Five theses on technoliberalism and the networked public sphere

Abstract

How have digital technologies affected the market logics and economization that constitute the underlying governing rationality of neoliberalism? This essay unfurls five theses that further develop the concept of technoliberalism, the intensification of neoliberalism through computational technology, in the context of the networked public sphere: (1) technoliberalism names the dominant governing rationality in cultures where digital computation technology suffuses everyday life; (2) technoliberalism replaces public, democratically accountable power with the private, technical expertise of digital technology firms; (3) technoliberalism focuses on contriving technical systems to change culture at the expense of democratic argument and deliberation; (4) technoliberalism intensifies the commodification of attention, resulting in undemocratic forms of “noopower”; and (5) technoliberalism standardizes subjectivities through grammatization. Each thesis complicates the prospects of democratic deliberation in the networked public sphere and articulates lines of communication research necessary for keeping democratic practices vibrant.

Discrete and looking (to profit): homoconnectivity on Grindr

“…They are platforms that bring together users, corporate partners, and even governments who have a vested interest in "the systematic collection, algorithmic processing, circulation, and monetization of user data" (van Dijck, Poell, & de Waal, 2018, p. 4). Thinking with Grindr and similar apps extends previous work about queer commercialization online (Campbell, 2005), privacy (Fuchs, 2012), technoliberalism (Pfister & Yang, 2018), and platform studies (van Dijck, 2013) to better enunciate the material and political stakes for queer people in this current mutation of capitalism. I offer the concept of homoconnectivity 1 to illuminate the risks LGBTQ people as a group face online-not just because Grindr encourages stranger sociability (Albury & Byron, 2016) but due to datafication (Crain, 2018;Mai, 2016).…”

“…Grindr participates in what Pfister and Yang (2018) call technoliberalism, an intensification in capitalism where apps "work to build new systems that can replace existing ways of doing things" (p. 254). A key way these systems intervene is by creating user experiences so seamless that people incorporate digital products into their daily performativities.…”

How platforms govern: Social regulation in digital capitalism

“…As a result, platformization is creating pressures for a new governing logic, coming to shift the fundamental market ideology, discipline, and rationality that provided the foundation for post-Fordism's social regulation. In the same way that Foucault (2008: 259-260) suggests that the modern disciplinary power was reshaped by the biopolitical power exerted by neoliberal rationalities, so is the biopolitical power of neoliberalism thus now being altered by complex power made possible by digital technologies (Cheney-Lippold, 2011;Pfister and Yang, 2018). As neoliberal rationality came with an associated ideology and belief in the legitimacy of market rationality in regulating every aspect of human life, so does this complex control come with its associated ideology: what Malaby (2011) terms "technoliberalism," defined by faith in the legitimacy of emergent effects-"the emergent properties of complex interactions enjoy a certain degree of rightness just by virtue of being emergent" (Malaby, 2011: 56).…”

“…However, while contemporary platforms may constitute merely a “transitory solution that will be amended by further private innovations and completed by the implementation of public rules of the game” (Boyer, 2021: 2), these transitory solutions, we will argue, foreshadow the digital era that is in the process of becoming. The paper draws on the regulation theory literature to examine these harbingers, seeking to identify what institutional architecture can be anticipated (Aglietta, 2000; Boyer, 1990; Dunford, 1990; Lipietz, 1987; Staab, 2019). The paper makes three main arguments.…”

Manufacturing Populism: Digitally Amplified Vernacular Authority

“…Our communications on digital platforms are hybrids not only of our own volition but also that of corporations. Scholars worry that this hybridizing of volitions privileges neoliberal logics or what Pfister and Yang have described as "technoliberalism" (Payne, 2014;Pfister & Yang, 2018). In an environment where our attention is monetized by a range of competing communication platforms, we are all connected as individuals but "some connections are valued more than others" (Pfister, 2016, p. 39).…”