bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cultural Work as a Site of Struggle: Freelancers and Exploitation
Authors: Cohen Nicole S.
Published: May 2018

This paper argues that Marxist political economy is a useful framework for understanding contemporary conditions of cultural work. Drawing on Karl Marx’s foundational concepts, labour process theory, and a case study of freelance writers, I argue that the debate over autonomy and control in cultural work ignores exploitation in labour-capital relationships, which is a crucial process shaping cultural work. To demonstrate the benefits of this approach, I discuss two methods media firms use to extract surplus value from freelance writers: exploitation of unpaid labour time and exploitation of intellectual property through aggressive copyright regimes. I argue that a Marxist perspective can uncover the dynamics that are transforming cultural industries and workers’ experiences. From this perspective, cultural work is understood as a site of struggle.
‘A Workers’ Inquiry 2.0’: An Ethnographic Method for the Study of Produsage in Social Media Contexts
Authors: Brown Brian , Quan-Haase Anabel
Published: May 2018

In this paper, we propose a new ethnographic method for the study of produsage (Bruns 2008) in social media contexts. The proposed method is based on three lines of thought: Marx’s method of ‘A Workers’ Inquiry’, the autonomists’ method of co-research, and recent critical theory of Web 2.0. To show the applicability and usefulness of the proposed method, we first compare it to other Marxist inspired methodological approaches and then we describe a case study to illustrate the method’s diversity and its potential for providing new insights into the processes of produsage and the commodification of audiences as described in previous work by Smythe (1977), Bruns (2008), Cohen (2008), and Fuchs (2011). The case study consists of a critical examination of the mode of produsage as it takes place in Flickr, one of the largest photo-sharing communities on the Internet.
Social Media, Mediation and the Arab Revolutions
Authors: Aouragh Miriyam
Published: May 2018

Abstract: This article discusses the socio-political implications of user-generated applications and platforms through the prism of the Arab revolutions. Popular postmodern conceptualisations such as (post-nation state) network societies, (post-class) immaterial economies and (horizontal) political resistance through multitudes requires rigorous reassessment in the aftermath of the events in the MENA. Although the revolutions have led to a resurgence of debates about the power of new media, such arguments (or rather assertions) are echoes of earlier suggestions related to peculiar fetishisations of ICT in general and social media in particular. The point of my critique is not to deny the social and political usefulness of new media but to examine the pros and cons of the internet. I tackle the juxtaposition of the internet and political activism through the Marxist concept Mediation and investigate how the social, political and cultural realms of capitalism (superstructure) are both conditioned by and react upon the political-economic base. This helps us to understand structural factors such as ICT ownership (political-economic decision making of social media); while deconstructing the effect of cultural hegemony disseminated through mass media. It also overcomes an unfortunate weakness of some “academic Marxism” (an overwhelming focus on theory) by anchoring the theoretical arguments in an anthropological approach
Some Reflections on Manuel Castells’ Book "Networks of Outrage and Hope. Social Movements in the Internet Age".
Authors: Fuchs Christian
Published: May 2018

This paper provides critical reflections on Manuel Castells’ (2012) book Networks of Outrage and Hope. Social Movements in the Internet Age that analyses the “nature and perspectives of networked social movements” (p. 4) and gives special focus to the role of “social media” in movements that emerged in 2011 in Tunisia, Iceland, Egypt, Spain and the United States. I situate Castells’ book in an intellectual discourse that focuses on the political implications of social media and that has involved Clay Shirky, Malcolm Gladwell and Evgeny Morozov. The article also discusses the role of social theory and empirical research in Castells’ book, presents as an alternative a theoretical model of the relationship between social movements and the media, discusses the implications that some empirical data that focus on social media in the Egyptian revolution and the Occupy Wall Street movement have for Castells’ approach, discusses how Castells positions himself towards capitalism and compares his explanation of the crisis and his political views to David Harvey’s approach. Section overview: 1. Introduction 2. Social Media and Politics: A Controversy between Clay Shirky, Malcolm Gladwell and Evgeny Morozov 3. Castells on Social Media in the Context of Protests and Revolutions: The Dimension of Social Theory 4. Social Theory Recovered: A Model of the Relationship between Social Movements and the Media 5. Castells on Social Media in the Context of Protests and Revolutions: The Dimension of Empirical Research 6. Manuel Castells and David Harvey: The Question of Political Struggle - For or against Capitalism? 7. Conclusion
Race: The Difference That Makes a Difference
Authors: Ali Syed Mustafa
Published: May 2018

