bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Subject Supposed to LOL: Slavoj Žižek and the Event of the Internet
Authors: Burnham Clint
Published: May 2018

Is the Internet an Event? Does it constitute, as Žižek argues an Event should, a reframing of our experience, a retroactive re-ordering of everything we thought we knew about the social but were afraid to ask Facebook?In this contribution, Clint Burnham engages with Žižek’s recent work (Less than Nothing, Event, Absolute Recoil) as a way to argue, first, that in order to understand the Internet, we need Žižek’s “immaterial materialism,” and, in turn, to understand Žižek’s thought and how it circulates today, we need to think through digital culture and social media.   As regards the Internet, then, no cynical disavowal, no Facebook cleanses, no shutting off the wifi: les non-dupes errent, or those who distance themselves from social media and the like are the most deceived. Next: the Internet’s two bodies: digital culture is both the material world of servers, clouds, stacks and devices and the virtual or affective world of liking, networking, and the mirror stage of the selfie. And here we must confront the “obscene underside” of digital culture: not only the trolls, 4chan porn, and gamergate bro’s, but also the old fashioned exploitation of labour, be it iPhone assembly-line workers at Foxconn, super-exploited “blood coltan” miners in the Congo, “like farmers” in India, or social media scrubbers in the Phillipines, who ensure your feeds are “clean” of porn, beheadings, and other #NSFW matter. These last concerns, then, mean we also have to think about what Žižek calls the “undoing of the Event” of the Internet, the betrayal of the Internet, its diseventalization.This podcast is a recording of a CAMRI research seminar that took place at the University of Westminster on January 28, 2015.
Anti-Semitism, Anti-Marxism, and Technophobia: The Fourth Volume of Martin Heidegger’s Black Notebooks (1942–1948)
Authors: Fuchs Christian
Published: May 2018

The fourth volume of Martin Heidegger’s Schwarze Hefte (Black Notebooks) was published in March 2015. It contains philosophical notes written in the years 1942–1948. This contribution discusses the role of anti-Semitism, the hatred of modernity, democracy, Marxism and socialism, the belittlement of the Nazi system, and the opposition to modern media and technologies that can be found in the book. It also provides English translations of some of the book’s key passages.Image source: By: Andreas Praefcke (Own work (own photograph)) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Under the Cloak of Whiteness: A Circuit of Culture Analysis of Opportunity Hoarding and Colour-blind Racism Inside US Advertising Internship Programs
Authors: Boulton Christopher
Published: May 2018

Drawing on qualitative fieldwork at three large agencies, this article adapts Richard Johnson’s “circuit of culture” (1986) as a framework to examine both the material practices that help reproduce an overwhelmingly white labour force within US advertising agencies and the ideological screens that conceal them from scrutiny, critique, and reform. I argue that efforts to diversify advertising through internship-based affirmative action programs are ultimately undermined and overwhelmed by the more widespread systems of white privilege whereby agency executives and powerful clients bypass the application process and directly place personal friends and relatives into highly sought after internship slots. Furthermore, I contend that such material practices of class preference are masked, and thereby enabled, by ideological screens of colour-blind meritocracy. I argue that colour-blindness leads to meritocracy in theory, but race discrimination in practice, and conclude with a discussion of some possible implications for communication theory in general and critical media industry studies in particular.
Educating the Precariat: Intern Labour and a Renewed Approach to Media Literacy Education
Authors: Tewksbury Doug
Published: May 2018

As internships have become more common in the production of media content, the media literacy movement has been neglectful in addressing the role of labour in general and internship labour in particular as a necessary component in deconstructing media content. This paper argues that media literacy educators should teach citizens to understand not just the content and grammar of media production, but also the labour conditions that underlie the creation of this content, with internships being among the most exploitative development in recent years and representative of a larger issue of worker precarity. The paper concludes with a call for reforms to media literacy pedagogy to address workers’ rights and dignity in media and creative industries.
“You Kind of Have to Bite the Bullet and do Bitch Work”: How Internships Teach Students to Unthink Exploitation in Public Relations
Authors: Rodino-Colocino Michelle , Berberick Stephanie N.
Published: May 2018

Based on critical analysis of three focus groups with PR students at Penn State, we argue that describing PR internships as “bitch work” highlights key material and ideological lessons about labour, gender, and exploitation. Analysing interviews of PR interns through Marxist and feminist perspectives, we explain the dynamics of viewing PR internships as “bitch work.” We discuss how internships come to signify good luck in a lottery-like market while also instilling a love of work and the hope that “good work” will follow “bitch work.” Such lessons, furthermore, teach interns to unthink work, our phraseology for the ideological process of viewing internships as almost-but-not-quite labour. We conclude with a call to rethink internships as work, recognize the gendered exploitation of interns, and compensate interns for their real labour.
Art Struggles: Confronting Internships and Unpaid Labour in Contemporary Art
Authors: Kompatsiaris Panos
Published: May 2018

