Creating Worlds that Create Audiences: Theorising Personal Data Markets in the Age of Communicative Capitalism

Abstract

In this article, we draw on theories of biopolitical marketing to explore claims that personal data markets are contextualised by what Shoshana Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism” and Jodi Dean calls “communicative capitalism”. Surveillance and communicative capitalism are characterised by a logic of accumulation based on networked captures of life that enable complex and incomprehensive processes of extraction, commodification, and control. Echoing recent theorisations of data (as) derivatives, Zuboff’s key claim about surveillance capitalism is that data representations open up opportunities for the enhanced market control of life through the algorithmic monitoring, prediction and modification of human behaviour. A Marxist critique, focusing largely on the exploitative nature of corporate data capitalism, has already been articulated. In this article, we focus on the increasingly popular market-libertarian critique that proposes individual control, ownership, and ability to commodify one’s personal data as an answer to corporate data extraction, derivation and exploitation schemes. We critique the claims that personal data markets counterbalance corporate digital capitalism on two grounds. First, these markets do not work economically and therefore are unable to address the exploitative aspect of surveillance capitalism. Second, the notion of personal data markets functions ideologically because it reduces the critique of surveillance capitalism to the exploitation of consumers and conceals the real objective of data capitalists such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple to not (just) exploit audiences but to create worlds that create audiences.

Manipulate to empower: Hyper-relevance and the contradictions of marketing in the age of surveillance capitalism

“…Through the figure of relevance, everyone is invited to this utopia where the world is more searchable, shopping more convenient, staying in touch with friends easier, cab rides more available and affordable, and so on. Digital marketing represents the promise of ubiquitous and perfect marketing where every new improvement in network optimization, consumer surveillance, automated response accuracy, user experience design, and environmental modulation is hailed as another step towards a world specifically designed for each consumer (Charitis et al, 2018). Paradoxically, this world of ubiquitous, always on marketing becomes, in the mind of digital marketers, a world without marketing; a post-marketing utopia where old forms of marketing-the disruptive, irrelevant and corporate kind-have been replaced by something new and different, still performed by marketers but no longer marketing.…”

“…From the vantage point of digital marketers, a perfect world is achieved when consumers are embedded in highly personalized worlds that are algorithmically emptied of irrelevant choices. One could certainly argue that when marketers act as choice architects who create worlds for consumers (Charitis et al, 2018;Yeung, 2017) conventional notions of the rational, self-reflexive subject become harder to sustain. However, whether consumers mourn the loss of agency and rational self-determination is not clear.…”

O Dark Side da Digitalização na Era do Capitalismo de Vigilância: Um estudo dos Termos de Consentimento da Uber à Luz da Legislação Brasileira

“…Em seu livro de 2019, Zuboff aborda a forma como o capitalismo de vigilância se tornou o modelo dominante econômico a partir da expropriação de dados dos indivíduos, por meio da digitalização de quase toda a vida humana (Zuboff, 2019). O termo ainda aparece em outros trabalhos com diferentes derivações que utilizam termos como captura, capitalismo de plataforma, vigilância da web 2.0, sistemas de vigilância e dataficação, mas sempre seguindo na direção do domínio e poder a partir dos dados (Fuchs, 2010;Foster & McChesney, 2014;Srnicek, 2017;Charitsis, Zwick, & Bradshaw, 2018;Couldry & Mejias, 2019).…”

Data agency at stake: MyData activism and alternative frames of equal participation

“…On the surface, they seem to advocate economic agency for people in the information society. They can, however, be criticized on many grounds: for example, that they are excessively individual-centric and reliant on markets that do not work economically (Charitsis et al, 2018); that over-individualization can make them susceptible to private sector co-optation in the same way as the protection of privacy (Coll, 2014); and that they are driven by the judgments of the technical elite about just data practices (Kennedy, 2018). Despite this, they represent work-in-progress experimentation on what a more just data economy could look like; we, therefore, consider them as “moments where meaningful change can occur” (Schrock, 2016: 583).…”