During the last two decades, critical enquiry into the nature of race has begun to enter the philosophical main-stream. The same period has also witnessed the emergence of an increasingly visible discourse about the nature of infor-mation within a diverse range of popular and academic settings. What is yet to emerge, however, is engagement at the interface of the two disciplines – critical race theory and the philosophy of information. In this paper, I shall attempt to con-tribute towards the emergence of such a field of enquiry by using a reflexive hermeneutic (or interpretative) approach to analyze the concept of race from an information-theoretical perspective, while reflexively analyzing the concept of informa-tion from a critical race-theoretical perspective. In order to facilitate a more concrete enquiry, the concept of information formulated by cyberneticist Gregory Bateson and the concept of race formulated by philosopher Charles W Mills will be placed at the centre of analysis. Crucially, both concepts can be shown to have a connection to the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, thereby justifying their selection as topics of examination on critical reflexive hermeneutic grounds.
Foxconned Labour as the Dark Side of the Information Age: Working Conditions at Apple’s Contract Manufacturers in China.
Authors: Sandoval Marisol
Published: May 2018

Apple is one of the most dominant and most admired computer companies in the world. But hidden behind the clean surface of Apple’s advanced gadgets lies a dirty world of work. This paper focuses on the dark side of the information age by looking at working conditions in the workshops of Apple’s contract manufacturers in China. For this purpose I suggest a systematic model of working conditions that can be used for assessing and comparing work in different industries. Departing from Karl Marx’s circuit of capital it identifies elements that shape working conditions throughout the capital accumulation process including productive forces, relations of production, the production process, products, and labour legislation. Subsequently I apply this model to the realm of electronics manufacturing. Based on research conducted by corporate watchdogs this paper provides detailed insights into the work and life reality of workers in Apple’s first tier supplier factories. An analysis of Apple’s response to labour rights allegations furthermore reveals three ideological patterns that rather obscure existing problems than offering viable solutions.
The Parody of the Commons
Authors: Kostakis Vasilis , Stavroulakis Stelios
Published: May 2018

This essay builds on the idea that Commons-based peer production is a social advancement within capitalism but with various post-capitalistic aspects, in need of protection, enforcement, stimulation and connection with progressive social movements. We use theory and examples to claim that peer-to-peer economic relations can be undermined in the long run, distorted by the extra-economic means of a political context designed to maintain profit-driven relations of production into power. This subversion can arguably become a state policy, and the subsequent outcome is the full absorption of the Commons as well as of the underpinning peer-to-peer relations into the dominant mode of production. To tackle this threat, we argue in favour of a certain working agenda for Commons-based communities. Such an agenda should aim the enforcement of the circulation of the Commons. Therefore, any useful social transformation will be meaningful if the people themselves decide and apply policies for their own benefit, optimally with the support of a sovereign partner state. If peer production is to become dominant, it has to control capital accumulation with the aim to marginalise and eventually transcend capitalism.
Why and How to Read Marx’s “Capital”? Reflections on Johan Fornäs’ Book “Capitalism. A Companion to Marx’s Economy Critique”.
Authors: Fuchs Christian
Published: May 2018

This paper is a reflection on Johan Fornäs' book “Capitalism. A Companion to Marx’s Economy Critique” - a new introduction to all three volumes of Karl Marx's "Capital". It contextualizes the book with the help a comparison to other contemporary introductions to Marx's "Capital". The reflection is organized in the form of 7 sections: 1) Context 2) Method and Logic of Presentation 3) The Logical and the Historical in Marx’s Works 4) From Karl to Adolf Marx in German Marxist Theory? 5) Visualization 6) Crises 7) Read this Book!
Review of Jörg Becker’s Book “Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. Demoskopin zwischen NS-Ideologie und Konservatismus” (Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. Pollster between Nazi-Ideology and Conservatism)
Authors: Fuchs Christian
Published: May 2018

In light of an ongoing legal issue, this article was suspended on April 16, 2016. tripleC will look into the received claims and legal issues before finally deciding what should happen with the article.
The Diamond Model of Open Access Publishing: Why Policy Makers, Scholars, Universities, Libraries, Labour Unions and the Publishing World Need to Take Non-Commercial, Non-Profit Open Access Serious
Authors: Fuchs Christian , Sandoval Marisol
Published: May 2018