This article explores the practices of recently formed and mainly UK-based art workers’ collectives against unpaid internships and abusive work. The modes through which these collectives perform resistance involve activist tactics of boycotting, site-specific protests, counter-guides, and whistleblowing and name and shame approaches mixed with performance art and playful interventions. Grappling with the predicaments of work in contemporary art, a labouring practice that does not follow typical processes of valorization and has a contingent object and an extremely loose territorial unity, this article argues that while the identity of the contemporary artist is systemically and conceptually moving towards fluidity and open-endedness, these groups work to reaffirm a collective in whose name it is possible to advance certain claims, assumptions, and demands. The contradictions and dynamics of art workers organizing against internships and voluntary work within a highly individualized, self-exploitative, and often privileged field are useful for informing labour organizing in the framework of ongoing capitalist restructuring.
Anti-Neoliberal Neoliberalism: Post-Socialism and Bulgaria’s “Ataka” Party
Authors: Marinos Martin
Published: May 2018

The last elections (2014) for European Union deputies once again confirmed the popularity of far-right parties. Despite scholarly attention, racism and xenophobia in the easternmost part of the EU, remain relatively unexplored. This essay focuses on Ataka, the first far-right political party to enter Bulgaria’s parliament after 1989. Specifically, the article focuses on its official media discourse in order to explain its complex position on neoliberalism. While this party engages in criticisms of neoliberalism, its understanding of it is non-economic and ambiguous. A rhetorical analysis of the party’s newspaper reveals that angry attitudes towards neoliberal economics fuel movements such as Ataka. However, Ataka often presents neoliberalism as a cultural project focused on multiculturalism, “Islamization”, and anti-nationalism. The essay explores this strategy to fuse economic demands with issues of identity. As such, this piece calls for a more nuanced understanding not only of the discourse of contemporary far-right movements, but also of neoliberalism itself.
A History of Internships at CBC Television News
Authors: Murphy Marlene
Published: May 2018

Internships are a common component of journalism education in Canada and, in some cases, a requirement for graduation. I look at the history and development of internships, both paid and unpaid, in the English-language national television newsroom of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canada’s public broadcaster. This account is informed by interviews with CBC staff, union officials, and former CBC interns as well as a survey of post-secondary education institutions that place interns with the CBC. I explore the establishment of unpaid internships at the CBC and the role of the Canadian Media Guild in creating the contract language defining the parameters of internship placements. Internships at the CBC are perceived by some of the Corporation’s staff as a responsibility of the public broadcaster, and representatives of the colleges and universities that participate in the program view the internships as valuable. I argue that the absence of institutional statistics on internships is a missed opportunity to deepen understanding of the role of internships at the CBC, and that systematic information-gathering by academic institutions regarding placements and offers of paid employment would be a useful resource in the debate over unpaid internships.
Report on Intern Rights Advocacy in 2013-2014
Authors: Labor Rights Intern
Published: May 2018

2013-2014 was a milestone for intern rights, with significant accomplishments in the fight to have interns recognized as employees with rights to both pay and workplace protections reviews activist efforts to bring an end to the precarious position of unpaid and underpaid interns in the United States, from the work of the advocacy group Intern Labor Rights and other organizations, to efforts on the judicial and legislative levels. We highlight the movement’s accomplishments in 2013-14 and look forward to the goals it hopes to attain in the near future, all the while contextualizing this is- sue within the larger framework of national labour and wage movements.
Introduction
Authors: De Peuter Greig , Cohen Nicole S. , Brophy Enda
Published: May 2018

This article introduces the special issue, "Interrogating Internships: Unpaid Work, Creative Industries, and Higher Education."
The Materialist Circuits and the Quest for Environmental Justice in ICT’s Global Expansion
Authors: Chen Sibo
Published: May 2018

This article builds on and contributes to research on the material impacts of Information and Communication Technology and Consumer Electronics (ICT/CE) by proposing a holistic framework addressing labour exploitation and environmental destruction in the production, consumption, and disposal of digital devices. Although the emerging media scholarship on digital labour have critically analyzed the material impacts of ICT/CE in terms of labour issues emerged from the production and consumption stages, relatively little research attention has been paid to the end-of-life issues of digital devices and other environmental issues caused by the ICT industry’s global expansion. Based upon previous research on digital labour, environmental management and ecological justice, this article proposes a political economic understanding of the environmental dimension of the ICT industry and how it has contributed to the escalation of environmental crisis and social injustice in developing coun-tries, especially in terms of the urging situation of the global e-waste challenge. The article argues that the critical standpoints taken by political economy of communication and environmental justice re-search provide valuable and promising theoretical connections between labour activism and ecological struggles; and future inquiries on digital economy, in this regard, should combine both perspectives, pay more attention to the enormous social and ecological tensions in the Global South, and make explicit connections between the regressions in labour rights and global environmental justice and ICT’s aggressive and unsustainable expansion.
Beyond the Screen: Uneven Geographies, Digital Labour, and the City of Cognitive-Cultural Capitalism
Authors: Mahmoudi Dillon , Levenda Anthony
Published: May 2018

