The article explains foundations of critical political economy, especially the cycle of capital accumulation, and argues that this approach is suited for explaining and analyzing the contemporary information economy, knowledge labor, and the Internet economy. The notions of class and surplus value are applied to knowledge labour and Internet usage. Based on Dallas Smythe’s notion of the audience commodity, the concept of the Internet produsage/prosumer commodity is worked out.
New Paper: Christian Fuchs: Labor in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet
christian fuchs, May 2nd 2010
Remarks on the BBC documentary “Virtual Revolution: The Cost of Free “
The BBC recently aired a documentary in its ”Virtual Revolution“ series that focused on ”The Cost of Free“. The overall topic were the risks and problems posed by Internet platforms that are operated by corporations such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, News Corporation, and others.
Critical political economist Dallas Smythe in his seminal paper “On the audience commodity and its work” suggested that advertising business models of the media are not primarily based on the commodification of content, but the commodification of the audience. In case of the Internet, one can speak of the Internet prosumer commodity.
christian fuchs, February 18th 2010