This reflection introduces a new term to the debate on open access publishing: diamond open access (DOA) publishing. The debate on open access is a debate about the future of academia. We discuss the problems of for-profit academic publishing, such as monopoly prices and access inequalities and point at the limits of contemporary perspectives on open access as they are frequently advanced by the publishing industry, policy makers and labour unions. The article introduces a public service and commons perspective that stresses the importance of fostering and publicly supporting what we term the model of diamond open access. It is a non-profit academic publishing model that makes academic knowledge a common good, reclaims the common character of the academic system and entails the possibility for fostering job security by creating public service publishing jobs. Existing concepts such as “gold open access” have serious conceptual limits that can be overcome by introducing the new term of diamond open access. The debate on open access lacks visions and requires social innovations. This article is a policy intervention and reflection on current issues related to open access (OA) publishing. It reflects on the following questions: * What should the role of open access be in the future of academic publishing and academia? * How should the future of academic publishing and academia look like? * Which reforms of academic policy making are needed in relation to open access publishing? We want to trigger a new level of the open access debate. We invite further reflections on these questions by academics, policy makers, publishers, publishing workers, labour unions, open access publishing associations, editors and librarians.Twitter: #DiamondOA
The Dialectics of Communicative and Immanent Critique
Authors: Fornäs Johan
Published: May 2018

In cultural studies and cultural research, the importance of being critical is often stressed, but it is more rare to scrutinise how such critique is and can be performed. This text discusses different modes of critique, in three main steps. First, a brief review of the history and signifying layers of the concept of critique itself leads up to a late modern communicative concept of critique, linked to the contested relation between critique and tradition, and based on how Paul Ricoeur has interpreted ideology critique and the hermeneutics of suspicion. This communicative mode is contrasted to critical approaches that strive to radically dissociate themselves from others. Second, it is argued that the most powerful sources of critique are to be sought in the inner contradictions of the targeted spheres of social reality rather than applied from the outside. Such immanent – as opposed to transcendent – critique, has been formulated and exercised by Karl Marx, Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, among others. The third section sums up the spiral moves of cultural studies as informed by critical hermeneutics: dialectical critique based on communicative and immanent critique must be on the move, never frozen, and may temporarily and locally explore radical and transcendent modes of critique, in ways that have been discussed by Donna Haraway.
darkmatter: Racial Reconfigurations and Networked Knowledge Production
Authors: Sharma Ashwani , Sharma Sanjay
Published: May 2018

In the form of a discussion the founding editors of darkmatter journal reflect on the challenges of developing an online race project in the neoliberal context of knowledge production. The independent open access journal, operating at the borders of academia and cultural production, attempts to grasp the shifting contours of contemporary race and racism in a networked postcolonial world. Against the limitations of solely working within disciplines such as Postcolonial or Cultural Studies, darkmatter brings into dialogue a diverse range of conceptual frameworks to address the proliferation of race discourses. Interrogating and reworking the developments in digital publishing, the project constructs a space for the exploration and dissemination of race thinking and creating relations between different fields, sites and groups. The threats posed by the info-colonialism of corporate academic publishing are transversed through the evolution of darkmatter with its experiments in techno-cultural design and innovations in autonomous working practices.
The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open Access
Authors: Beall Jeffrey
Published: May 2018

While the open-access (OA) movement purports to be about making scholarly content open-access, its true motives are much different. The OA movement is an anti-corporatist movement that wants to deny the freedom of the press to companies it disagrees with. The movement is also actively imposing onerous mandates on researchers, mandates that restrict individual freedom. To boost the open-access movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic futures of young scholars and those from developing countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality open-access journals. The open-access movement has fostered the creation of numerous predatory publishers and standalone journals, increasing the amount of research misconduct in scholarly publications and the amount of pseudo-science that is published as if it were authentic science.
OAJ and Wagadu: Towards a Diamond Model of Feminist, Postcolonial Publishing
Authors: Nagel Mechthild
Published: May 2018

This comment reflects on the genesis of an OA non-corporate journal, affiliated with a public university. Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies emerged from an idealized discussion of open access to a more robust understanding of the pragmatics of visibility, tenure and promotion guidelines. It gives account of the challenge of trying to navigate in ethical ways through the corporate waves of cooptation.
Negotiating the New Media Platforms: Youth and Political Images in Kenya
Authors: Mukhongo Lynete Lusike
Published: May 2018

New media platforms, particularly social networks act as vehicles for visual representation of a nation’s political discourse among the youth. Web 2.0 has created online spaces (private and public) that have been appropriated by Kenyan youth, locally, and in the Diaspora to weave their own political narratives and present them in forums that accommodate their views without fear of censorship or regulation that characterises “offline” communications. Using post structuralism, with emphasis on Roland Barthes “Death of the Author” and “Camera Lucida”, the article critically analyses how cultural values affect the interpretation of online political images from Kenya, by internet users from different culture zones. Further, the article discusses whether political images posted by the youth in Kenya on their online private spaces can be used to promote political stereotypes, subjectivities and perpetuate visual hegemonies; or whether it allows the youth to circumvent government surveillance tactics and afford nations an opportunity to correct the media hegemony by rewriting their own stories on a platform that is not just national, but transnational
Framing Openness. The Digital Circulation of Israel's National Photographic Memory
Authors: Casemajor Nathalie
Published: May 2018