In this paper, we demonstrate that an examination of the socio-environmental impacts of digital ICTs remains a fruitless enterprise without “materializing” digital labour. We suggest one approach to materializing digital labour: this first includes connecting political economic analyses of digital ICTs to the co-evolution and geography of planetary urbanization and technological change, and second, examining the relationships between immaterial, digital, labour with the material industrial production system. In the context of broad changes in technology, social life, and urbanization, many scholars have theorized a shift towards a third phase of capitalism, beyond mercantilism and industrialism, based in immaterial, digital, and cognitive labour. We introduce the literature on cognitive-cultural capitalism and third-wave urbanization as markers of contemporary capitalism, producing uneven socio-spatial arrangements across the global-urban system. Synthesis of media and communication studies and political economies of urbanization suggests that both capital accumulation and the social lives of (planetary) urban residents are increasingly mediated and structured by online, digital ICT platforms. We show that digital ICTs are sophisticated manipulations of nature that require and illuminate new ways of thinking about digital labour, and more broadly, of immaterial labour. We suggest that the immaterial labour associated with digital ICTs is actually material labour responsible for increasing the velocity of capital circulation, as a moment of production and an appendage of the growing complexity of third-phase capitalist industry and urbanization. The materiality of cognitive, cultural, and symbolic labour reaches beyond the city, invades the lifeworlds of a planet of urban residents, and excretes concrete, silicon, bits, servers, and energy waste producing an urban landscape beyond the city. Through an examination of data centres, we show the necessary relationship between the third-wave urbanization and its planetary reach into rural, pristine Oregon. Data centres in Oregon and the broader Pacific Northwest, highlight the uneven geography of “clean” digital labour focused in large urban technopoles, the potentially harmful, material, and socio-environmental, impacts of data centres in rural areas, and the necessary and dialectic relationship between the two for cognitive-cultural capitalism. We argue that third-wave urbanization, and the concurrent and co-produced technological advancement in digital ICTs and digital ICT infrastructure, creates the conditions for capital’s subsumption of cognitive and cultural labour.
Networked Social Reproduction: Crises in the Integrated Circuit
Authors: Thorburn Elise Danielle
Published: May 2018

This paper argues that the means of communication are sites for, and aspects of, social reproduction. In contemporary capitalism, motivated as it is by new, networked digital technologies, social reproduction is increasingly virtualised through the means of communication. Although recent political struggles have demonstrated how networked technologies can liberate social reproduction from the profit motive and from commodifying impulses, the tendency is to invoke and accelerate socially reproductive crises—crises in the capacity to reproduce ourselves both daily and intergenerationally. These crises have psychic and corporeal impacts, and intensify Tronti’s “social factory” thesis of capital’s technical composition. In order to develop modes and means of liberatory communication in the integrated circuit it is necessary to untangle and chart both the pathways and outcomes of the crises networked social reproduction invokes.
Market and Labour Control in Digital Capitalism
Authors: Staab Philipp , Nachtwey Oliver
Published: May 2018

Theorists of post capitalism have recently argued for a more or less inevitable end to capitalism. They assume that private accumulation is systematically blocked by the inability of capitalist corporations to create revenues by setting prices as they lose control over the reproduction of their commodities and that in this process, capitalist labour will eventually disappear. Drawing on a case study of Amazon and thoughts on the policies of other leading digital corporations, we challenge these assumptions. Key corporate players of digitization are trying to become powerful monopolies and have partly succeeded in doing so, using the network effects and scaling opportunities of digital goods and building socio-technical ecosystems. These strategies have led to the development of in part isomorphic structures, hence creating a situation of oligopolistic market competition. We draw on basic assumptions of monopoly capital theory to argue that in this situation labour process rationalization becomes key to the corporation’s competitive strategies. We see the expansion of digital control and the organizational structures applied by key corporate players of the digital economy as evidence for the expansion of capitalist labour, not its reduction.
The Subject in the Crowd: A Critical Discussion of Jodi Dean’s “Crowds and Party”
Authors: Johanssen Jacob
Published: May 2018

