Born Political: A Dispositive Analysis of Google and Copyright

Abstract

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Conceptualizing data‐deliberation: The starry sky beetle, environmental system risk, and Habermasian CSR in the digital age

“…We suggest that in situations where national governments are intact, the political role of the business firm is not condemned to remain passive (Scherer et al, ). In line with Whelan () highlighting that technology companies such as Google are “born political,” and can switch their political operating mode from passive governance to active democratic deliberation, we argue that digital capacities of corporations may thereby enable firms to address difficult societal challenges, which demand the attention of both, public and private actors to protect public goods.…”

“…More generally, digitalization provides corporations with new means and resources to support formal legitimacy and offers corporations a scope for public participation in a deliberative sense (Habermas, ; Willke & Willke, ). In a similar vein, Whelan () suggests that rather than becoming political actors (see, e.g., Scherer et al, ), organizations of the digital age, such as Google, are born political , with the capacity to switch from passive governance to active deliberation. New possibilities in terms of transparency, surveillance, and data sharing may, therefore, contribute to an active democratic deliberation mode of corporations, advancing the political understandings of corporations, and their social responsibilities.…”

“…The Habermasian PCSR literature underlines that discourse ethics and deliberative democracy strive to find novel forms of democratic will formation (Habermas, 1996;Scherer & Palazzo, 2011). In this sense, the digital space opens up a new forum for public participation and corporations to carry out an active political role, via democratic deliberation (Whelan, 2019a).…”

Corporate diplomacy and political CSR: Similarities, differences and theoretical implications

“…In addition, other theories that are applied to PCSR in some of the papers include Rawls' theory of social justice and the division of moral labor (Arnold, 2013, Mäkinen & Kasanen; Mäkinen & Kourula, 2016), the neo-Gramscian concept of passive revolution (Gond et al, 2016;Gond & Nyberg, 2017;Levy, Reinecke, & Manning, 2016), Boltanskis and Thevenot's economies of worth theory (Gond et al, 2016), Upper Echelon and agency theory (Maak et al, 2016), as well as the actor-network theory (Gond & Nyberg, 2017), resource dependence theory (Shirodkar et al, 2016) and Weber's theory of social and economic organizations (Djelic & Etchanchu, 2017). Moreover, social constructivism (Morsing & Roepstorff, 2015) and concepts of power and hegemony (Dawkins, 2015;Moog et al 2015;Whelan, 2017) as well as Young's theory of social connection (Hennchen, 2015;Wickert, 2016) are applied to PCSR. As the application of these theories to PCSR occurs in only a few circumstances, they will not be further described.…”

Sharing by proxy: Invisible users in the sharing economy

“…This user data is necessary for platforms to operate. With the future of work being increasingly data-driven, platforms in the digital economy automate decisions, such as the allocation of labor, based on the collection of vast quantities of user data (Sax, 2016;Whelan, 2017). Data is now collected from online transactions and peer-to-peer information exchanges, as well as clickstreams, logs, and search queries (Floridi, 2005;Lutz and Hoffmann, 2017;Martin, 2016).…”