Since 1948, the Government Press Office of Israel has been collecting and producing an extensive archive of photographs representing the birth and development of the Israeli nation state. Digitized and published online, this archive functions as a visual memorial of Israel, an example of what Jan Assman calls “bonding memory”, a form of memory that connects individuals to a political body, and which acts to frame a collective national identity. In 2011, the copyright terms of this archive were changed to encourage the circulation and reuse of images. This decision echoes a broader trend towards the “opening” of large data sets on the Web (“open data”, “open archives”, “open government”). At the same time, the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and the existence of contesting narratives of the creation of Israel threaten the integrity of the official national memory. In this context, what are the conditions and limits of “opening” the national photographic archive? Examining contemporary ideology of the “open” in new media discourses and the free culture movement, this paper investigates the conditions of circulation and appropriation of memory and the role of copyright as a potential tool to control freedom of expression.
Toward a Political Economy of ‘Audience Labour’ in the Digital Era
Authors: Nixon Brice
Published: May 2018

This article contributes to a political economic theory centred on the concept of “audience labour”. First, the previous use of the concept of audience labour is briefly traced and the process of rethinking the concept as the basis of a political economic theory is begun. Second, a theory of the audience labour process is developed, drawing on previous theories of audience activities of cultural consumption as productive activities of signification and adapting Marx’s theory of the human labour process to the audience labour process. Third, a political economy of audience labour is outlined. As a theory of the basic processes through which communicative capital can control and extract value from audience labour, it describes the exploitation of audience labour and accumulation of communicative capital through distribution relationships of rent and interest. Finally, the continuing centrality of audience labour exploitation in the digital era is discussed.
Production Cultures and Differentiations of Digital Labour
Authors: Chen Yujie
Published: May 2018

The article makes two theoretical interventions to engage with current scholarship on digital labour. First, the author complicates the relationship between culture and production by bringing the former from the “superstructure” in the classical Marx’s framework to the “base.” As various cultural production, consumption, and economic activities converging onto digital, networked media eco-system, digital labour is indeed the indispensable source for capitals’ accumulation of surplus and, more importantly, for cultural construction around production process. How labourers perceive their relations and interactions to the digital production process as crucial as which capacity they rely on to perform their labour. Culturalization of production process (re)draws the boundaries for desirable skills and constructs ideal digital workers with normative behaviours.  Second, precisely because the production process has become normative construction site, meanings and values of labouring are subject to broader social and cultural context including prior established global inequality and cultural differences.
Property Outlaws in Cyberspace and Meatspace? Examining the Relationship between Online Peer Production and Support for Private Property Violations
Authors: Gibson Timothy
Published: May 2018

Marxian theory has long viewed the institution of private property as central to labour exploitation. After all, private property laws allow those who control the means of production to expropriate surplus value from the dispossessed. An analogous relationship arguably defines life on the Internet, where users are forced to venture onto privately owned digital enclosures to access key services. Yet these online property relationships are anything but settled and uncontested. Outside the digital enclosures of Apple and Google, the Internet has fostered the development of “commons-based peer production”, where key resources (e.g. software) are produced without anyone claiming exclusive property rights. In fact, some scholars have argued that the rise of peer production on the web has begun to re-shape popular attitudes concerning the legitimacy of property exclusions more broadly. In short, as we become “property outlaws” on the web, we come to question the inevitability and legitimacy of private property elsewhere in life. This paper explores this hypothesis by reporting data from a survey of Internet users at an East Coast university. Are users who engage in more peer production activities on the web also more likely to approve of “property outlaw” behaviours not just in the online context, but in the offline world as well (e.g. squatting)? The data provide only partial support for the hypothesis: active online peer producers were indeed more likely to support violations of intangible (intellectual) properties, but not violations of tangible or “real-world” properties.
Phantasmagoria of Urban Spectacle: Walter Benjamin and Media Theory Today
Authors: Kang Jaeho
Published: May 2018

This contribution is the audio recording of a talk that Jaeho Kang gave at the University of Westminster in the Communication and Media Research Institute's (CAMRI) Research Seminar Series on October 29, 2014.Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is one of the most original and perceptive German literary and cultural critics, but his unique insight into the profound impact of the media on modernity has received a good deal less attention. Based on my book, 'Walter Benjamin and the Media: The Spectacle of Modernity' (2014, see http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745645209), I will talk about Benjamin’s critical and provocative writings on the intersection between media and modern experience with particular reference to phantasmagoria, aesthetic public space, and urban spectacle. In so doing, I will clarify Benjamin’s distinctive and enduring contribution to contemporary media studies.
The Commodification of the Couch: A Dialectical Analysis of Hospitality Exchange Platforms
Authors: Schöpf Simon
Published: May 2018