This article presents a critical discussion of Jodi Dean’s (2016) book “Crowds and Party”. I pay particular attention to her discussion of crowds that is influenced by psychoanalysis. Dean has put forward an important argument for the affectivity within crowds that may be transformed into a Communist Party that is characterised by a similar affective infrastructure. I suggest that Dean’s discussion of affect is slightly vague at times and may be supplemented with Sigmund Freud’s work on affect. In contrast to Dean, who stresses the collectivity and deindividuation of the crowd, I argue that the crowd needs to be thought of as a place where individuality and collectivity come together and remain in tension.
Reflections on a Critical Sociology of Networks
Authors: Tsekeris Charalambos
Published: May 2018

Nowadays, sociological concerns for networks, relations, associations, processes, mobilities and flows are intensive and emblematic. This reflection takes “networks” and their multiple products as starting points for a new sociological imagination. It hence outlines a set of current theoretical and methodological issues for approaching the wide and diverse field of the sociology of networks in a critical manner, beginning from the analytical distinction between the critical and the normative-functionalist sociology of networks. The paper concludes with reference to contemporary digital society and the critical use of network data, that is, ever-larger quantities of information generated by human communicative interactions in social networking platforms and other web activities.
Fetishism or Ideology? A Contribution to the Political Economy of Television
Authors: Yuran Noam
Published: May 2018

The dominant approach to the political economy of television argues that television produces "audience commodity" which is sold to advertisers. It situates the economic effects of television in the sphere of subjects and subjectivity. This article presents a different approach, according to which television produces objects. Television advertising produces brands as economic objects possessing qualities that material goods cannot provide. For that purpose, it changes the basis of a critical study of television form ideology, which is primarily an epistemological category, to the ontological category of fetishism. This change entails a shift in the topology of critique of the visual image. Instead of seeing images as inverted representations of reality, in fetishism, according to Marx, things “appear as what they are”. The article argues that broadcast television is the distinctive fetishistic visual medium, in both the Marxian and the psychoanalytic senses of the term.
Donald Trump: A Critical Theory-Perspective on Authoritarian Capitalism
Authors: Fuchs Christian
Published: May 2018

This paper analyses economic power, state power and ideological power in the age of Donald Trump with the help of critical theory. It applies the critical theory approaches of thinkers such as Franz Neumann, Theodor W. Adorno and Erich Fromm. It analyses changes of US capitalism that have together with political anxiety and demagoguery brought about the rise of Donald Trump. This article draws attention to the importance of state theory for understanding Trump and the changes of politics that his rule may bring about. It is in this context important to see the complexity of the state, including the dynamic relationship between the state and the economy, the state and citizens, intra-state relations, inter-state relations, semiotic representations of and by the state, and ideology. Trumpism and its potential impacts are theorised along these dimensions. The ideology of Trump (Trumpology) has played an important role not just in his business and brand strategies, but also in his political rise. The (pseudo-)critical mainstream media have helped making Trump and Trumpology by providing platforms for populist spectacles that sell as news and attract audiences. By Trump making news in the media, the media make Trump. An empirical analysis of Trump’s rhetoric and the elimination discourses in his NBC show The Apprentice underpins the analysis of Trumpology. The combination of Trump’s actual power and Trump as spectacle, showman and brand makes his government’s concrete policies fairly unpredictable. An important question that arises is what social scientists’ role should be in the conjuncture that the world is experiencing.See also the related blog post "How The Frankfurt School Helps Us To Understand Donald Trump’s Twitter Populism"http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/christian-fuchs1/how-the-frankfurt-school-_b_14156190.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-donald-trumpThe German translation of this shorter piece was published in Der Falter 5/2017: 21-23.
tripleC-Interview mit Kerem Schamberger über Berufsverbote, linke Kommunikationswissenschaft und Kritik an der deutschen Wissenschaftslandschaft
Authors: Schamberger Kerem
Published: May 2018

Kerem Schamberger ist ein Doktorand am Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft und Medienforschung der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Er ist auch ein linker Aktivist und Mitglied der Deutschen Kommunistischen Partei (DKP). Im Zuge seiner Anstellung wurde auf Basis der bayrischen Gesetzeslage vom Bayrischen Verfassungsschutz geprüft, ob Kerem als verfassungsfeindlich gilt und ihm daher die Anstellung verweigert werden sollte. In der deutschen Mediensoziologie gab es mit Horst Holzer in den 1970er-Jahren einen ähnlichen Fall eines Berufsverbots, das damals durchgesetzt wurde. tripleC hat ein Interview mit Kerem geführt und ihn gebeten, die Hintergründe genauer zu erläutern. Das Interview wurde von Christian Fuchs und Thomas Allmer auf Deutsch geführt und ins Englische übersetzt.
The Point Is to Change It! Introduction to Critical Political Interventions in Media and Communication Studies
Authors: Slaček Brlek Sašo , Amon Prodnik Jernej
Published: May 2018

