Socialmedia and Transnational CapitalismDr David Kreps, ISOS, Salford, UK

Introduction Gramsci, Gill, and the Hegemony of the Transnational Historic Bloc Transnational Capital and Socialmedia Conclusion.

Introduction

Social Networking Sites (SNS) and other social media the most publicly discussed innovations of the internetBalance remains precarious between technological features which support social networking and those which facilitate online advertising.

Introduction: Examining VC

Venture Capital: Often treated as an anonymous and unremarkable part of the processCultural concepts originally developed by Antonio Gramsci - HegemonyGill - transnational historical bloc

Introduction: Virtual countriesBulletin Board Systems of 80s and 90s amateur enterprisesToday’s SNS and MUVEs have populations the size of countries - or blocs

Hundreds of professionals involvedBig businessAttractiveness to investorsWalled gardens - Apps Tensions between social and commercial - Facebook > 500 million

Gramsci, Gill, and the Hegemony of the Transnational Historic Bloc

Commodicification, consumerism, and the power of rich elites Antonio Gramsci: “recognised that social power is not a simple matter of domination on the one hand and subordination or resistance on the other.”

HegemonyCulture and politics :

Marx: underlying economic necessities Gramsci: web of relations with the economy in which there is a continual shift of emphasis and influence

“Rather than imposing their will ‘dominant’ groups within democratic societies generally govern with a good degree of consent from the people they rule, and the maintenance of that consent is dependent upon an incessant repositioning of the relationship between rulers and ruled.” Gramsci

Consent of the ruledInsidiously, a dominant bloc, in order to maintain its dominance, must be able to “reach into the minds and lives of its subordinates, exercising its power as what appears to be a free expression of their own interests and desires.”

Hegemony: The Punk exampleLate 1970s: safety pins in the

ear and torn fabrics loosely arranged as clothing - statement of rebellion, of rejection of fashion (Hebdige 1979)Early 1980s this ‘look’ had become a fashion in itselfWhat was revolutionary had been absorbed, packaged, and sold back to the revolutionariesEverything is allowed, if it contributes to the market - the pluralistic nature of the modern consumerist society

Gill & the New World Order

Stephen Gill, Professor of Political Science at York University, Canada, writing in 2003New World Order created after 1945 - the world after 1991 he describes as but the 3rd phaseThe dominance of the market, of transnational capital, the G7 (and more recently G8 and G20) and the central role of US power in supporting and spearheading this dominance.

Roosevelt’s 30’s New Deal Significant shift in US political &

domestic policy Increased government control over the economy and money supplyIntervention to control prices and agricultural productionWorld War II tightened the relationship between government and economy

‘mobilisation’ of industrial units & workforce to produce of arms.

Military Industrial Complex

Post World War II - Marshall Plan - NATO - emerging EEC - an international historical bloc built on a pax Americana American New Deal state - the model for the whole Western world

Albeit modified by wartime mobilisation & the ‘military-industrial complex’this had spawned.

Cold WarMobilisation not ‘stood down’ in 1945 - evolved into ‘military-industrial complex’

combination of a nation’s armed forces, its suppliers of weapons systems, supplies and services, and its civil government

European and transatlantic treaties, special relationships and political settlements under American leadership

International military-industrial-complex, underpinning an American led economic model

an ⎯ international historical bloc.

SupremacyHegemony of US capitalism became supremacy after 1st Gulf War, collapse & absorption of Soviet bloc 3rd phase New World Order

More integrated global political economy Organised labour increasingly marginalisedCapitalist elites investing in many different nationsElites include those in “key positions in transnational companies, banks, universities, think tanks, media companies, governments and international organisations such as the IMF, World Bank and OECD” 1 supermarket - 6 oil companies

3 car manufacturers

World’s 10 biggest companies

Transnational historical bloc1st and 2nd phase international historical bloc

becomesUS-“centred & led transnational historical bloc” at whose “apex are elements in the leading states in the G7 and capital linked to advanced sectors in international investment, production and finance” whose activities “seek to make transnational capital a class ‘for itself’”

4th Phase New World Order

Arguably the crash of 2008 heralded a new phaseChina, India and Brazil challenging US-led transnational historical blocG20, not G7‘Decline’ of US

UK in decline since1880s

Multipolar world?https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html

Transnational Capital and Socialmedia

It is the authors’ opinion that socialmedia display precisely this constellation of behaviours between a dominant bloc of venture capitalists and the tens of millions of us who willingly surrender our personal data and the conduct of our friendships and relationships to their marketplace.

