New Media Enterprises
What are the limitations of your loyalty to technology? I must confess, after the readings this week my disposition towards my iPhone and laptop has been impacted. Zattain’s lecture and Fuchs chapter both analyzed new media enterprises, the greatness it brings into our life and the not so great that we are all too happy to forget. By now it is no secret that new media has been using us, the audience. These hybrid economies use our consumption and sharing to gain value and profit for their business. Originally, this didn’t seem like too much of an issue. However, after this week’s readings I realize that we aren’t getting as much credit in these new media enterprises as we should be.
Web 2.0 is supposedly a place of sharing and equal opportunity, however not too surprisingly, there are businesses exploiting this. ‘Corporations and their logic dominate social media and the Internet is predominantly capitalist in character’ (Fuchs 2014, 102). Each time we use these new media platforms we are being monitored, and our information is being put through algorithms to be sold to advertisers. And the more we use these platforms, the more value they have for advertisers, meaning that these corporations can gain a larger profit because of us. In doing so, ‘corporations reduce their investment costs and labor costs, jobs are destroyed, and consumers who work for free are extremely exploited’ (Fuchs 2014, 106) the issue here is not only that people receive little to no reward for their work which capitalists flourish from, but also that they aren’t being compensated for overtime. There are no set work hours for when prosumers are laboring because it’s disguised as play. ‘Nearly two-thirds of the Australian population now own a smartphone’ (Godfrey 2013) so for many, accessibility to these programs is 24/7. ‘On corporate social media, users create content, browse content, establish and maintain relations with others by communication, and updating their profiles. All the time they spend on these platforms is work time.’ (Fuchs 2014, 114)
Price for value is only one of the many issues with what Zittrain refers to as ‘crowd sourcing’. Corporations use the collective power of individuals to act as a Mechanical Turk (Zittrain, 2009) in completing mindless jobs for monetary rewards or satisfaction. As a result, people will complete these tasks without full consciousness of what they’re actually doing, and who their employer is. For years now I’ve been answering what I thought were security questions of captcha. I never really put much thought into what I was typing out. But now I see I was no more than a tool, decoding words for some company's larger plan, which I know nothing about.
New media has blurred the lines of both moral and the law. In ‘the real world’ society takes work conditions very seriously, and people have strong opinions about what they believe is right and wrong. However, when it comes to new media we live in blissful ignorance, putting aside what is right and just, all for the love of our technology that we have become so dependent on. So while these media enterprises should be regulated, they aren't entirely to blame. People need to want change, which wont happen in this zombie-like state.
References
Zittrain, Jonathan. 2009. Minds for Sale (video, 1hr 16mins). 16 November. Available at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2009/11/berkwest
Fuchs, Christian. 2014. “The Power and Political Economy of Social Media.” In Social Media: An Introduction, 97 – 125. London: Sage Publications (Available on CMD)
Godfrey, Miles. 2013. “Two thirds of Aussies own a smartphone: report” Sydney Morning Herald, July 29. Accessed March 25, 2014. http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/twothirds-of-aussies-own-a-smartphone-report-20130729-2quj1.html