On Digital Fetishism: A Critique of the Big Data Paradigm

Miconi, Andrea

doi:10.1177/08969205231202873

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 44 publications

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“…The article asks how to best theorise and analyse online activities in digital capitalism and argues for the need to distinguish between wage labour and lifeworld activities. Andrea Miconi (2024) discusses three acclaimed approaches in the big data paradigm: Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias' data colonialism, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger's big data concept and Shoshana Zuboff's surveillance capitalism. Instead of reviewing the books, the article sets out the standard features of all three approaches and what tends to be emblematic of the big data discourse in general: an over-emphasising and even fetishisation of the role of big data and an under-estimation of the role played by human labour.…”

Section: Domination Abstraction and Fetishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Sociology of Media and Communication: Connecting a Disconnected Field

Bilić,

Allmer

2024

Critical Sociology

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The sociology of media and communications was never explicitly defined – nor was there ever an explicit debate about the sub-field. Not having a clear anchor makes it hard to define what its critical component should be. Nonetheless, a rich yet disconnected tradition of sociology and critical political economy allows flexibility to reconsider communication and social relations in the broader societal dynamics of capitalism. Specifying a critical sociological approach to communication can help better define the role of communication at the micro, mezzo and macro levels of society. The multi-paradigmatic heritage of sociological theory can provide new ways of criticising communication power in contemporary society. Diverse contemporary developments in the critique of political economy give a breadth of understanding of the capitalist mode of production and its internal dynamics. Sociology can add depth to understanding social relations within and beyond the production, distribution and consumption process. This introduction sets out the framework for the special issue.

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Section: Domination Abstraction and Fetishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Sociology of Media and Communication: Connecting a Disconnected Field

Bilić,

Allmer

2024

Critical Sociology

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Data as a Contested Commodity

Ducuing

2024

Global Jurist

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Data are undoubtedly a contested commodity. On the one hand, data commodification is largely under way including through the operation of law. This is notably visible with the new EU data policy (Data Strategy notably followed by the Data Act, the Data Governance Act) that aims to establish data markets in keeping with European values. On the other hand, this phenomenon is heavily contested based on a wide range of different arguments, which have not been subjected to a systematic clustering. Data commodification is often understood simplistically as a binary and monolithic phenomenon whereby data would be either ‘commodified’ or not. This leads to misunderstandings of this phenomenon and of the ways in which it manifests. For example, many conceptual misunderstandings surround the relationship between ‘data access’ or ‘data sharing’ and data commodification and markets. This paper clarifies the phenomenon of data commodification, by approaching it as a spectrum with degrees following M. J. Radin (Contested Commodities, 1996). Following Radin, the paper clusters the different data governance arguments – or even paradigms – found in the literature along a data commodification spectrum. A specific attention is paid to the importance of market discourses in commodification dynamics, especially on the law. The paper offers a novel systematic synthesis of the data governance normative arguments, including data commons, data trusts, data sharing, data intermediation, against the background of the data commodification phenomenon. This synthesis brings conceptual clarity and allows to bring together different strands of the data literature (especially welfare economics, law and economics, commons, critical data studies, infrastructure studies) comprehensively, while they have until now remained siloed. Data governance normative arguments would greatly benefit from taking into account (conceptual and/or normative) arguments found in other strands of the literature. The paper can also be used to evaluate how data governance arguments or legislations relate to data commodification and take into account the specificities of data, thus enabling for more systematic analysis. The paper finds that data is actually a very contested commodity: The very conceptualization of data as a commodity is ontologically contestable. The framework in which situations are conceptualized – whether as data market ones or not – can indeed play a powerful but often invisible discursive role on commodification dynamics. Finally, the very identification and regulation of ‘data’ alone necessarily brings about certain commodification affordances.

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On Digital Fetishism: A Critique of the Big Data Paradigm

Cited by 2 publications

References 44 publications

Critical Sociology of Media and Communication: Connecting a Disconnected Field

Critical Sociology of Media and Communication: Connecting a Disconnected Field

Data as a Contested Commodity

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