Online hospitality exchange (HospEx) platforms—essentially facilitating the connection between a traveller and a local resident—embody many of the cyber-utopian promises intrinsic to the Web as it started out 25 years ago. This paper investigates upon the antagonistic struggle between the commons and processes of commodification in the light of critical theory of social media for this niche social networking space and introduces two relevant examples. The biggest of those platforms, Couchsurfing.org, changed its organizational orientation from a non-profit, commons-based project towards a for-profit company in 2011—an instance of commodification. An analysis of both quantitative and qualitative community data shows that the transformation consequently concerns members on multiple levels. The structural change of ownership results in a loss of transparency and privacy, an alteration of the platform’s integrity, a sacrifice of the “uniqueness” of the community, and a differing relationship between the user and the platform. To discuss an alternative, community-based governance approach, the paper further explores the specifics of a platform guided by the logic of the commons, the non-commercial and non-profit HospEx platform BeWelcome.org.
Digitalisation and Labour: A Rejoinder to Christian Fuchs
Authors: Bolaño César Ricardo Siqueira
Published: May 2018

I have published a paper about social network sites in the journal Television & New Media, criticising some ideas of Christian Fuchs, who considers the mere act of surfing on commercial websites using targeted advertising, such as Facebook, a form of labour. His rejoinder deserves some responses from me. We share the same concern about the need to analyse the Internet from a Marxist perspective—revealing its dominative features and its functions as an instrument of exploitation, while considering the counter-hegemonic possibilities allowed by the system structure or, as Fuchs puts it, regarding the fact that “alternatives to Facebook and the capitalist Internet are needed”. Although, Fuchs in his response concerns mainly one major idea, he makes the same mistake as Dallas Smythe regarding the labour theory of value. In his rejoinder he refers to some old polemic issues known in the Marxist debate that have nothing to do with the problem itself. Acknowledgement: The two articles, on which this contribution is based, are: Bolaño, César R. S. and Eloy S. Vieira. 2015. The Political Economy of the Internet: Social Networking Sites and a Reply to Fuchs. Television & New Media 16 (1): 52–61. Fuchs, Christian. 2015. Against Divisiveness: Digital Workers of the World Unite! A Rejoinder to César Bolaño and Eloy Vieira. Television & New Media 16 (1): 62–71.
Digital Labour: A Comment on César Bolaño’s tripleC-Reflection
Authors: Fuchs Christian
Published: May 2018

This paper is a reflection on César Bolaño’s tripleC article “Digitalisation and Labour: A Rejoinder to Christian Fuchs”. It discusses aspects of digital labour that relate to the dialectic of production and consumption, the category of prosumption, productive labour, housework, the international division of digital labour, and Facebook use as a form of ideological transport labour.
Review: Ecology of Virtual Realities
Authors: Dimitrov Assen
Published: May 2018

The book’s introductory chapter justifies its overall theoretical, ecological framework, its scientific and cultural assumptions, and the range of the philosophical, interdisciplinary, and particular issues arising in the context of the ecology of virtual realities. The second chapter outlines a complementary perspective on virtual reality, disclosed by the philosophy of information, the proper categorical structures and relations to which the complex dynamics of virtual reality boils down. Chapter 3 extensively deals with the architecture and the design of virtual reality, the augmented reality, cyberspace, and the prospects for its future. Chapter 4 examines the auto/regulation of the virtual public sphere, considered as a digital ecosystem. The fifth and final chapter introduces us into the machinery underlying the phantasmagorical logic of virtual financial markets.
Negotiating Educated Subjectivity: Intern Labour and Higher Education in Hong Kong
Authors: Ip Iam-chong
Published: May 2018

This article examines interns’ negotiation of their work identity, with a focus on the nexus of transformations in higher education and the “new” capitalist economy. The existing literature on internships emphasizes the restructuring of employment in creative and cultural industries, the surplus cultural labour supply, and the impact of internships on the career paths of educated youth mostly in western countries. Based on interviews and participant observation in Hong Kong, I argue that the intern’s “educated subjectivity,” nurtured by new values and practices of higher education such as self-reflexive learning and interfacing with community, plays an important role in the making of the intern economy. These values and practices contribute to the ambiguity and elasticity of the role of interns identified in previous research on internships.
Interning and Investing: Rethinking Unpaid Work, Social Capital, and the “Human Capital Regime”
Authors: Hope Sophie , Figiel Joanna
Published: May 2018

