Alienation, Exploitation, and Social Media

Abstract

This article is a critical examination of how capitalism has adapted to the explosion of websites devoted to user-generated content (commonly referred to as social media or Web 2.0). The author proceeds by reviewing how Marx applies the concepts of alienation and exploitation to his paradigmatic example (i.e., the factory); the author then attempts to extend the logic of both concepts to determine what they might reveal about the structural conditions of social media. A difference of prime importance between the two case studies is that factory work is wage labor coerced by economic necessity, whereas use of social networking sites is apparently voluntary and done freely. The author concludes by arguing that social media users are subject to levels of exploitation relatively consistent with industrial capitalism, whereas the structural conditions of the digital economy link profitability to a reduction in the intensity of alienation. Finally, he infers that social media is not economically beneficial to most users.

Understanding Social Media Use as Alienation: A Review and Critique

“…The second critical social media school of thought's protagonists ---notably, Rey (2012) and Fisher (2012) ---flip the switch: engaging with social media, they insist, militates against alienation. Ostensibly working within a materialist framework, Fisher argues that social media users are 'dealienated' under a deliberate capitalist strategy to heighten the rate of exploitation (Fisher, 2012, p. 179).…”

“…In short, how Fisher (2012) and Rey (2012) construct their argument has considerable drawbacks. By being too loose in their use of 'exploitation', they constantly risk rendering this concept so diffuse that it becomes almost literally meaningless.…”

“…The irony is that Google's social media platforms, notably YouTube but also Google+, draw on time and effort supplied by unpaid users. Refracting Marx through the autonomist social factory lens, and employing the notion of value-creating labour extending well beyond the wage-relation (Terranova, 2000), it is then but a short step to say that social media users are therefore alienated or even exploited (Andrejevic, 2009;Fuchs, 2010;Fisher, 2012;Rey, 2012).…”

“…The other position sophistically brackets alienation in a trade-off with exploitation; authors who write from this standpoint argue that social media users' exploitation requires a low level of alienation (cf. Fisher, 2012;Rey, 2012). By positing a trade-off between alienation and exploitation, they fail to consider how alienation can be used to forge an analysis of social media that meets Smythe's materialist requirements.…”

Processes of Inclusion and Exclusion in the Sphere of Prosumerism

“…It can be argued that the reality of social media prosumption invalidates many of the basic value theory assumptions underpinning this argument, and that the exploitation is not so extreme, in that labor is compensated in other ways than wages [14]. For Fuchs, however, prosumerism in the capitalist system is an extreme form of exploitation in which the prosumer works for Capital for free: the productive time exploited involves not only the work-time of salaried employees but also time spent online by users.…”