Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media

by Christian Fuchs

Author	: Christian Fuchs
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 382
Release	: 2015-01-09
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1317558197

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Understanding social media requires us to engage with the individual and collective meanings that diverse stakeholders and participants give to platforms. It also requires us to analyse how social media companies try to make profits, how and which labour creates this profit, who creates social media ideologies, and the conditions under which such ideologies emerge. In short, understanding social media means coming to grips with the relationship between culture and the economy. In this thorough study, Christian Fuchs, one of the leading analysts of the Internet and social media, delves deeply into the subject by applying the approach of cultural materialism to social media, offering readers theoretical concepts, contemporary examples, and proposed opportunities for political intervention. Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media is the ultimate resource for anyone who wants to understand culture and the economy in an era populated by social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google in the West and Weibo, Renren, and Baidu in the East. Updating the analysis of thinkers such as Raymond Williams, Karl Marx, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, and Dallas W. Smythe for the 21st century, Fuchs presents a version of Marxist cultural theory and cultural materialism that allows us to critically understand social media’s influence on culture and the economy.

Sharing

by Philippe Aigrain

Author	: Philippe Aigrain
Publisher	: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages	: 243
Release	: 2012
Genre	: Business & Economics
ISBN	: 9089643850

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"In the past fifteen years, file sharing of digital cultural works between individuals has been at the center of a number of debates on the future of culture itself. To some, sharing constitutes piracy, to be fought against and eradicated. Others see it as unavoidable, and table proposals to compensate for its harmful effects. Meanwhile, little progress has been made towards addressing the real challenges facing culture in a digital world. Sharing starts from a radically different viewpoint, namely that the non-market sharing of digital works is both legitimate and useful. It supports this premise with empirical research, demonstrating that non-market sharing leads to more diversity in the attention given to various works. Taking stock of what we have learned about the cultural economy in recent years, Sharing sets out the conditions necessary for valuable cultural functions to remain sustainable in this context."--[P] 4 of cover.

Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media

by Christian Fuchs

Author	: Christian Fuchs
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 435
Release	: 2015-01-09
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1317558200

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Understanding social media requires us to engage with the individual and collective meanings that diverse stakeholders and participants give to platforms. It also requires us to analyse how social media companies try to make profits, how and which labour creates this profit, who creates social media ideologies, and the conditions under which such ideologies emerge. In short, understanding social media means coming to grips with the relationship between culture and the economy. In this thorough study, Christian Fuchs, one of the leading analysts of the Internet and social media, delves deeply into the subject by applying the approach of cultural materialism to social media, offering readers theoretical concepts, contemporary examples, and proposed opportunities for political intervention. Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media is the ultimate resource for anyone who wants to understand culture and the economy in an era populated by social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google in the West and Weibo, Renren, and Baidu in the East. Updating the analysis of thinkers such as Raymond Williams, Karl Marx, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, and Dallas W. Smythe for the 21st century, Fuchs presents a version of Marxist cultural theory and cultural materialism that allows us to critically understand social media’s influence on culture and the economy.

The Social Media Age

by Zoetanya Sujon

Author	: Zoetanya Sujon
Publisher	: SAGE
Total Pages	: 271
Release	: 2021-04-07
Genre	: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN	: 1526481979

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Exploring power and participation in a connected world. Social media are all around us. For many, they are the first things to look at upon waking and the last thing to do before sleeping. Integrated seamlessly into our private and public lives, they entertain, inform, connect (and sometimes disconnect) us. They’re more than just social though. In addition to our experiences as everyday users, understanding social media also means asking questions about our society, our culture and our economy. What we find is dense connections between platform infrastructures and our experience of the social, shaped by power, shifting patterns of participation, and a widening ideology of connection. This book introduces and examines the full scope of social media. From the social to the technological, from the everyday to platform industries, from the personal to the political. It brings together the key concepts, theories and research necessary for making sense of the meanings and consequences of social media, both hopefully and critically. Dr Zoetanya Sujon is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Director for Communications and Media at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

The Oxford Handbook of Digital Technology and Society

by Simeon Yates

Author	: Simeon Yates
Publisher	: Oxford University Press
Total Pages	: 552
Release	: 2020-06-01
Genre	:
ISBN	: 0190932600

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Required reading for anyone interested in the profound relationship between digital technology and society Digital technology has become an undeniable facet of our social lives, defining our governments, communities, and personal identities. Yet with these technologies in ongoing evolution, it is difficult to gauge the full extent of their societal impact, leaving researchers and policy makers with the challenge of staying up-to-date on a field that is constantly in flux. The Oxford Handbook of Digital Technology and Society provides students, researchers, and practitioners across the technology and social science sectors with a comprehensive overview of the foundations for understanding the various relationships between digital technology and society. Combining robust computer-aided reviews of current literature from the UK Economic and Social Research Council's commissioned project "Ways of Being in a Digital Age" with newly commissioned chapters, this handbook illustrates the upcoming research questions and challenges facing the social sciences as they address the societal impacts of digital media and technologies across seven broad categories: citizenship and politics, communities and identities, communication and relationships, health and well-being, economy and sustainability, data and representation, and governance and security. Individual chapters feature important practical and ethical explorations into topics such as technology and the aging, digital literacies, work-home boundary, machines in the workforce, digital censorship and surveillance, big data governance and regulation, and technology in the public sector. The Oxford Handbook of Digital Technology and Society will equip readers with the necessary starting points and provocations in the field so that scholars and policy makers can effectively assess future research, practice, and policy.

