scholarly journals The Political Economy of Working-Class Social Media Commerce: Digital Capitalism and the Engelsian Concept of Working-Class “Property”

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-194
Author(s):  
Suddhabrata Deb Roy
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The Political ◽  
Digital Capitalism ◽  
Exchange Value ◽  
Estate Property ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
University Town ◽  
The University

Social Media platforms, from being simply a mode of communication, have, recently, evolved into digital “marketplaces”, which have been facilitating the exchange of commodities within the working-class. In addition to the digitalisation of the medium of exchange value creation, which gives the worker a certain amount of regulated autonomy, this has also reinvigorated the debate about owning property and its utilisation for credit and profit generation by the working-class. The term, ‘Property’ in the paper, is not restricted to only real estate property but encompasses everything which has the potential to generate an exchange value for its owner. The paper generalises Engels’s ideas about property owned by the workers from two of his major works, “The Housing Question” and “The Condition of the Working-Class in England” and uses the same to analyse the political economy and growing popularity of social media- based commerce among the working-class. Through data collected from the university town of Dunedin in Aotearoa New Zealand, a town with an extensive and established system of social media-based commerce, the paper puts forward the relevance of the Engelsian critique of the idea of uplifting the working-class simply by giving them control over the possession of property, in the age of digital capitalism. In doing so, the present paper talks about how digital capitalism utilises social media and its associated platforms for commercial exchange to keep the cycle of accumulation in the capitalist social system intact by further exploiting the working-class.

scholarly journals Commodification, Spatialization, and Structuring in Instagram (Vincent Mosco's Descriptive Political Economy Study on Instagram Anies Baswedan Related to Covid-19)

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rifka Hanifah ◽  
Vinda Fauzia Hamdani Putri ◽  
Ajeng Setia Utari
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
New Media ◽  
Descriptive Study ◽  
The United States ◽  
Internet Technology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Economy Of Media ◽  
Exchange Value ◽  
Use Values

Instagram is one of the social media that is widely used by Indonesians. Instagram users in Indonesia are under Instagram users from the United States, Brazil and China. The emergence of social media Instagram is a new and interesting dynamic to research based on Vincent Mosco's descriptive study of the political economy of the economy. One way to see and analyze an issue or phenomenon of communication is through the descriptive study of Vincent Mosco's political economy and economy. In theory, Mosco refers to the globalization of the political economy of media which explains where there is a transition from old media and when new media emerge. Thus the formulation of the problem of this research is how the political economy practice of communication in the use of Instagram social media during the Covid-19 pandemic which was observed from Anies Baswedan's Instagram account. This study uses a descriptive research method in order to provide an overview description of the political economy practice of communication on Instagram social media during the Covid-19 pandemic which was observed from the Instagram account of the Governor of DKI Jakarta, Anies Baswedan. It can be concluded that social media is a means based on internet technology (online media) such as Instagram which allows a person to interact, communicate, collaborate and share information with others. Even Instagram users can easily participate directly in it. Commodification, spatialization and structuration are three important elements in political economy because they can bring about changes in function or use values. Commodification is one of the elements that is directly related to how the process of transforming goods or services (along with their use value) into a commodity that has an exchange value in the market. Spatialization is a process when dealing with time and space. Structuring is a communication or media activity associated with social structures.

Communication (Part II): Building Alternative Social Media

2020 ◽  
pp. 119-142
Author(s):  
Thomas Swann
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Weak Ties ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Self Organisation ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Chapter Seven presents a schematic account of the functions a social media platform would need to have in order to fulfil the roles required of it by anarchist cybernetics. Drawing on the negative critiques of existing social media platforms and the positive requirements outlined by activists and scholars, this chapter asks what an alternative social media platform would look like and how it would be different from the commercial platforms we use everyday. The chapter identifies four broad lines of critique aimed at the use of social media in anarchist cybernetic organising: (1) the privacy critique (2) the political economy critique; (3) the weak ties critique; and (4) the political subjectivity critique. The chapter provides a sketch of what such an alternative platform would look like, identifying the key features that aid the functionality of such a platform for self-organisation.

The Political Economy of the American Working Class

1977 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Mackenzie ◽  
Harry Braverman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Working Class

scholarly journals Selfies as expressively authentic identity performance

First Monday ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linh Nguyen ◽  
Kim Barbour
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Online Social Media ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

This paper explores whether or not our online social media persona is viewed as authentic. The selfie is a fundamental part of the structure of the online identity for young people in today’s digital world. The relationship between an individual’s self-identity in the physical face-to-face environment was analysed and compared to a carefully constructed, modified virtual representation in a selfie posted on social media platforms. Data was obtained through four focus groups at the University of Adelaide. Two key theoretical frameworks provide a basis for this study: Erving Goffman’s concept of the self as a performance, and Charles Horton Cooley’s concept of the looking glass self. In examining the focus group discussions in light of these two frameworks as well as associated literature, we conclude that the authenticity of the selfie as a way of visualising a social media persona is subjective and dependent on the individual posting a selfie. Ultimately, authenticity involves a degree of subjectivity. It was on this basis that focus group participants argued that selfies could be considered authentic expressions of identity.