For young workers, interning is a strategy for speculating on one’s asset portfolio. Students and graduates undertake internships as a way of maintaining their self-appreciation and avoiding depreciation in a “human capital regime.” In this article, we explore the specific example of interning in the creative industries as the self-management of human capital vis-à-vis the human capital theses. Taking three cultural objects and recent representations of the issue of unpaid internships—Intern magazine, an advert for a “volunteering opportunity” student placement, and testimonies from interns—we analyze how unpaid work in the creative industries and the neoliberal version of human capital entrepreneurship can be seen as embodied by interns.
Media and Information Technology in Ten Years’ Time: A Society of Control Both from Above and Below, and From Outside and Inside
Authors: Becker Jörg
Published: May 2018

In the process of continual change from the hand axe to the factory and now to industrial production 4.0, technology has had, and still has, two basically invariable functions: control and rationalisation. Each of these two terms is to be understood in a very comprehensive sense, in technical, engineering, commercial, legal and also social terms. This tenet also applies to television and to information technology. In my lecture, the terms “above” and “below” stand for a model of social stratification; they stand for capital and labour. The terms “outside” and “inside” stand for the external conditions of the class struggle from “above” and “below”. The external conditions mean the social and the inside conditions mean the psychological environment. Both television and information technology rely on content and organisational forms that run from above to below (from top to bottom). Moreover, contrary to Gutenberg’s invention of moving letters, today innovations in the media and IT fields no longer run from the bottom up, but only from the top down. While television conditions the individual from outside, users of social media internalise that same conditioning as a liberation from constraints.
Challenging Intern Nation: A Roundtable with Intern Labour Activists in Canada
Authors: Cohen Nicole , De Peuter Greig
Published: May 2018

Internships have gained critical attention in Canada, thanks largely to the efforts of intern labour activists, who have generated media coverage, lobbied and advised politicians, conducted education and outreach, and advocated for an end to the proliferation of unpaid internships in Canada. This roundtable interview with intern labour activists Ella Henry, Andrew Langille, Joshua Mandryk, and Claire Seaborn was conducted by Nicole Cohen and Greig de Peuter in Toronto on March 1, 2015. Follow up interviewing was conducted over e-mail in May 2015. The interview has been edited and condensed.
The Commodity Form of Safety Information
Authors: Finkelstein Rodrigo
Published: May 2018

The production of safety information is deemed a vital resource to protect human lives at the work site. The injury rate, lost days, incapacity rate, and fatality rate, are key indicators to prop up labour risk awareness and identify job hazards. However, safety information gets highly distorted because it does not only measure risk but serves as a means of exchange. It determines the amount of money to be swapped between Workers’ Compensation Boards and their client corporations. Moreover, as a depository of exchange value, safety information tends to exert pressure over social reality rather than just being a passive reflection of it. This paper discloses the commodity form of safety information. Based on a political economy of information framework, it identifies, describes, and analyses the safety information commodity in its active role of organizing safety and labour health.
Monetary Materialities of Peer-Produced Knowledge: The Case of Wikipedia and Its Tensions with Paid Labour
Authors: Lund Arwid , Venäläinen Juhana
Published: May 2018

This article contributes to the debate on the possibilities and limits of expanding the sphere of peer production within and beyond capitalism. As a case in point, it discusses the explicit and tacit monetary dependencies of Wikipedia, which are not only due to the need to sustain the technological structures that render the collaboration possible, but also about the sustenance of the peer producers themselves. In Wikipedia, the “bright line” principle for avoiding a conflict of interest has been that no one should be paid for directly editing an article. By examining the case of Wiki-PR, a consultant firm allegedly involved in helping more than 12,000 clients to edit Wikipedia articles until 2014, the goal of the analysis is to shed light on the paradoxical situation where the institution for supporting the peer production (Wikimedia Foundation) found itself taking a more strict perspective against commercial alliances than the unpaid community editors.
Access, Resources, and Classes in the History of Capitalism: A Theory of Social Stratification from a Cognitive Materialist Perspective
Authors: Zukerfeld Mariano , Yansen Guillermina
Published: May 2018

This article aims to apply some concepts from cognitive materialism to the sociological problem of social stratification in capitalism, both in theoretical and abstract terms and through concrete historical examples. After discussing the necessity for a theory of social classes, a division is presented between two types of resources: those intensive in material and energy, and those which are knowledge intensive. At the same time three alternative conditions of access to these resources are theorized: exclusive access (applicable to physical or intellectual property), non-exclusive access, and no access. Combining the different types of resource with the different types of access, we obtain a proposal for a theory of classes (reclaiming this theory as the most powerful for the analysis of social stratification) which we apply, in a simplified and schematic way, to various periods. Thus, we analyze social strata in the transition from feudalism to mercantile capitalism, the subsequent transition to industrial capitalism (in which we distinguish two clearly differentiated stages), and finally, in the current transformation into informational capitalism.
Making Media Studies
Authors: Gauntlett David
Published: May 2018

