrasts these movies in terms of their major themes, in particular the ways in which these two films portray capitalism, either internally or externally. It especially examines how the bow and arrow symbolize class struggle either within a country or between countries in order to map out the major differences that the arrows represent.
Knowledge Workers, Identities, and Communication Practices: Understanding Code Farmers in China
Authors: Sun Ping Sophie , Magasic Michelangelo
Published: May 2018

Extending the concept of “knowledge workers”, this paper studies the identity dynamics of IT programmers from small companies in China. Through the discursive analysis of programmers’ personal memoirs (collected via personal interviews and online ethnography), four themes of identity dynamics emerge: IT programmers demonstrate identification with professionalism and technology; they naturalize the high mobility and internal precarity of their work via discourses of the self and social improvement; the term manong (“code monkey” or “code farmer” in English) is used to support a sense of selfhood amidst high pressure schedules and “panoptic control”; the disparaging term diaosi (“loser” in English) is appropriated in order to activate a sense of self-expression and collective resistance regarding the programmers’ working and living conditions. These four themes are integrated into: 1) hegemonic discourses of economic development and technical innovation; and 2) the processes of individualization among IT programmers on a global scale. Our findings suggest that being a knowledge worker means not only to provide professional expertise, communication, creativity and knowledge, it also interrogates questions of survival, struggle, and solidarity.
Introduction: The Materiality of the Immaterial: ICTs and the Digital Commons
Authors: Roos Andreas , Kostakis Vasilis , Giotitsas Christos
Published: May 2018

Today, two great signs of change are occurring. On the one hand, the capitalist world economy is putting tremendous pressure on the earth’s biosphere and bringing an onslaught of destruction to immediate environments and vulnerable people worldwide. On the other hand, the rise of new and progressive social-economic foundations is the result of an unprecedented increase of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Therefore it is arguably more crucial than ever to understand how social, economic and ecological foundations of the internet and ICT infrastructures are interwoven. What are we – as scholars, activists and citizens - to make of ICTs that seem to emerge from an economic and social system based upon ecological destruction and social oppression, while at the same time engaging millions of people in the proliferation of information, knowledge and active democratic collaboration? This special issue investigates how we can begin to understand this problem, and how we can hope to balance the perils and promises of ICTs in order to make way for a just and sustainable paradigm.
Re-thinking the Global Age as Interdependence, Opacity and Inertia
Authors: Poveda Guillén Oriol , Svensson Jakob
Published: May 2018

In this theoretical essay we criticize theories of modernity and explore the possibility that the modern epoch is coming to a close while a new configuration is emerging: the global age. Building upon sociologist Martin Albrow’s work The Global Age, we claim that Albrow’s scholarship did a remarkable job at outlining the shift away from modernity, but that greater clarity is needed in laying out the main characteristics of the global age. With this essay we aim to fill that gap. Acknowledging that capitalism is the most important feature of our societies, we outline the contours of the global age through three interrelated concepts: interdependence, opacity and inertia which in turn we exemplify with the global environmental crisis, the global economy and the Internet.
Social Democratic and Critical Theories of the Intellectual Commons: A Critical Analysis
Authors: Broumas Antonios
Published: May 2018

Over the past twenty years theorizing about the intellectual commons has undeniably become a popular activity not only among scholars that deal with the dialectics between information/communication technologies and society but also among the wider scientific community. Yet, the discourse over intellectual commons and their contested relationship with contemporary laws and institutions has not been confined only within the academia but has rather become a more general social issue. Social democratic and critical theories of the intellectual commons are re-conceptualizations of the social intellect as the productive force of our intellectual commonwealth. As emerging theoretical paradigms, they eventually come in contrast with the dominant notions of the social intellect, which basically advocate the establishment of private monopolies over intellectual works. By deciphering contemporary shifts and dynamics in the ways we produce and distribute information, knowledge and culture, such theories are thus better placed to inspire and orientate social movements, recast agendas of policy – making and construct alternative narratives to existing socio-legal arrangements, which are capable of accommodating the potential of the intellectual commons.
Workplace Suicide and States of Denial: The France Telecom and Foxconn Cases Compared
Authors: Waters Sarah
Published: May 2018

Workplace suicides are sharply on the rise and reflect a generalised deterioration in working conditions across the globalised economy. Despite their growing prevalence, workplace suicides are subject to specific modes of repression that tend to keep them hidden from public view. Suicides and their social recognition threaten the vested interests of corporate and political elites by giving material embodiment to relations of production in the form of extreme human suffering. This article focuses on 'suicide waves' at two distant corporations in the information and communications sector: in France, the telecoms provider, France Télécom (rebranded Orange in 2013) and in China, electronics supplier, Foxconn. Drawing on Stanley Cohen's notion of 'states of denial', the article examines the tactics used by corporate and political elites in an effort to keep the suicides concealed. These include discourses that denied the suicides, individualised their causes and repressive tactics intended to control information and impede investigations. Recognising workplace suicides and the forms of repression that seek to occlude them, is crucial if we are to confront the profound human costs of a new international division of digital labour on lived experiences of work.
tripleC-Interview with Kerem Schamberger about Occupational Bans, Left-Wing Communication Studies and Critique of German Academia
Authors: Schamberger Kerem
Published: May 2018

