The Networked Media Economy and the Indian Gilded Age

Abstract

The rapid and conspicuous growth of the networked media economy in India, comprising of network infrastructure, content industries and online media, has been boosted over the last decade by the rapid digitisation of production, distribution and consumption. This development has aligned the increasingly networked media economy with the broader vector of 'platform economics', in which maximum data extraction is key. Arguments about how this data should be controlled, and more specifically concerns about the regulation of so-called cross-border data flows, have been expressed through different analogies. Mukesh Ambani, chairman, managing director, and largest shareholder of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) has recently argued that: India's data must be controlled and owned by Indian people ─ and not by corporates, especially global corporations. For India to succeed in this data-driven revolution, we will have to migrate the control and ownership of Indian data back to India ─ in other words, Indian wealth back to every Indian…we have to collectively launch a new movement against data colonisation. In this new world, data is the new oil. And data is the new wealth (2019).In response, Facebook's Vice-President for Global Affairs and Communications, Sir Nick Clegg, sought to challenge this view by saying: There are many in India and around the world who regard data as the new oiland that, like oil, having a great reserve of it held within your national boundaries, will lead to sure-fire prosperity. But this analogy is mistaken…. Data isn't oila finite commodity to be owned and traded… a better liquid to liken it to is water, with the global Internet like a great border-less ocean of currents and tides (2019).These contrasting perspectives underscore Athique's earlier observation that, rather than control over content and message, the geopolitics of information in the digital era are primarily centred upon control over the data infrastructure and data harvest ( , p. 53, see also Schiller, 2014. Thus, in its Digital Economy Report 2019, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) notes: "while it is important that data be allowed to flow easily in order to harness the benefits of the digital economy, it is equally important to ensure that the associated gains are shared in a fair manner by the actors and countries involved in the value creation process" (UNCTAD 2019, p. 92). Despite the exponential growth of data production and use, UNCTAD observes that developing countries confront the "increasing dominance of global digital platforms and their control of data, as well as their capacity to create and capture the ensuing value" (ibid.). UNCTAD highlights the dominance of seven 'super platforms': Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent and Alibaba. The UN body therefore calls for national development strategies to "enhance domestic capacities to 'refine' the data" and ensure that local firms can upgrade their position within data value chains so as to avoid the "emergence of a new kind of internatio...

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