LIBR559A/Rey, P. J. (2012)

Citation

Rey, P. J. (2012). Alienation, exploitation, and social media. American Behavioral Scientist, 56(4), 399-420. doi:10.1177/0002764211429367

Annotation

Rey begins by positing that our current society is not only characterized by an abundance of material goods, but it is also characterized by an abundance of digital information. Involved in this is social media, particularly Facebook. Facebook generates profit not from selling a commodity for a surplus but, instead, generates it by exploiting user-generated information for means of targeted advertising. This is a form of immaterial production which is an adaptation of capitalist exploitation. In this sense, Rey uses the term “exploitation” as being completely distinct, and separated, from “alienation.” Rey argues that while users of social media are exploited, they are not alienated because social media does not cause their intellectual lives to be alienated from their physical lives. In other words, social media is not physical labour and users of social media are essentially volunteers; there is no estrangement from their humanity, in the Marxian sense. Even when being informed of exploitation through prosumption, users are accepting as long as they are able to do what they want to do on social media. Social media generates profit through consumption, and because consumption is a “subjective intentionality,” it is not a form of alienation. Additionally, when it comes to social media and a digital economy, “labor itself is no longer coerced by the threat of deprivation of biological needs.”

Initially, I thought that this was a trivial distinction but I appreciated how Rey made the distinction to argue that the capitalist mode of production is even more insidious because a lack of alienation can create a lack of class consciousness. Traditionally, labour was a structured activity that required physical bodies to be at physical locations performing physical labour for a certain period of time every day. Now, with digital information and prosumption, users are being exploited constantly, while either not recognizing it or being apathetic to it.

Areas / Topics / Keywords

Labour, social media, alienation