This podcast is a recording of a research seminar that took place on December 3, 2015, at the University of Westminster's Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI).In this contribution, David Gauntlett discusses his new book, Making Media Studies, and other new work. In Making Media Studies (Peter Lang, 2015), Gauntlett proposes a vision of media studies based around doing and making – not about the acquisition of skills, as such, but an experience of building knowledge and understanding through creative hands-on engagement with all kinds of media. Gauntlett suggests that media studies scholars have failed to recognise the significance of everyday creativity – the vital drive of people to make, exchange, and learn together, supported by online networks. He argues that we should think about media in terms of conversations, inspirations, and making things happen. Media studies can be about genuine social change, he suggests, if we recognise the significance of everyday creativity, work to transform our tools, and learn to use them wisely. David Gauntlett is a Professor in the School of Media, Arts and Design at the University of Westminster, where he is also the School's Co-Director of Research. He is the author of several books, including: Creative Explorations (2007), Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction (2nd edition 2008), Making is Connecting (2011), and Making Media Studies (2015). He has made a number of popular online resources, videos and playthings, and has pioneered creative research and workshop methods. He is external examiner for Information Experience Design at the Royal College of Art, London.
Piracy as Labour Struggle
Authors: Mueller Gavin
Published: May 2018

This paper examines the organization of digital piracy in the context of reshaping labor under neoliberalism. It discusses the practices by which enclosures of intellectual property are resisted by drawing from literature on the labor process, and examining the historical emergence of piratical practice on electronic bulletin board systems. These pirates sought, above all, to preserve autonomous, self-managed working conditions in the face of tendencies to commodify, enclose, and deskill.
Socialisme ou Barbarie: From Castoriadis’ Project of Individual and Collective Autonomy to the Collaborative Commons
Authors: Papadimitropoulos Evangelos
Published: May 2018

In this article, I examine the content of socialism in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis in its potential relation to the current emergence of collaborative commons. I begin by analysing Castoriadis’ conceptualisation of socialism, as crystallised in the project of individual and collective autonomy, which was initially demonstrated in the journal Socialisme ou Barbarie (1949-1965) and evolved thereafter in his later writings. I continue by briefly presenting some basic points of criticism, after which I explore the potential compatibility of Castoriadis’ political project with the prospect of market socialism, as the latter emerges today in the form of collaborative commons. I argue, in particular, that collaborative commons echo Castoriadis’ conception of socialism in several respects. Finally, I critically develop a series of proposals made by Vasilis Kostakis and Michel Bauwens that could provide fertile ground for further discussion on the prospect of the commons.
Ernesto Laclau and Critical Media Studies: Marxism, Capitalism, and Critique
Authors: Schou Jannick
Published: May 2018

Ernesto Laclau’s post-Marxist discourse theory is increasingly utilised within media studies in order to investigate discourses circulating about, within, and through media. Discourse theory has proved itself to be a productive theoretical asset that can yield important empirical insights into the solidification and neutralization of particular discursive regimes. Yet, the critical potentials of Laclau’s theoretical work have often been downplayed or neglected. Instead of offering a fully formed critical theory, Laclau has been relegated to offering a descriptive toolbox in which the underlying critical implications have often either been overlooked or forgotten altogether. This paper seeks to reflect on the potentials and obstacles within Laclau’s work for critical media studies by engaging with the role of Marxism, capitalism and critique. First, the paper addresses the relation between Marxism and post-Marxism by arguing that rather than abandoning Marxism, Laclau actively situates his own work as a dialogue with and against this tradition. Second, the paper addresses the relation between Laclau’s analysis of so-called globalised capitalism and political struggle, which leads to a discussion of class relations and political economy. Third, the paper examines Laclau’s notion of ideology critique and argues that it must be seen as a simultaneously explanatory, normative and practical perspective. Based on these discussions, it is this paper’s contention that it is insufficient to simply appropriate discourse theory as a descriptive research format, but that it must rather be seen as underlined by a radical critique of existing structures of domination and capitalist subordination. The paper furthermore argues that there are parts of Laclau’s work that are problematic for this purpose and needs to receive further attention by future research. By providing an extended discussion of Laclau’s own work, this paper seeks to contribute to the critical application of discourse theory within the field of media studies and contribute to the on-going dialogue between Marxism, post-Marxism, and critical media studies.
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Authors: Roos Andreas , Kostakis Vasilis , Giotitsas Christos
Published: May 2018

