Some Thoughts on Social Media and Capitalism
Communicative capitalism refers to Capitalism’s place and role in the modern internet. These brief thoughts attempt to break down and think about the ideas of Jodi Dean, namely in the book “The Communist Horizon”, in order to explain what is meant by Communicative Capitalism and how we, as users of the modern internet, are used to make a profit for large corporations.
Definitions
Dean describes communicative capitalism as “an ideological formation wherein capitalism and democracy converge in networked communication technologies”. I take this broadly to mean how capitalism has expanded into our social media, messaging services, and online content platforms like YouTube. By capitalism, what is meant is modern neoliberalism; a particularly vicious form of capitalism in which competition, the profit motive and exploitation is encouraged in every facet of life and the market is forcefully expanded into the final frontiers it has yet to conquer. By exploitation, what is meant is the profit made by companies and people on individual’s unpaid, or underpaid, labour (commonly referred to in theoretical writing as extracting surplus value). This is what I mean when I write “neoliberal capitalist relations” later in this piece; profit motive, competition and making profit from unpaid work.
Understanding communicative capitalism is therefore about understanding how companies profit off us through our use of the modern internet.
“The tether of 24/7 availability”
It would not be true to suggest that previous to the modern internet or neoliberal capitalism, communication and the knowledge it could impart was held in ‘common’, i.e. free and accessible for all. Dean touches on the work of Michael Hardt to point out that communication was not equal; different languages and dialects as well as different access to education and books meant that certain information available through communication was inaccessible to whole swathes of people, either because of class or geography.
Social media and the internet have the power to eradicate the barriers in communication and make it ‘common’. Our problems and solutions can be both shared easier and accessed easier. Software can automatically translate anything we write to a reader’s language. Algorithms figure out exactly what we want to read and what we might be interested in and almost all of this is readily accessible for free.
However, this is not the case. Instead, the modern internet is riddled with neoliberal capitalist relations and perpetuates those relations further into our lives.
Firstly, how does the modern internet perpetuate neoliberal capitalism? Dean writes how “networked information technologies have been the means through which people have been subjected to the competitive intensity of neoliberal capitalism”. More and more technologies let us work anywhere at any time and to be more efficient when doing so. There is no excuse not to reply to an email after work if you have your phone with you. Going away for the weekend? Your laptop means there is no excuse not to complete the task your boss has asked you to do. Cannot attend the meeting because you are sick (or stuck at home due to a worldwide pandemic)? No reason you cannot attend via zoom.
It is also easier to participate in financial capitalism. You can buy stocks and shares in seconds on your phone, on the advice of some social media guru of course. If you don’t, you’re missing out: social media is riddled with clips of everyone living the high life and telling you that you can too.
This is the result of new internet technologies and software’s that have supposedly made our working lives easier, but have led to “widespread de-skilling, surveillance and the acceleration and the intensification of work and culture”. On some software for office organisation, you must complete a task in the time your superiors deem enough, and if you fail to hit the deadline it will be marked against you. Your every action on your company laptop can be, and is, watched, logged and recorded and so you must work, like a drone, continuously. You should always be available to work; as Dean says, “the freedom of telecommunicating quickly morphed into the tether of 24/7 availability… under constant soul-destroying to keep-up, stay alert and remain motivated”. For an idea that on face value preaches individuality, neoliberal capitalism kills the individual as a human and replaces them with a working drone who is always available and always working.
The “work” of content consumption
We have therefore established that modern network and communication technologies help capitalism pierce into our everyday lives, turning the person in to the eternal worker. But what about those times when you are not working, but consuming content or messaging a friend? When scrolling through twitter, watching YouTube or replying in a group chat, how is capitalism in action and how is it extracting profit from you?
The answer lies in data. Every click, every search, every video watched creates value in the form of data. That data is valuable for companies as they can, and do, use it to make profit. Companies like Facebook and Google can (of course, allegedly) sell your data to others who can use that to target adverts at you. This is something we experience everyday and have become numb to; mention to a friend that you’re thinking of moving to a new house and you will be inundated with adverts for estate agent, for example.
Whether it appears to be on face-value or not, your messages and clicks and consumption is work. In making choices about what to watch and what not to watch, you create data that companies pay for to better know how to make you watch their stuff. In choosing which article to read after a Google search and then buying something on Amazon shortly after, you create a data-chain that contributes to a profile of yourself and people like you which companies buy in order to know how better to target you and others with content and products.
Dean turns to the idea of decision fatigue to help explain further how this is work. Effectively, it is increasingly clear to neuroscientists that our constant decision making brought about by social media and the modern internet is tiring. John Tierney explains that “You can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price… you’re not consciously aware of being tired but you’re low on mental energy. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts”.
Those shortcuts can come in the form of recommendations. YouTube can, and allegedly does, choose what content to push more into people’s recommendations than others and on which videos to put the most valuable adverts. Ironically enough it is not a free marketplace, in which the best content rises to the top, but one in which the most brand-friendly, profitable-for-google companies are artificially boosted.
The same goes for search results or social media posts: the best content does not always win nor the content one wants to see, but the one who paid the most to have their searches boosted or which have been selected to be at the top as they are profit making, hence the change on most social media (Twitter/ Instagram) feeds from chronological order to a mysterious and unexplained algorithm.
What makes a piece of content more profitable to a social media company? Firstly, if it is bland, uncritical and inoffensive to brands who want to pay to have adverts on a social media. Secondly, and more importantly, the more clickable it is. More clicks mean more data which means more money for companies. It is no mistake that sensationalist and fake news is ever-present on twitter and Facebook and that these are continuously recommended to all, almost totally unchecked. These drive the most the clicks and are therefore the most profitable. Any restriction on these only occurs when brands and corporations start to worry about their public image when their advertising turns up underneath a controversial news piece.
Some final thoughts
These thoughts were not written to be exhaustive nor authoritative. This has simply been me working through the thoughts I had while reading Chapter 4, ‘Commons and Commons’ in Dean’s book. My theory and explanation will no doubt be riddled with mistakes and inconsistencies, and the piece is explanatory and contributory more so than it is original. There is much more to be said on the subject of communicative capitalism and work and if you are interested, I encourage you to read “The Communist Horizon” which is a thought-provoking book.
Sources:
Jodi Dean, “The Communist Horizon”, (Verso, 2018)
Michael Hardt, “The Common in Communism” in The Idea of Communism, (Verso, 2010)
John Tierney, “Do You Suffer from Decision Fatigue?”, New York Times Magazine, August 2001