The intention of this paper is to provide a historical overview and an introduction to the interviews with Bodgan Osolnik, Breda Pavlič, Cees Hamelink, Daya K. Thussu, Peter Golding and Dan Hind presented in this special section. Following Marx, we entitled the section The Point Is to Change It! Critical Political Interventions in Media and Communication Studies. We discuss the need for critical theory to bridge the divide between theory and practice because this notion is central to all of the interviews in one way or another. We also provide a historical contextualization of important theoretical as well as political developments in the 1970s and 1980s. This period may be seen as a watershed era for the critical political economy of communication and for the political articulation of demands for a widespread transformation and democratization in the form of the New World Information and Communication Order initiative. We believe that many contemporary issues have a long history, with their roots firmly based in this era. The historical perspective therefore cannot be seen as nostalgia, but as an attempt to understand the historical relations of power and how they have changed and shifted. In our view, the historical perspective is crucial not only for understanding long-lasting historical trends, but also to remind ourselves that the world is malleable, and to keep alive the promises of the progressive struggles of the past.
"The intention was to democratise the sphere of communication." An Interview with Bogdan Osolnik.
Authors: Slaček Brlek Sašo , Amon Prodnik Jernej
Published: May 2018

Interview with Bogdan Osolnik, active member of the Yugoslav liberation front during World War II, member of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems under the leadership of Sean MacBride (commonly known as the MacBride Commission), former vice-president of International Association for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR), one of the pioneers of theoretical and practical research of public opinion in the Yugoslav socialist society and one of the co-founders of the first journalism program in Yugoslavia. Osolnik was an engaged critical researcher of media and communication in the international environment and combined theoretical work with political activity.
(Digital) Activism at the Interstices: Anarchist and Self-Organizing Movements in Greece
Authors: Siapera Eugenia , Theodosiadis Michael
Published: May 2018

The paper traces the history and evolution of the anarchist and self-organising movements in Greece, paying attention to their communicative practices and their implications for political praxis. After years of repression, and following the hegemony of the social democratic Pasok, and subsequently Syriza, the movements are currently coming to their own. Beginning with a brief history of the movements and more broadly of the left in Greece, the paper focuses on the current moment, determined by three events: the revolt of 2008, the movement of the squares in 2011, and the rise and u-turn of Syriza in 2015. Examining the critiques, discourses and communicative practices of the antagonistic movement as a whole, the paper argues that these constitute an alternative path to organizing beyond populist hegemony. Equally, the antagonistc movement tries to eschew the problems associated with the so-called folk politics, by paying attention to the growth of the movement through combining affect and experience, new learning and action, and through ultimately contributing to fundamental shifts in political subjectivities.
Student Protests. Three Periods of University Governance
Authors: Rodriguez-Amat Joan Ramon , Jeffery Bob
Published: May 2018

Exploring the idea of student protests as an autonomous object of research and discussion, this paper leads to the understanding that the transforming role of the university and its governance defines the possibilities for the political role of students. In this perspective, there is a particular constellation of the different forms of higher education governance that provides students with the right and even the responsibility of protesting as politically engaged citizens of the university and of the state. Approaching the transformation of the models of university governance as a set of archaeologically organised states this paper identifies the sequential roles provided to the students and the meaning of their protests and demonstrations. After visiting some antecedents of more contemporaneous student movements and protests, this paper focuses on the UK to explore three manifestations of university governance that can be roughly differentiated as the enduring democratic period that extends from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, the globalisation period that extends from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s and as the post-millennial turn. These periods, embodying three different styles of governance of higher education, not only demonstrate conformity with the political and economic contexts in which they are embeded, they also correspond to particular socio-technological and communicative ecosystems and determine the specificities of the role of the students and their capacity for political action.
Re-Shaping the Political Field One Visual Fragment at a Time: The Tunisian Conundrum
Authors: Montanari Giulia , Toscano Javier
Published: May 2018

The Internet has become a vigorous political field of interactions. Many of these interchanges – confrontations as well as encounters – rely on the weight of the image as a prominent communication tool. We are now used to loads of images flowing through the Internet’s digital corridors, but the mainstreaming of this phenomenon has brought about singular possibilities for political developments based on emerging uses and interpretations. In a way, politicians have historically made use of images to sustain their agendas, but the forms, styles and circumstances available today have become a game-changing factor at certain critical moments. In this article, we explore the case of the Tunisian Revolution of 2011 as a clear case of an important shift in this tradition. Our interpretation brings to the fore the double-edged semiotic meaning of a particular image and its key significance within a particular political event.
The Information Process and the Labour Process in the Information Age
Authors: Cardenas-Garcia Jaime F , Soria de Mesa Bruno , Romero Castro Diego
Published: May 2018

