Jernej Amon Prodnik

Mapping Approaches to User Participation and Digital Labour: A Critical Perspective

The period since the mid-1990s has been awash with interpretations of the changes brought about by digital technologies and online social media. Many non-critical accounts have been quick to emphasize how these developments have empowered users by providing increased possibilities for participation, global connectivity and the generation of content that can seriously counter the formerly entrenched inequalities. By making a fourfold challenge to such celebratory accounts, we suggest in this chapter an alternative, critical approach to user participation (Section 1). We maintain that relating user participation to digital labour substantiates the critical approach since it allows speaking of user participation as exploited and participating in the reproduction of social inequality (Section 2). We map two influential critical accounts to user exploitation in informational capitalism. Finally, we apply the suggested critical perspective to the concrete example of social media usage by taking Marx’s understanding of the mode of production into account and situating the business model of social media within (Section 3).

Changing Faces of Slovenia

Abstract The study indicates that political, economic and social faces of Slovenia have changed substantially during the half-decade of the crisis. While the ability of citizens to influence important political decisions has been curtailed on both the national and transnational level, instability has become endemic and social solidarity has been eroded. By using quantitative and qualitative content analysis the study analyses how the unfolding crisis has been communicated in the media in the 2008–2013 period with respect to the dynamics between structure and agency as well as regarding the key (inter)national features and contours of the crisis. The study indicates Slovenian news media hardly served as an integrative force and a common forum for an inclusive and open debate. Namely, results of the quantitative content analysis indicate that journalism communicated the “causes” for the crisis by portraying it as something purely accidental, while rarely pointing at the possibility of its systemic nature. Similarly, “solutions” have been predominantly portrayed within the prevailing paradigms or through the neoliberal prism favoured by holders of political and economic power. Qualitative content analysis of how Slovenian news media communicated the decisive breaks and formative moments of the unfolding crisis shows they mostly relied on event-orientation, simplistic juxtapositions and naturalisation of the established power divisions on national as well as international levels.

35 Let pozneje: macbridovo poročilo v zgodovinskem in intelektualnem kontekstu

Namen prispevka je umestitev poročila Mednarodne komisije za proučevanje komunikacijskih problemov Mnogo glasov, en svet (bolj znano kot MacBridovo poročilo), v zgodovinski, družbeni, političnoekonomski in intelektualni kontekst njegovega nastanka. Poročilo velja za eno najpomembnejših intervencij na področju mednarodnega komuniciranja, ki si je za cilj zastavilo zmanjševanje neenakosti v dostopu do komunikacijskih sredstev tako med državami kot znotraj držav. Prispevek izhaja iz predpostavke, da sta kritična misel in poizkus njenega prenosa v praktične rešitve neizogibno pogojena s širšim družbenim kontekstom. To se kaže tako v primeru MacBridovega poročila kot tudi v razvoju politične ekonomije komuniciranja, ki je tvorila temelje za pobudo za novo svetovno informacijsko in komunikacijsko ureditev, katere najpomembnejši dokument je prav MacBridovo poročilo. The aim of this article is to situate the report of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems Many Voices, One World (more commonly known as the MacBride report) within its historic, social, political-economic and intellectual context. The report is regarded as one of the seminal interventions in the field of international communication, and aimed to reduce inequalities in the access to means of communication between countries as well as within them. The article argues that critical thought and its practical application are necessarily conditioned by the wider social context. This is evident in the case of the MacBride report as well as in the development of political economy of communication, which formed the basis of the call for a New World Information and Communication Order and of its most important document, the MacBride report.

Razvojne tendence medijev v kapitalizmu v luči politične ekonomije komuniciranja

Povzetek Prispevek v prvem delu opredeljuje temeljna izhodišča politične ekonomije komuniciranja. Gre za področje, ki je v slovenskem raziskovalnem prostoru brez primerne teoretske utemeljitve. V drugem delu so izpostavljeni ključni poudarki avtorjev, ki jih je mogoče označiti za intelektualne predhodnike politično-ekonomskega pristopa k medijem: Marxa, Bücherja in Sinclairja. V zadnjem delu so na podlagi zgodovinske kontekstualizacije izpostavljene tendence medijev v kapitalizmu, pri čemer je fokus predvsem na vlogi oglaševanja pri zgodovinskih spremembah medijev. Eden izmed ciljev prispevka je pokazati, da so anonimni mehanizmi blagovne menjave na kapitalističnem medijskem trgu vsaj tako pomembni pri vzpostavljanju družbenega konsenza in (re)produkciji obstoječih razrednih in ideoloških odnosov, kot je (potencialno namerna) vloga lastnikov medijev pri vplivu na vsebine, ki jih posredujejo množični mediji.