Value, Rent, and the Political Economy of Social Media

Rigi, Jakob; Prey, Robert

doi:10.1080/01972243.2015.1069769

Cited by 61 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Bolaño's approach stands in a line with a number of comparable approaches (see, for example , Comor 2014;Foley 2013;Huws 2014;Reveley 2013;Rigi and Prey, forthcoming;Robinson, forthcoming). They postulate that digital labor is not exploited, but that it is a part of the sphere of circulation of capital that only realizes but does not create value and/or that users' activities are one or several of the following: unproductive, no labor at all, less productive, a consumption of value generated by paid employees in sectors and companies that advertise on social media, the realization of value generated by paid employees of social media corporations, or an expression of a system where what appears as profits are rents derived from the profits of advertisers.…”

Section: Productive Labormentioning

confidence: 85%

Against Divisiveness

Fuchs

2014

Television & New Media

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This piece is a short rejoinder to César Bolaño's paper The Political Economy of the Internet and related articles (e.g., Comor, Foley, Huws, Reveley, Rigi and Prey, Robinson) that center around the relevance of Marx's labor theory of value for understanding social media. I argue that Dallas Smythe's assessment of advertising was made to distinguish his approach from the one by Baran and Sweezy. Smythe developed the idea of capital's exploitation of the audience at a time when both feminist and anti-imperialist Marxists challenged the orthodox idea that only white factory workers are exploited. The crucial question is how to conceptualize productive labor. This is a theoretical, normative, and political question. A mathematical example shows the importance of the "crowdsourcing" of value-production on Facebook. I also point out parallels of the contemporary debate to the Soviet question of who is a productive or unproductive worker in the Material Product System.We live in a phase of capitalist crisis. Since its start in 2008, the academic interest in Marx and Marxist political economy has surged. In the field of Media and Communication Studies, this development has been accompanied by a new interest in discussing, revisiting, developing, revising, or rejecting Dallas Smythe's notions of audience labor and audience commodification, which shows the topicality of the founding person of the political economy of communication's thought. One area of

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Section: Productive Labormentioning

confidence: 85%

Against Divisiveness

Fuchs

2014

Television & New Media

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“…Rigi and Prey () make a similar argument in their shrewd critique of the recent audience commodity debates—namely that branding and advertising function to redistribute demand.…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

Crisis of Command: Theorizing Value in New Media

Caraway

2015

Commun Theor

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Theorists of free labor have argued that users produce value directly for capital through unwaged participation in online social media platforms. I argue that this interpretation of value is misguided. I begin with a brief overview of the labor theory of value as it has been developed by political economists in the context of new media. I then use Marxian crisis theory to demonstrate the limitations of the concept of free labor. I also elaborate how value is created within media markets through a complex set of interactions among media firms, market researchers, advertisers, finance capital, and unwaged content producers. I conclude with a discussion of the consequences of free labor theory for Marxian politics.

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“…There is no lack of discussion on how actual commodity exchange occurs in social media companies and how value is created: audience commodity (Fuchs 2010;Fisher 2015), network surplus value (Pasquinelli 2009;, rent (Rigi and Prey 2015;Rigi 2015), etc. have all been examined.…”

Section: Informational Rationality: Commodity Exchange and Valuementioning

confidence: 99%

A Critique of the Political Economy of Algorithms: A Brief History of Google’s Technological Rationality

Bilić¹

2018

tripleC

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Abstract:In this article, I argue that the debate about the irrational consequences of rationality, discussed within the tradition of the Frankfurt School, and applied to technology and machinery in the concept of technological rationality (Marcuse 1941;1960;2007/1964/1965, can help us better understand and criticise contemporary algorithmic capitalism. In particular, the dialectical relation between technics and technology proposed by Marcuse (1941) argue that the company developed on the foundation of three interconnected technological rationalities: organisational rationality of flexible management values and labour utilisation; informational rationality of generating value from advertising and audience labour; and rationality of surplus value accumulation based on reification of labour and consciousness. The company produces two main types of commodities: audience commodity and algorithmic commodity, each solidifying the company's control and dominance over Internet usage habits.Keywords: Technological Rationality, Algorithms, Automation, Commodity Exchange, Labour, Reification, Value, Praxis Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Christian Fuchs and WIAS International Fellows for informed and critical discussions about contemporary capitalism that helped solidify and sharpen the ideas developed in this article.

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Value, Rent, and the Political Economy of Social Media

Cited by 61 publications

References 21 publications

Against Divisiveness

Against Divisiveness

Crisis of Command: Theorizing Value in New Media

A Critique of the Political Economy of Algorithms: A Brief History of Google’s Technological Rationality

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