Kerem Schamberger is a doctoral student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich’s Department of Communication Studies and Media Research. He is also a left-wing activist and member of the German Communist Party (DKP). In the course of his appointment, the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz), based on Bavarian legislation, assessed whether Kerem should be considered as being a threat to the constitution and whether he should be denied employment. In German media sociology, there was a comparable case in the 1970s when an occupational ban was carried out against Horst Holzer. tripleC interviewed Kerem and asked him to explain the background in more detail. Christian Fuchs and Thomas Allmer conducted the interview in German and translated it into English.
"Well friends, let's play jazz." An Interview with Cees J. Hamelink.
Authors: Amon Prodnik Jernej
Published: May 2018

An interview with Cees J. Hamelink, one of the most important scholars in global communication and international political economy of communication, who was also an active participant in several political initiatives and movements in the field of media and communication, including NWICO and WSIS. We spoke about his political ideas, scholarly work and how his fascinating life-path, which took him to different parts of the world, in many ways had an impact on his intellectual development.
"Is enlightenment just a European idea?" An interview with Daya Thussu.
Authors: Slaček Brlek Sašo , Amon Prodnik Jernej
Published: May 2018

Interview with Daya Kishan Thussu, Professor of International Communication at the University of Westminster. We discuss his journalistic experience at the Press Trust of India and Gemini News Service, the New World Information and Communication Order and the MacBride report, the rise of BRICS and changes in the sphere of international communications in recent decades, the significance of critical scholarship and the need to internationalize media and communication studies.
“I can't imagine a radically reformed political economy that isn't built on a radically reformed public sphere.” An interview with Dan Hind.
Authors: Slaček Brlek Sašo
Published: May 2018

Interview with Dan Hind, advocate for media reform. We discuss the need to democratise journalism, his proposal to achieve this goal by giving the public direct control over the allocation of public subsidies in the form of public commissioning, possible objections and hurdles in the way of implementing it and his views on the pilot project of public commissioning by the Croatian Ministry of Culture.
Technopopulism: The Emergence of a Discursive Formation
Authors: Deseriis Marco
Published: May 2018

This article contends that technopopulism is a discursive formation that emerges from the convergence of two preexisting discourses: populism and technolibertarianism. Whereas these discourses are historically distinct the 2008 financial crisis and the 2011 wave of struggles have precipitated the political conditions for their intersection and hybridization. Such convergence produces both tensions and possibilities. On the one hand, technopopulism engenders a radically participatory model of democracy, which is ultimately anti-institutional as citizens cooperate and engage in sophisticated decision-making without the mediation of professional politicians. On the other hand, the more successful technopopulist parties—at least in the electoral arena—are all led by charismatic leaders who synthesize the positions that emerge from the netroots to mobilize them against the establishment. These two seemingly contradictory aspects precipitate in two variants of technopopulism: a leaderless-technocratic variant, which is derived from the open source mode of governance and from early experiments of the Global Justice Movement in networked self-government; and a leaderist-populist variant, which is more strictly focused on the electoral competition as an intrinsically reductive and thus hegemonic practice. The article concludes with a reflection on the discursive complementarity of these two variants and on the political tensions and challenges technopopulism faces in the current phase.
From Cyber-Autonomism to Cyber-Populism: An Ideological Analysis of the Evolution of Digital Activism
Authors: Gerbaudo Paolo
Published: May 2018

The analysis of digital activism has so far been dominated by a techno-determinist approach which interprets the logic of activism and its transformation as directly reflecting the properties of the technologies utilised by activists. This line of interpretatoin has been manifested in the popularity acquired by notions as “Twitter protest” or “revolution 2.0” in the news media and in academic discourse. Moving beyond this reductionist trend, this article proposes an ideological approach to the study of digital activism and its hisstorical transformation, which can better account for the combination of political, cultural and social factors involved in shaping it. I identity two main waves of digital activism, corresponding not only to two phases of technological development of the internet (the so-called web 1.0 and web 2.0), but also to two different protest waves, the anti-globalisation movement, and the movement of the squares that began in 2011, each with its own dominant ideology. I argue that reflecting the seismic shift in perceptions and attitudes produced by the 2008 crash, and the connected shifts in social movement ideology, digital activism has moved from the margins to the centre, from a countercultural posture to a counterhegemonic ambition. I describe this turn as a transition from cyber-autonomism to cyber-populism as the two defining techno-political orientations of the first and second wave of digital activism. Reflecting the influence of neo-anarchism and autonomism in the anti-globalisation movement cyber-autonomism saw the Internet as an autonomous space where to construct a countercultural politics outside the mainstream. To the contrary cyber-populism, informed by the populist turn taken by 2011 and post-2011 movements, sees the Internet as a “popular space”, which needs to be appropriated by ordinary citizens, turned away from consumption activities and towards the purpose of popular mobilisation against the neoliberal elites. This shift that substantially modifies the way in which activists conceives of and utilise digital media goes a long way towards explaining the differences in digital activism practices, and their contrasting views of the internet as a tool and site of struggle.