Micky Lee

What's Missing In Feminist Research In New Information And Communication Technologies?

As implied by the question asked in the title, this paper examines a missing component in the body of feminist research in telecommunications and new information and communication technologies—that of a global feminist political economic analysis of women and new information and communication technologies. Given the ferment of feminist research in new information and communication technologies in the past decade, it is surprising to find so little discussion on women’s relations to telecommunications as an industry (as raised by Liesbet van Zoonen 1994; Richard Vincent 1997). A very few scholars, notably including Ellen Balka (2002) and Michèle Martin (2002), study women workers in the telecommunications industry. Moreover, there exists a scarcity of examinations of international and domestic telecommunications policies that include women or gender analyses in discussions of ownership, market structure, and regulatory policies. What is troubling is that the majority of feminist scholars study how women interact with technologies, be they machines or knowledge, without questioning why technologies come into existence and why women come into interaction with technologies (Martin 2002). Privileging the “how to,” not the “who,” is a technocratic way to conceptualise the relations between humans and technologies (Gerald Sussman & John Lent 1991). In other words, it is imperative to recognise that some actors actively invent, design, and distribute certain technologies for specific purposes. Hence, the evolution of telecommunications and new information and communication technologies is nothing that is “natural.” It is undeniable that new information and communication technologies form an important part of today’s global economy and that the global economic sectors use telecommunications and new technologies intensively (Saskia Sassen 2002). Stephen Graham (2002), Saskia Sassen (1996), and Gwen Urey (1995) have suggested that telecommunications facilitate global capitalism by helping large corporations to expand locally and globally. However, most feminist scholarship in communication studies does not question the link between new technologies and a market-based economy. Given the materialist nature of new information and communication technologies, feminist scholars should not limit their inquiry to the discursive nature of gender and technologies. This article thus argues that women should be situated and understood in the context of unequal global wealth distribution, where they serve as resources in the production, distribution, and consumption process of the information society (as argued by Margaret Gallagher 1981; Gill Kirkup 2001; Michèle Martin 2002). Unlike men’s participation in the information society, women tend to be primarily responsible for the tedious, manual

Google ads and the blindspot debate

This article renews Dallas Smythe’s ‘blindspot’ argument by examining the economy of Google advertising. I argue that Google sells at least three types of commodities: keywords, statistics of keywords, and search results. Through a vertically integrated system, Google sells to advertisers commodities that have no exchange value outside the Google ads system. Moreover, Google creates an ideology that the world’s information is at the users’ fingertips, which encourages users to search more, and hence view more advertisements.

A POLITICAL ECONOMIC CRITIQUE OF GOOGLE MAPS AND GOOGLE EARTH

Using a political economic approach to communication, this paper critiques the Google company by examining Google Maps and Google Earth. Academic, media and daily lives discourses tend to ask three questions about Google. First, what other services does Google provide in addition to a search engine? Second, is Google an unconventional company? Third, does Google provide free information? By examining the development of Google Maps and Google Earth from an historical perspective, and by situating technological development in a broader socioeconomic context, the paper argues that Google employs a wide array of strategies to stay competitive in the information industry.

A Feminist Political Economy of Communication

In the spring of 2004, after I defended my doctoral dissertation, I decided to read as much literature on women, gender, and new information and communication technologies (ICTs) as I could. My dissertation examined how UNESCO conceptualised the relationship between women and telecommunications. Although telecommunications are closely related to new ICTs (and sometimes erroneously seen as the same subject), I decided not to address new ICTs in my dissertation. The more literature I read, the angrier I felt. My anger was channelled into writing the article “What’s Missing in Feminist Research in New Information and Communication Technologies?” (Micky Lee 2006), published in Feminist Media Studies. In that article, I wrote about how a “global feminist political economic analysis” may approach the relationship between women, gender, and new ICTs. The three directions that I proposed are: first, to recognise telecommunications and new ICTs as industries; second, to discover the multiple roles that women have in relation to telecommunications and new ICTs; and, third, to study the ideology that naturalises the unequal distribution of wealth. In hindsight, I wrote that article with a lot of naı̈veté. I thought that I had nailed down a missing piece in feminist research on new ICTs and had provided a holistic picture of the gendered nature of the new ICT industries. Little did I know that I had just begun to explore a largely untrodden path. In the following years, I read many wonderful feminist critiques on macroeconomics, intellectual property, nation states, international relations, technology and science, and labour. The many courageous feminists who spoke before I did stimulated me to look deeper into the feminist political economy of telecommunications, new ICTs, and media. My current working definition of a feminist political economic approach to communication is: the study of the gendered production, distribution, and consumption of goods and resources and the examination of how ideology is used to stabilise the unequal relations. I employ Marxist definitions of production, goods and resources, ideology, and social relations. Production is the process of transforming one form of commodity into another form of commodity through the use of labour and technology; goods are commodities that have market value whilst resources may not have market value (such as the time of the unemployed); ideology is false consciousness that masks real economic relations; and social relations are determined by economic relations. Neo-Marxists (such as Althusser) and post-Marxists (such as Baudrillard) have questioned the usefulness and relevancy of these Marxist terms in a consumerist society. I certainly think feminists should question Marxist thought. But first let me plead the case for why Marxism should form the basis of feminist political economy.

