I have watched Henry Jenkins’ virtual keynote presentation “Spreadable Media” that he gave at the 2011 conference of the International Communication Association. I did not like it. Here are the reasons why.
Special issue of tripleC: Capitalist Crisis, Communication & Culture
“Capitalism […] is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point” (Slavoj Žižek).
What is the role of communication in the general situation of capitalist crisis?
The global economic downturn is an indicator of a new worldwide capitalist crisis. The main focus of most public debates as well as of economic and policy analyses is the role of finance capital and the housing market in creating the crisis, less attention is given to the role of communication technologies, the media, and culture in the world economic crisis. The task of this special issue of tripleC is to present analyses of the role of ICTs, the media, and culture in the current crisis of capitalism. The seven papers focus on the causes, development, and effects of the crisis. Each paper relates one or more of these dimensions to ICTs, the media, or culture.
christian fuchs, August 29th 2010
WikiLeaks – Alternative Internet Medium and Watchdog Platform – and the Critique of the Power Elite
The truth about the WikiLeaks Afghanistan documents is that the platform has the potential to make visible the scale of brutality, violence, and horror of warfare and military conflicts. WikiLeaks can be seen as an alternative media project: it tries to provide information that uncovers the misuse of power by powerful actors, it is an Internet-based medium that enables critiques of power structures. The problem of the WikiLeak self-description is that in the first third of the text, only documenting government corruption is mentioned, whereas documenting corporate irresponsibility and corporate crimes is not. The problem that remains is that in the WikiLeaks self-description, corporate crimes and corporate corruption are only mentioned late and that the notion of civilizing corporations is adopted.
christian fuchs, August 4th 2010
The Google Street View Surveillance Machine
It is a fact that Google has while taking panorama photographs of streets in cities all over the world (in 34 countries) for its Street View application also collected information about wireless networks and data from open wireless networks that are not password-secured. Maybe it is time to stop talking about corporate social responsibility and to start focusing on the analysis, exposure, and investigation of corporate social irresponsibility.
christian fuchs, May 29th 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