The Materiality of the Immaterial: ICTs and the Digital Commons, edited by Andreas Roos, Vasilis Kostakis, Christos Giotitsas 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.
When Will Greece Get its Money back from Germany? Reflections on Yanis Varoufakis’ New Book
Authors: Fuchs Christian
Published: May 2018

This article reviews Yanis Varoufakis’ (2016) book “And the Weak Suffer what They Must? Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability”. It argues that the question “When will the creditors get ‘their money’ back from Greece?” must be dialectically reversed: When will Greece get its money back from Germany? When will Germany pay its debts?
Humanist and Materialist Perspectives on Communication: The Work of Álvaro Vieira Pinto
Authors: Grohmann Rafael
Published: May 2018

The present paper recovers the notion of technology present in the works of the Brazilian philosopher Álvaro Vieira Pinto written during the 1970s. Pinto made humanist and materialist contributions to the study of communication(s). The paper connects the author’s contributions to communication theory with different theoretical and epistemological approaches, discussing the Zeitgeist of things, the post-human and the immaterial. Vieira Pinto anticipated theoretical questions that are relevant in current debates in communication theory.
Critical Reflections on Time and Capitalism
Authors: Klikauer Thomas
Published: May 2018

Abstract: Wayne Hope’s book on Time, Communication and Global Capitalism highlights how capitalism depends on two central issues: communication and time.  In that, Hope’s analysis goes well beyond the famous quote on time by the comedian Dave Allen “we spend our lives on the run: we get up by the clock, eat and sleep by the clock, get up again, go to work - and then we retire. And what do they [fucking] give us? A clock”. Hope emphasises the conflicts between two key time concepts: a) real-time and b) clock time. But the books also discusses ideas such as presentism, temporality, coevalness and allochronism. All these notions affect how capitalism communicates time to us. The book, rather convincingly, argues that all these versions of time are part of global media capitalism, financial regimes and the political economies in general. As a consequence, they also shape today’s workplaces and everyday life.
Technology Retreats and the Politics of Social Media
Authors: Fish Adam
Published: May 2018

This essay examines weeklong technology retreats in Silicon Valley. These retreats embody digital healthism, which I define as the discourse that promotes the self-regulation of digital consumption for personal health. I argue that the self-regulation advanced by digital healthism insufficiently addresses the politics of media refusal. Technology retreats channel frustrations about social media use into opportunities for personal and corporate growth instead of political activism. I consider how technology retreats might participate in a dialogue about the regulation of social media platforms and companies by states. Evidence for these claims come from ethnographic research with the founders of a technology retreat in Silicon Valley.
Media Matter
Authors: Pötzsch Holger
Published: May 2018

The present contribution maps materialist advances in media studies. Based on the assumption that matter and materiality constitute significant aspects of communication processes and practices, I introduce four fields of inquiry - technology, political economy, ecology, and the body - and argue that these perspectives enable a more comprehensive understanding of the implications of contemporary technologically afforded forms of interaction. The article shows how each perspective can balance apologetic and apocalyptic approaches to the impact of in particular digital technologies, before it demonstrates the applicability of an integrated framework with reference to the techno-politics of NSA surveillance and the counter-practices of WikiLeaks.
Digital Lifestyles Between Solidarity, Discipline and Neoliberalism: On the Historical Transformations of the Danish IT Political Field from 1994 to 2016
Authors: Hjelholt Morten , Schou Jannick
Published: May 2018

Governments have increasingly turned to digital technologies as a means of rebuilding their public sectors, allowing them to heighten efficiency, cut expenditure, and deliver new services to citizens. However, rather than merely a technical upgrading of governmental institutions, digital reforms and IT policymaking are deeply political practices concerned with producing and imposing certain normative and ideological visions of the social world. Denmark is often labelled as a leading nation in terms of implementing digital governance, but the political and normative dimensions of digital reforms within the Danish welfare state are yet to be systematically investigated. This paper provides a historical study of Danish IT policies from 1994 to 2016. Relying on archival research of national policies and drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s work on the state, we explore how the IT political field has emerged through symbolic struggles over time and how these struggles have produced particular forms of “digital lifestyles”. We find that two overall logics have dominated within the Danish IT political field. In 1994-2001, solidarity, equality and local Danish values were highlighting as core components of a digital life, but from 2002, however, economic efficiency, competitiveness and self-governance become the main ideals. In this way, the IT political field has increasingly come to converge with neoliberal discourses concerned with imposing market-like dynamics on the public sector and population. The paper concludes with a reflection on how the concept of digital lifestyles may help us understand these changes, and argues that the current dominant discourse should be challenged.