Thomas Allmer

Towards a Critical Theory of Surveillance in Informational Capitalism

Contents: Critical Social Theory - Critical Media and Communication Studies - Critical Surveillance Studies - Panopticon - Karl Marx - Michel Foucault - Political Economy of Surveillance - Political Economy of the Internet - Workplace Surveillance - Pre-Employment Screening - Intellectual Property Surveillance - Consumer Surveillance.

Critical theory and social media : between emancipation and commodification

Introduction. Part I: Theoretical Foundations 1. Critical Theory and Dialectics 2. Critical Internet and Social Media Studies 3. Critical (Internet) Privacy Studies: Ideology Critique 4. Critical (Internet) Surveillance Studies: Commodity Critique Part II: Case Study 5. Traditional and Critical Research of Privacy and Surveillance on Social Media 6. Empirical Results: (Dis)Advantages of Social Media Part III: Techno-Social Revolution 7. Critical Theory, Dialectics, and the (Dis)Advantages of Social Media 8. Conclusion

(Dis)Like Facebook? Dialectical and Critical Perspectives on Social Media

Abstract Apart from a few exceptions, there are no studies combining critical theoretical and empirical research in the context of social media. The overall aim of my article is to study the constraints and emancipatory potentials of web 2.0 and to assess to what extent social media can contribute to strengthen the idea of the communication and network commons and a commons-based information society. I follow an emancipatory research interest being based on a critical theory and political economy approach in three sections: I provide some foundational concepts of a critical theory of media, technology and society in section one. The task of section two is to study the users’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards the potentials and risks of social media. This section can be considered as a case study of the critical theory and dialectics of media, technology, and society. In section three, I raise the question if technological and/or social changes are required in order to bring about real social media. Section three furthermore discusses political implications and draws some conclusions.

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).

Social Media as Surveillance: Rethinking Visibility in a Converging World

In recent years, based on the employment of various surveillance technologies, there has been an extension and intensification of privacy threats and surveillance risks in economic, political, and cultural contexts. The Internet and new media are among these technologies. The fact that one can find Web 2.0 platforms such as Facebook (rank 2), YouTube (rank 3), LinkedIn (rank 8) and Twitter (rank 10) among the most frequently accessed websites worldwide indicates the enormous popularity of these sites (data source: Alexa Internet, 2013). It is therefore important to conduct theoretical and empirical studies of these research areas. In Social Media as Surveillance, Daniel Trottier (2013) makes an important contribution to this task. Along with Identity Problems in the Facebook Era (Routledge), it is Trottier’s second book within the field of new and digital media to be published in almost 1 year and shows how active and energetic this scholar is. It can be expected that he will provide many new and inspiring contributions to the academic community in the near future. The book

Precarious, always-on and flexible: A case study of academics as information workers

The higher education landscape has changed in the past decades. The neoliberal restructuring of universities has led to transformations such as reducing public expenditure, allocating resources based on competition and quasi-market disciplines. These structural transformations have also an effect on the working conditions, practices and relations of subjects within universities. Questions that need to be addressed: How do different working contexts and conditions in the academia shape feelings of autonomy, flexibility and reputation on one hand and precariousness, overwork and dissatisfaction on the other? What are the broader political realities and potentials in terms of solidarity, participation and democracy at universities? I address these questions based on a theoretical analysis and qualitative interviews with precariously employed academics.

Academic Labour, Digital Media and Capitalism:

The aim of this article is to contextualise universities historically within capitalism and to analyse academic labour and the deployment of digital media theoretically and critically. It argues that the post-war expansion of the university can be considered as medium and outcome of informational capitalism and as a dialectical development of social achievement and advanced commodification. The article strives to identify the class position of academic workers, introduces the distinction between academic work and labour, discusses the connection between academic, information and cultural work, and suggests a broad definition of university labour. It presents a model of working conditions that helps to systematically analyse the academic labour process and to provide an overview of working conditions at universities. The article furthermore argues for the need to consider the development of education technologies as a dialectics of continuity and discontinuity, discusses the changing nature of the forces and relations of production, and the impact on the working conditions of academics in the digital university. Based on Erik Olin Wright’s inclusive approach of social transformation, the article concludes with the need to bring together anarchist, social democratic and revolutionary strategies for establishing a socialist university in a commons-based information society.