This paper examines how information fundamentally influences the labour process in the information age. The process of becoming human in the labour process brings to the fore the notion of information and our dialectical interactions with our natural environment as organisms-in-the-environment. These insights lead the authors to posit that information/ideas are material. Information/ideas are not ethereal/immaterial, as is commonly believed, which does not negate that information/ideas may be abstract. Taking a fundamental approach serves to discard the concept of immaterial labour and products, to posit an undeniable materialist basis for the labour theory of value. More importantly, it serves to point to the immanence of information and labour in the labour theory of value.
The Politics of the Commons: Reform or Revolt?
Authors: Papadimitropoulos Vangelis
Published: May 2018

In this paper I present a critical overview of the contemporary political theories of the Commons, classified in three main categories: 1) the liberal 2) the reformist and 3) the anti-capitalist. Advocates of the liberal theory of the Commons take a stand in favour of the coexistence of the Commons with the state and the market. The reformists argue for the gradual adjustment of capitalism to the Commons with the aid of a partner state, while the anti-capitalists contrast both the liberals and the reformists by supporting the development of the commons against and beyond capitalism. I make the case that both the liberal and the anti-capitalist theorists miss the likelihood of technology rendering redundant large-scale production in the future, and forcing thus capitalism to adjust to the Commons in the long run. The prospect, therefore, of an open cooperativism introduced by the reformist theory holds significant potential with respect to the future development of the Commons. For the Commons however to expand and flourish, a global institutional reform, followed by a set of inter-local and international principles, is sine qua non. Hence, transparency of information, distribution of value, solidarity and bottom-up self-management are the core variables of individual and collective autonomy inasmuch as they permit a community or group to formulate its values in relation to the needs and skills of its members.
From Global Justice to Occupy and Podemos: Mapping Three Stages of Contemporary Activism
Authors: Wolfson Todd , Treré Emiliano , Gerbaudo Paolo , Funke Peter N.
Published: May 2018

Special Section of tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique (http://www.triple-c.at) Edited by Todd Wolfson, Emiliano Treré, Paolo Gerbaudo, Peter FunketripleC 15 (2), 2017, pp. 390-542 Please note that the editors appear in reversed alphabetical order, not in order of importance. This special issue represents a collective effort, and all the four editors contributed equally to it.
Günther Anders’ Undiscovered Critical Theory of Technology in the Age of Big Data Capitalism
Authors: Fuchs Christian
Published: May 2018

Günther Anders (1902-1992) was an Austrian philosopher, critical theorist, political activist, and a writer of poems, short stories and novels. His works on the critical theory of technology have remained rather undiscovered. His main work Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen (The Antiquatedness of the Human Being) appeared in two volumes and has thus far not been published in English. This essay reviews key aspects of Anders’ works and uses them to critically assess big data capitalism. It first discusses Anders’ concept of the Promethean gap; the gap between what humans can produce with the help of technologies and the capacity of imagining the negative effects these technologies can have. The essay also engages with Anders’ analysis of commercial television and radio. Anders sees capitalism as having catastrophic potentials. He argues that Auschwitz and Hiroshima are two symbols of 20th-century catastrophism. The article discusses Anders’ letter to Klaus Eichmann, the son of Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of the organisation of the displacement and deportation of Jews in the Third Reich. It furthermore analyses the exchange of letters between Anders and Claude Eatherly, the pilot of an aircraft that supported dropping the nuclear bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima. Finally, the paper engages with Anders’ critique of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. In the age of the Internet and big data capitalism, Anders’ warnings about the potential negative effects of capitalist technologies and capitalism remain of crucial relevance and have taken on new qualities. Anders’ philosophy is an undiscovered critical theory of technology that allows us to critically understand power structures in the age of big data and social media.Günther Anders and Hannah Arendt. Source: posted on Flickr as CC by acido nucleio, https://www.flickr.com/photos/guntheranders/4248063814
Why There Are Certain Parallels Between Joachim C. Fest’s Hitler-Biography and Michael Wolff’s Trump-Book
Authors: Fuchs Christian
Published: May 2018

Joachim C. Fest published one of the most widely read Hitler biographies in 1973. Are there parallels of its analytical approach to Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House”?
The Mexican Third Sector of the Media: The Long Run to Democratise the Mexican Communication System
Authors: Gomez Rodrigo
Published: May 2018

This article addresses the structural historical conditions of the Mexican communication system (MCS) in relation to the process of its democratisation. In order to analyse this process of democratisation, the research focused on the struggles of the third sector of the media – citizen/community/popular/free/alternative/radical/indigenous – to find room in that communication system. The aim was to highlight the structural inequality faced by this sector when compared with the hegemony of the private/commercial – or first – sector. From a normative perspective, a democratic and pluralistic communication system must have fair and equitable conditions among the three media sectors – private, public and citizen – with the aim of generating horizontal public spheres as a plural network of spaces for public conversation and deliberation on common issues.
Introduction: Academic Labour, Digital Media and Capitalism
Authors: Allmer Thomas , Bulut Ergin
Published: May 2018