Cultural Political Economy

by Jacqueline Best

Author	: Jacqueline Best
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 518
Release	: 2010-01-21
Genre	: Political Science
ISBN	: 1135173893

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The global political economy is inescapably cultural. Whether we talk about the economic dimensions of the "war on terror", the sub-prime crisis and its aftermath, or the ways in which new information technology has altered practices of production and consumption, it has become increasingly clear that these processes cannot be fully captured by the hyper-rational analysis of economists or the slogans of class conflict. This book argues that culture is a concept that can be used to develop more subtle and fruitful analyses of the dynamics and problems of the global political economy. Rediscovering the unacknowledged role of culture in the writings of classical political economists, the contributors to this volume reveal its central place in the historical evolution of post-war capitalism, exploring its continued role in contemporary economic processes that range from the commercialization of security practices to the development of ethical tourism. The book shows that culture plays a role in both constituting different forms of economic life and in shaping the diverse ways that capitalism has developed historically – from its earliest moments to its most recent challenges. Providing valuable insights to a wide range of disciplines, this volume will be of vital interest to students and scholars of International Political Economy, Cultural and Economic Geography and Sociology, and International Relations.

The Politics of Expertise in Cultural Labour

by Karen Patel

Author	: Karen Patel
Publisher	: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages	: 153
Release	: 2020-03-16
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1786612518

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What is expertise? In the arts, or cultural work, the experts in this area are commonly regarded to be art critics, dealers or intermediaries. Why are they considered experts? What about the expertise of the artists or cultural workers themselves? The Politics of Expertise in Cultural Labour provides a much-needed account of the concept of expertise in cultural work, providing new insights into the individual experiences of cultural workers and the role of social media in their creative practice and development of expertise. It also explores the potential reasons for inequalities in the sector which centre not only on protected characteristics such as class, gender and race, but increasingly the digital divide. Drawing on interviews with cultural workers and an innovative social media analysis, this book highlights the characteristics of aesthetic expertise in production – the practical skills cultural workers hone and deploy over years of training and creative practice. This is a new take on aesthetic expertise, which is traditionally associated with those involved in the judgement of culture, such as critics, dealers and intermediaries. The book highlights how social media platforms both enable and constrain the development of practical aesthetic expertise, and the platforms’ role in the mediation of the cultural object online. Finally, Patel interrogates the power dimensions of expertise, focusing primarily on gender. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, it explores how opportunities to develop aesthetic expertise, and the ability to use social media platforms to signal that expertise, are not available to everyone. In this sense, The Politics of Expertise in Cultural Labour adds new perspectives to the growing body of work on inequalities in the creative and cultural industries, as well as scholarship on social media and creative work. The book concludes with the argument that the term ‘expertise’ needs to be problematised and reclaimed by those who are not equally represented in the cultural industries, using gender as a case in point.

Digital Capitalism

by Christian Fuchs

Author	: Christian Fuchs
Publisher	: Routledge
Total Pages	: 342
Release	: 2021-11-30
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1000473244

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This third volume in Christian Fuchs’s Media, Communication and Society book series illuminates what it means to live in an age of digital capitalism, analysing its various aspects, and engaging with a variety of critical thinkers whose theories and approaches enable a critical understanding of digital capitalism for media and communication. Each chapter focuses on a particular dimension of digital capitalism or a critical theorist whose work helps us to illuminate how digital capitalism works. Subjects covered include: digital positivism; administrative big data analytics; the role and relations of patriarchy, slavery, and racism in the context of digital labour; digital alienation; the role of social media in the capitalist crisis; the relationship between imperialism and digital labour; alternatives such as trade unions and class struggles in the digital age; platform co-operatives; digital commons; and public service Internet platforms. It also considers specific examples, including the digital labour of Foxconn and Pegatron workers, software engineers at Google, and online freelancers, as well as considering the political economy of targeted-advertising-based Internet platforms such as Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Instagram. Digital Capitalism illuminates how a digital capitalist society’s economy, politics, and culture work and interact, making it essential reading for both students and researchers in media, culture, and communication studies, as well as related disciplines.

Social Theory after the Internet

by Ralph Schroeder

Author	: Ralph Schroeder
Publisher	: UCL Press
Total Pages	: 210
Release	: 2018-01-04
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 178735122X

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The internet has fundamentally transformed society in the past 25 years, yet existing theories of mass or interpersonal communication do not work well in understanding a digital world. Nor has this understanding been helped by disciplinary specialization and a continual focus on the latest innovations. Ralph Schroeder takes a longer-term view, synthesizing perspectives and findings from various social science disciplines in four countries: the United States, Sweden, India and China. His comparison highlights, among other observations, that smartphones are in many respects more important than PC-based internet uses. Social Theory after the Internet focuses on everyday uses and effects of the internet, including information seeking and big data, and explains how the internet has gone beyond traditional media in, for example, enabling Donald Trump and Narendra Modi to come to power. Schroeder puts forward a sophisticated theory of the role of the internet, and how both technological and social forces shape its significance. He provides a sweeping and penetrating study, theoretically ambitious and at the same time always empirically grounded.The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media and society, the internet and politics, and the social implications of big data.