Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

The End of History and the Last Man

Working in the digital media industry is not as much fun as it is made out to be. The “NetSlaves” of the eponymous Webzine are becoming increasingly vociferous about the shamelessly exploitative nature of the job, its punishing work rhythms, and its ruthless casualization (www.disobey.com/netslaves). They talk about “24–7 electronic sweatshops” and complain about the ninety-hour weeks and the “moronic management of new media companies.” In early 1999, seven of the fifteen thousand “volunteers” of America Online (AOL) rocked the info-loveboat by asking the Department of Labor to investigate whether AOL owes them back wages for the years of playing chathosts for free.1 They used to work long hours and love it; now they are starting to feel the pain of being burned by digital media. These events point to a necessary backlash against the glamorization of digital labor, which highlights its continuities with the modern sweatshop and points to the increasing degradation of knowledge work. Yet the question of labor in a “digital economy” is not so easily dismissed as an innovative development of the familiar logic of capitalist exploitation. The NetSlaves are not simply a typical form of labor on the Internet; they also embody a complex relation to labor that is widespread in late capitalist societies. In this essay I understand this relationship as a provision of “free labor,” a trait of the cultural economy at large, and an important, and yet undervalued, force in advanced capitalist societies. By looking at the Internet as a specific instance of the fundamental role played by free labor, this essay also tries to highlight the connections between the “digital economy” and what the Italian autonomists have called the “social factory.” The “social factory” describes a process whereby “work processes have shifted from the factory to society, thereby setting in motion a truly complex machine.”2 Simultaneously voluntarily given and unwaged, enjoyed and exploited, free labor on the Net includes the activity of building Web sites, modifying software packages, reading and participating in mailing lists, and building virtual spaces on MUDs and MOOs. Far from being an Tiziana Terranova Free Labor

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Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy

This article presents a set of grounded hypotheses on the relationship between communication and power relationships in the technological context that characterizes the network society. Based on a selected body of communication literature, and of a number of case studies and examples, it argues that the media have become the social space where power is decided. It shows the direct link between politics, media politics, the politics of scandal, and the crisis of political legitimacy in a global perspective. It also puts forward the notion that the development of interactive, horizontal networks of communication has induced the rise of a new form of communication, mass self-communication, over the Internet and wireless communication networks. Under these conditions, insurgent politics and social movements are able to intervene more decisively in the new communication space. However, corporate media and mainstream politics have also invested in this new communication space. As a result of these processes, mass media and horizontal communication networks are converging. The net outcome of this evolution is a historical shift of the public sphere from the institutional realm to the new communication space.

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Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society

Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Briggs, Asa and Peter Burke. 2005. A Social History of the Media from Gutenberg to the Internet. Cambridge: Polity Press. Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. 2006. \"Introduction: Did Somebody Say New Media?\" In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Kennan eds., New Media/Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 1-11. Deibert, Ronald. 1997. Parchment, Printing and Hypermedia: Communication in World Order Transformation. New York: Columbia University Press. Elsaesser, Thomas. 2006. \"Early Film History and Multi-Media: An Archaeology of Possible Futures?\" In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Kennan eds., New Media/Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 13-26. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Luhman, Niklas. 2000. The Reality of the Mass Media. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2006. \"Network Subjects or, The Ghost is the Message.\" In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan eds., New Media/Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 335-345. Saenger, Paul. 1997. \"Introduction\" to Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 1-17. Thorburn, David and Henry Jenkins eds. 2003. Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition. Boston: MIT Press.

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (review)

Overview of the Political Economy of Communication What is Political Economy? Definitions and Characteristics What is Political Economy? Schools of Thought The Development of a Political Economy of Communication The Political Economy of Communication: Building a Foundation The Political Economy of Communication Today Commodification: Content, Audiences, Labour Spatialization: Space, Time, and Communication Structuration: Class, Gender, Race, Social Movements, Hegemony Challenges on the Borders ... and Beyond

The political economy of communication

Winner of the 2005 Gary A. Olson Book Award presented by the Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition and JAC: Journal of Advanced Composition The digital era promises, as did many other technological developments before it, the transformation of society: with the computer, we can transcend time, space, and politics-as-usual. In The Digital Sublime, Vincent Mosco goes beyond the usual stories of technological breakthrough and economic meltdown to explore the myths constructed around the new digital technology and why we feel compelled to believe in them. He tells us that what kept enthusiastic investors in the dotcom era bidding up stocks even after the crash had begun was not willful ignorance of the laws of economics but belief in the myth that cyberspace was opening up a new world. Myths are not just falsehoods that can be disproved, Mosco points out, but stories that lift us out of the banality of everyday life into the possibility of the sublime. He argues that if we take what we know about cyberspace and situate it within what we know about culture--specifically the central post-Cold War myths of the end of history, geography, and politics--we will add to our knowledge about the digital world; we need to see it "with both eyes"--that is, to understand it both culturally and materially. After examining the myths of cyberspace and going back in history to look at the similar mythic pronouncements prompted by past technological advances--the telephone, the radio, and television, among others--Mosco takes us to Ground Zero. In the final chapter he considers the twin towers of the World Trade Center--our icons of communication, information, and trade--and their part in the politics, economics, and myths of cyberspace.

The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace

Introduction PART ONE: MAPPING THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF COMMUNICATION What Is Political Economy? The Political Economy of Communication PART TWO: RETHINKING AND RENEWING THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF COMMUNICATION Commodification Spatialization Structuration Challenges on the Borders Cultural Studies and Policy Studies

The political economy of communication : rethinking and renewal

1 The Cloud Ate My Homework 2 From the Computer Utility to Cloud Computing 3 Selling the Cloud Sublime 4 Dark Clouds 5 Big Data and Cloud Culture

To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World

In this paper five major trends in the political economy of communication are addressed: the globalization of the field, the expansion of an enduring emphasis on historical research, the growth of research from alternative standpoints, especially feminism and labour, the shift from an emphasis on old to new media, and the growth of activism connected to the political economy tradition. None of these are brand new tendencies but rather build on existing ones, which were often submerged beneath dominant trends in the field. Nonetheless, the outcomes of specific struggles within each of these domains suggest that political economists have made significant contributions to the overall resurgence of activism around major communication issues.

Vincent Mosco

Papers

The political economy of communication

The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace

The political economy of communication : rethinking and renewal

To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World

political economy of communication