The overall task of this special issue of tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique is to gather critical contributions examining universities, academic labour, digital media and capitalism. The articles collected in this special issue (1) provide the context, history and theoretical concepts underlying academic labour, (2) analyse the relationship between academic work and digital media/new information and communication technologies/the Internet/social media, and (3) discuss the political potentials and challenges within and beyond higher education institutions.
Globalization and Self-Organization in the Knowledge-Based Society
Authors: Fuchs Christian
Published: May 2018

In this paper I suggest that a theory of self-organization can be used as a consistent background theory for explaining the dynamics and logics of globalization. Globalization is not confined to the human realm, it is an attribute of all complex, self-organizing systems. Globalization in a synchronous sense means a micro-macro-link where bottom-up-emergence of new qualities in the self-reproduction of complex systems takes place, it is accompanied by a macro-micro-link of top-down-localization. A dynamic interaction between a global and a local level (glocalization) results in the permanent overall self-reproduction of the system. Globalization in a diachronic sense means the emergence of a new, higher level of self-organization during a phase of instability and heavy fluctuations by order through fluctuation. Globalization is shaped by a dialectic of change and continuity: in the hierarchy that stems from emergent evolution there are both general aspects of globalization and aspects that are specific for each organizational level. Applying this general notion of globalization to society means that human globalization is both a general process that can be found in all societies and a specific process with emergent qualities in concrete phases of societal development. Globalization processes in modern society are based on structural antagonisms that result in uneven developments in the technosphere, the ecosphere, the economy, polity, and culture. The transition to Postfordist, informational capitalism has been a consequence of the development of the structural antagonisms of Fordism and has been accompanied by a new phase of globalization that has transformed the subsystems of society and has resulted in new antagonism that are an expression of general antagonisms that shape modern societies. Hence we find antagonistic tendencies of contemporary globalization in all subsystems of society that result in both risks and opportunities. Human beings have the ability to actively shape society in such a way that an alternative sustainable form of globalization can be achieved.
The Sustainability of Complex Economic Systems. An Application of National Material Flow Analysis (MFA) to the Brazilian Economy
Authors: Da Costa Machado José Alberto , Fenzl Norbert , Mathis Armin
Published: May 2018

A systemic approach to sustainability is suggested where the society-environment relationship is conceived in terms of complex, open systems. The sustainability of the relationship between society and the environment can be analyzed with the help of Material Flow Analysis (MFA). MFA reveals aspects of the economy that concern its relationship to the environment and can't be covered by monetary analyses. In this work material flows and their resulting indicators for the Brazilian economy from 1975 to 1995 are presented. The results show that the Brazilian economy in 1995 became much more intensive in material than in 1975. This development is in line with a global trend of material consumption becoming more intensive and unsustainable. The global economic system has not diminished its size, but expanded its consumption drive in relation to the environment.
The April Fool Turing Test
Authors: Dougherty Mark S. , Hemgren Dougherty Sofi , Westin Jerker
Published: May 2018

This paper explores certain issues concerning the Turing test; non-termination, asymmetry and the need for a control experiment. A standard diagonalisation argument to show the non-computability of AI is extended to yields a socalled “April fool Turing test”, which bears some relationship to Wizard of Oz experiments and involves placing several experimental participants in a symmetrical paradox – the “April Fool Turing Test”. The fundamental question which is asked is whether escaping from this paradox is a sign of intelligence. An important ethical consideration with such an experiment is that in order to place humans in such a paradox it is necessary to fool them. Results from an actual April Fool Turing Test experiment are reported. It is concluded that the results clearly illustrate some of the difficulties.
Commonsense Spatial Reasoning: an Informational Perspective
Authors: Bandini Stefania , Colombo Gianluca , Mosca Alessandro , Palmonari Matteo
Published: May 2018

Pervasive Computing systems are characterized by possibly mobile components distributed in the environment and are devoted to collect, process and manage information in order to support users in different kind of activities. High-level correlation of information in such context can be defined, exploiting a formal model arising from the spatial disposition of information sources, as a form of commonsense spatial reasoning. With respect to this model, a Hybrid Logic to formalize commonsense spatial reasoning in these context has been defined. Here, on the basis of relevant analogies among Pervasive Computing and human practice in handling spatial knowledge, we suggest to provide the term “commonsense” with a positive meaning, showing that our logical framework captures some features of non-mathematical reasoning when spatially qualified information is concerned. The focus on such features and the analogies mentioned above suggest to qualify our approach to (commonsense) spatial reasoning as an informational approach.
Choosing between different AI approaches? The scientific benefits of the confrontation, and the new collaborative era between humans and machines
Authors: Vallverdú Jordi
Published: May 2018