scholarly journals Engels’s Theory of Social Murder and the Spectacle of Fascism: A Critical Enquiry into Digital Labour and its Alienation

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-67
Author(s):  
Aishik Saha
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Digital Capitalism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Similar Development

In this paper, I shall attempt to respond to the charge that the digital labour theory, as developed by Christian Fuchs, doesn’t faithfully stick to the Marxist schema of the Labour Theory of Value by arguing that Marx’s critique of capitalism was based on the social and material cost of exploitation and the impact of capitalist exploitation of the working class. Engels’s analysis of The Condition of The Working Class in England links the various forms of violence faced by the working class to the bourgeois rule that props their exploitation. I shall argue, within the framework of Critical Social Media Studies, that the rapid advance of fascist and authoritarian regimes represents a similar development of violence and dispossession, with digital capitalism being a major factor catalysing the rifts within societies. It shall be further argued that much like the exploitative nature of labour degrades social linkages and creates conditions of that exaggerates social contradictions, the “labour” performed by social media users degenerates social relations and promotes a hyper-violent spectacle that aids and abets fascist and authoritarian regimes.

Multimodal Mapping of a University’s Formal and Informal Online Brand

2014 ◽  
pp. 120-162
Author(s):  
Shalin Hai-Jew
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Video Sharing ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
University Reputation ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Channels ◽  
The University

With the popularization of the Social Web (or Read-Write Web) and millions of participants in these interactive spaces, institutions of higher education have found it necessary to create online presences to promote their university brands, presence, and reputation. An important aspect of that engagement involves being aware of how their brand is represented informally (and formally) on social media platforms. Universities have traditionally maintained thin channels of formalized communications through official media channels, but in this participatory new media age, the user-generated contents and communications are created independent of the formal public relations offices. The university brand is evolving independently of official controls. Ex-post interventions to protect university reputation and brand may be too little, too late, and much of the contents are beyond the purview of the formal university. Various offices and clubs have institutional accounts on Facebook as well as wide representation of their faculty, staff, administrators, and students online. There are various microblogging accounts on Twitter. Various photo and video contents related to the institution may be found on photo- and video-sharing sites, like Flickr, and there are video channels on YouTube. All this digital content is widely available and may serve as points-of-contact for the close-in to more distal stakeholders and publics related to the institution. A recently available open-source tool enhances the capability for crawling (extracting data) these various social media platforms (through their Application Programming Interfaces or “APIs”) and enables the capture, analysis, and social network visualization of broadly available public information. Further, this tool enables the analysis of previously hidden information. This chapter introduces the application of Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel (NodeXL) to the empirical and multimodal analysis of a university’s electronic presence on various social media platforms and offers some initial ideas for the analytical value of such an approach.

Social Media as Alternative Public Sphere for Citizen Participation and Protest in National Politics in Zimbabwe

2018 ◽  
pp. 17-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Collen Sabao ◽  
Tendai Owen Chikara
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Impact

The chapter examines and discusses the role and communicative potential of social media based platforms in citizen political participation and protests in Zimbabwe specifically focusing on the #thisflag movement on Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp. #thisflag is a social media-based platform that rose to challenge the Zimbabwean government over the political and economic decay as well as rampant corruption characterising the country contemporarily. While a new phenomenon to Zimbabwe and Zimbabwean politics, the impact and communicative potential of social media as an alternative public sphere was recently tested in nationwide protest stayaway organised through the Facebook and Twitter movement under the #thisflag handle/brand. This chapter discusses the manners in which such social media platforms impact national politics in Zimbabwe as well as globally, specifically looking at the #thisflag movement as a case study.

Social Media as Alternative Public Sphere for Citizen Participation and Protest in National Politics in Zimbabwe

2020 ◽  
pp. 772-786
Author(s):  
Collen Sabao ◽  
Tendai Owen Chikara
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Impact

The chapter examines and discusses the role and communicative potential of social media based platforms in citizen political participation and protests in Zimbabwe specifically focusing on the #thisflag movement on Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp. #thisflag is a social media-based platform that rose to challenge the Zimbabwean government over the political and economic decay as well as rampant corruption characterising the country contemporarily. While a new phenomenon to Zimbabwe and Zimbabwean politics, the impact and communicative potential of social media as an alternative public sphere was recently tested in nationwide protest stayaway organised through the Facebook and Twitter movement under the #thisflag handle/brand. This chapter discusses the manners in which such social media platforms impact national politics in Zimbabwe as well as globally, specifically looking at the #thisflag movement as a case study.

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