Course:LIBR559A/Zajc, M. (2015)

Citation

Zajc, M. (2015). The Social Media Dispositive and Monetization of User-Generated Content. The Information Society 31(1), 61-67. doi:10.1080/01972243.2015.977636

Annotation

In this article, Zajc presents the concept of the “social media despositive” as a conceptual tool for analysing digital labour and the monetization of user generated content. He analysis is informed by the work of the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, who argued against the traditional Marxist view that all aspects of a society can be explained by its economic structure (62). She also draws on the contemporary social theorists Deleuze and Agamben, who expanded on Althusser’s work.

Zajc argues that Marxist analyses of social media (e.g., Fuchs 2010) do not adequately describe the social motives of users. She agrees that the economic aspects of user-generated content are important, but questions the utility of traditional Marxist theory in a networked society. She believes that Fuchs’ emphasis on exploitation misses the fact that the conditions of digital labour are dramatically different from traditional forms of production. She proposes that analyses of social media use should consider both economic and social motives for participation. To this end, she introduces the concept of the “social media dispositive,” in which “social media are a constitutive element of contemporary capitalism not because of the amount of financial profit they generate, but because they provide for the conditions in which financial profits in general are generated” (66). This approach acknowledges the agency of users, whose participation in social media is voluntary and personally rewarding.

In Zajc’s view, digital technologies have blurred the boundaries between production and consumption, active and passive participation, and freedom and domination (63). Social media users create content willingly and derive benefits from their participation. At the same time, they are dominated and exploited by social media companies. She argues that users are “aware of their emotional involvement in social media, of the knowledge labor they perform, and of the harvesting of their personal data”, and the fact that they still choose to participate indicated that economic exploitation is not the only process involved (66). She suggests that analyses of social media should consider complex power relationships between different actors, rather than focusing solely on the exploitation of the multitude by the capitalist class (64).

A major weakness of the article is Zajc's assumption that users are aware of the labour they perform on social media and of the fact that their data is harvested by social media companies (66). This is demonstrably untrue; few users are aware of the extent of data harvesting on social media, and no one outside of these companies knows exactly how the data is being used. Further, users can’t be said to be aware of their labour if they have never thought about their online activities in Marxian economic terms.

Critical theoretical discussions of social media are relevant to LIS because they explain the power relations involved in everyday information behaviour. This article will of of particular interest to social media researchers and librarians involved with information literacy instruction.

Areas / Topics / Keywords

Social media, prosumption, Marxism, affect

Page Author: Allison Hill