AI is a multidisciplinary activity that involves specialists from several fields, and we can say that the aim of science, and AI science, is solving problems. AI and computer sciences are been creating a new kind of making science, that we can call in silico science. Both models top-eown and bottomup are useful for e-scientific research. There is no a real controversy between them. Besides, the extended mind model of human cognition, involves human-machine interactions. Huge amount of data requires new ways to make and organize scientific practices: supercomputers, grids, distributed computing, specific software and middleware and, basically, more efficient and visual ways to interact with information. This is one of the key points to understand contemporary relationships between humans and machines: usability of scientific data.
Topological Aspects of Biosemiotics
Authors: Zimmermann Rainer E.
Published: May 2018

According to recent work of Bounias and Bonaly (2000), there is a close relationship between the conceptualization of biological life and mathematical conceptualization such that both of them co-depend on each other when discussing preliminary conditions for properties of biosystems. More precisely, such properties can be realized only, if the space of orbits of members of some topological space X by the set of functions governing the interactions of these members is compact and complete. This result has important consequences for the maximization of complementarity in habitat occupation as well as for the reciprocal contributions of sub(eco)systems with respect to their structural mutualism. In this present paper it will be shown what this more technical result means in philosophical terms with a view to the biosemiotic consequences. As this approach fits naturally into the Kassel programme of investigat-ing the relationship between the cognitive perceiving of the world and its communicative modeling (Zimmermann 2004a, 2005b), it is found that topology as formal nucleus of spatial modeling is more than relevant for the understanding of repre-senting and co-creating the world as it is cognitively perceived and communicated in its design. Also, its implications may well serve the theoretical (top-down) foundation of biosemiotics itself.
Affordances are Signs
Authors: Pickering John
Published: May 2018

Peirce and Whitehead share a common project: to restrict the over-extension of reductionism, to show how matter must be sensate and to create an ontology of process and subjectivity. This article claims that biosemiotics can assist this project. Moreover, it shows that the concept of affordance is a means to produce a theory of causation that embraces physical, natural and cultural levels of order.
Prolegomenon to a Logic for the Information Society
Authors: Brenner Joseph E.
Published: May 2018

The rapid development of information and communication technologies and their applications has stimulated many definitions of an Information Society (IS), and the related concept of a Knowledge-Based Economy (KBE) from the technological, political and economic standpoints. The ethics proposed for the emerging IS has concentrated on reducing inequalities in access to technological developments.In a key Report, “ICTs and Society”, Hofkirchner et al. (2007) insist that a new evolutionary, descriptive and normative theory “for, about and by means of” the IS is necessary to support emergence of a moral, ecologically and globally sustainable information society - GSIS.This paper proposes a new kind of logic, a non-propositional, dialectic “Logic in Reality” (LIR), applicable to real systems and phenomena, as the “missing ingredient” required for such a theory. LIR provides new interpretations of morality, self-organization, communication and conflict, grounding them in physical reality and an appropriate information theory.As a “logic of transdisciplinarity” in the Paris school acceptation, also directed toward the unity of knowledge, LIR confirms that the techno-social field of study of ICTs and Society is a transdiscipline, with direct implications for sustainable development. LIR moves debate beyond the limits imposed by naïve pragmatism and conservative ideologies and can be an essential component of a critical theory.
Are “the semantic aspects” actually “irrelevant to the engineering problem”?
Authors: Díaz Nafría José María , Al Hadithi Basil M.
Published: May 2018

At the beginning of his famous “Mathematical Theory of Communication” (MTC), Shannon removes the semantic questions from the technical task, and such exoneration seems to be commonly accepted, even for those who certainly care for ‘semantic questions’. However, the MTC communication model itself is built upon this fundamental assumption, which at the same time is used in other information theories and –even with wider practical consequences– as a design pattern for the Information Technologies. When the human communication is more and more dependant with respect to information technologies, the suitability of the communication model used to design the technological systems has to be put into scope. Non essential element needed to establish a proper human communication should be omitted; otherwise this technology could isolate people, betraying its hypothetical purpose. Comparing the technological model to other based on several pragmatic theories of communication (emerged in linguistics, semiotic, psychology and anthropology) is shown the insufficiency of the technological model, pointing out some elements that a new model should not forget.
How to achieve a unified theory of information
Authors: Hofkirchner Wolfgang
Published: May 2018

The paper deals with the necessity and feasibility of an integrated information theory. It develops guidelines for how to conceive of information in a way that avoids the pitfalls of certain ways of thinking like reductionism, projectivism or disjunctivism.