Localizing a global amusement park: Hong Kong Disneyland

We examine how the Disney Company localizes Disneyland in Hong Kong. Unlike most transnational corporations that adapt local culture to accommodate local tastes in foreign markets, we argue that Hong Kong Disneyland adapts to the Chinese market by retaining and bringing to the fore Disneylands global form. Evidence gathered from multiple visits to the park shows that local residents and visitors from Asia understand how global consumption works. For tourists from mainland China, however, the park offers a chance for them to assume the role of aspiring global consumers, an experience that state control prevents them from having in their daily lives.

On the Relationship Between International Telecommunications Development and Global Women's poverty

The article discusses the relationship between international telecommunications development and global womens poverty by examining three questions: (1) Who benefits economically from international telecommunications development? (2) Why is womens poverty a peripheral concern in neoclassical economics? (3) How and by whom should womens poverty be defined? By focusing on the World Banks policies, programs and lending to telecommunications, and womens empowerment since the 1980s, and drawing on the perspectives of the political economy of communication, feminist economics and critical studies of global womens poverty, this article argues that the problem of global womens poverty should be understood in the contexts of an unequal distribution of goods and services across the globe and between men and women, the androcentrism and ethnocentrism of neoclassical economics and the processes of womens poverty and poor womens agency in poverty alleviation at a local level.

A Feminist Political Economic Critique of Women and Investment in the Popular Media

From a feminist political economic perspective, this paper examines the relationship between gender and investment in the popular media in three interrelating ways. First, a discourse analysis was used to examine eight popular books on investment for women published in the US. The popular financial literature asks women to solve the problems that they encounter in a patriarchal household by participating in the financial market. Second, Suze Orman was used as a case study to show the commodification process of financial information through the tactics brand differentiation, multi-platform delivery, and creation of niche markets. Third, the consumption of commodities is linked to that of production and distribution by revealing the relations between the gendered production and reproduction in the household, transnational corporations, and financial institutions.

INFORMATION AND FINANCE CAPITAL

This article examines the political economy of information in relation to finance capital from the vantage points of commodity, spatiality, and temporality by using Reuters as an illustrative case. The use and exchange values of financial information are examined in productive capital; and the fixed value of financial information as capital goods in finance capital is assessed. The value of financial information is argued to be both time and space dependent. The circulation of financial information constitutes a specific historical time in capitalism, which David Harvey characterized as ‘time–space compression’. Financial information is integral to both spatial fixes and temporal fixes, which have been used to solve the problem of surplus over-accumulation.

UNESCO’s Conceptualization of Women and Telecommunications 1970-2000

This article examines UNESCO resolutions and programs on women in relation to telecommunications in the time period 1970-2000. It argues that in those three decades, UNESCO responded to the four UN world conferences on women by incorporating women into its programs of information and communication. The organization’s conceptualized relations between women and telecommunications are critiqued as simple and naive. Women are alloted only three roles in relation to telecommunications: as representations, as media professionals and as active participants of communication technologies. It is argued that if women are not seen as owners of telecommunications and inventors of technologies, women’s advancement and women’s empowerment will not be fully achieved.

Time and the Political Economy of Financial Television

This article calls attention to the importance of time as a vantage point from which the intersection between finance, media, and information can be critiqued. The neoliberal temporality is constituted by both abstract time and historical time of the media. The sense of abstract time constructed by financial television is critiqued: the paradox of low production cost of television programs and high commercial value of advertisement spots illustrates the inherent contradictions of capitalism. The existence of financial television relies on the creation of new financial markets and the centralization of information to financial transaction—both phenomenon ought to be understood in the context of the historical time marked by neoliberalism since 1970s.