Peter Thiel Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook global reachInterestingly - in the new multipolar 4th phase - the very countries that are outgrowing the US are those where Facebook lacks penetration: China, India and Brazil

http://dukky.com/2010/11/facebook-a-country-unto-itself/

Web Business modelsAdvertising - but not the only model

Pay per click (Adwords)Pay per download (iTunes / Mac AppStore)Subscription to service (Spotify)Multi-tier internet [wired and wireless]‘Apps’ paid access to a web service

However - advertising the most successful model

Web 2 Success storyGoogle

Created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin as PhD students at Stanford“to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful” “Don’t be evil”Saw Search - the most important thing on the webCreated algorithm that credits a site that is linked to by other sites with a ranking that will enable it to come top of the search resultsMarket capitalisation Nov 2010 about $190bn

An ad-supported business

Web 2 success storyAmazon

Jeff Bezos founded it in 1994Largest online retailer in US, 3rd largest in UKMarket Capitalisation Nov 2010 - $75bn - 2nd after Google.

The biggest online retailer - much acclaimed for its internal advertising: ‘people who bought X also bought Y’

Web 2 success storyThe elite

Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek, and Ken HoweryFormed Paypal in March 2000 - charges a fee for online financial transactionsSold October 2002 for $1.5bn to eBay (Nov 2010 valued at $40bn, fourth after Facebook)

Web 2 success story

Peter ThielUsed his money from Paypal sale to eBay to create a hedge fund (very successful) and become main Venture Capitalist behind FacebookOwns 5.2% which he bought in Summer 04 for $0.5bn - now worth $2.6bn.

Facebook, as Zuckerberg famously reminded us, is an ad-supported business

FacebookFacebook valued at $50bn Jan 2011 - 3rd after Amazon

Web 2 success storyPeter Thiel

Now on steering committee of the Bilderberg Group

Social Networking & MoneyMarketing professionals understand

that “the reason that people are attracted to social networks in the first place is that reliance on user-generated content is seen as relatively free of traditional corporate content and advertising” (Goad & Mooney 2008).

Moreover “if users perceive that a social network is becoming ‘polluted’ they will leave and the evidence ⎯suggests that this can happen extremely quickly”

Commoditising friendshipFacebook utilizes transnational networks

architecturally structured to transcend geographyemphasising locality and the institutional, political or economic context of users’ physical localities

Rhetoric of communities-of-interest within communities-of-place

These are markets

“We are seeing the commodification of human relationships, the extraction of capitalistic value from friendships” (Hodgkinson 2008).

Market ResearchInvestors / advertisers can capture all Facebook users in a place (Harvard), or of a type (movie goers)Facebook repositioning themselves as ‘social facilitators’ rather than market researchers

This is a hegemonic relationship with their users

When Facebook over-assumes on the relationship, as with Beacon, users become aware and withdraw their consentWhen the illusion of divorce is maintained, Gramsci’s ‘unwitting collusion’ is perpetuated.

PrivacyFront-end social privacy described in friendly, jargon-free language on the About pagesBack end privacy described in techy language of cookies, IP logging and other opaque terminologyUsers may feel they are creating something new, vibrant, theirs, not ‘polluted’ by existing structures and institutions and social hierarchies Punk may have felt the same way before they saw their styles and tropes for sale on the high street.

Commodification of friendship

Social networks critical to hegemonic dominance of the commercial interests over the socialThe ‘commodification of friendship’ can occur between two friends, or two hundredIn economic terms, the strength of the tie or the ‘genuine-ness’ of the friend makes no differenceIt is the information exchanged between these ties, & across these networks with little concern for privacy policies

ConclusionUtopian rhetoric pictures SNS as a social space, mediated by transnational communication tools, that is democratic, anti-hierarchical, open, without capitalist agendasThis ignores hidden aspects of SNS as corporate entities with obligations to venture capital investors & shareholdersRather than separate from offline capitalist institutions and histories, the internet, including SNS, is in fact a continuation of these practices and ideologiesHaving made the move from hobby activity to corporate entity, SNS have been appropriated to become part of a hegemonic transnational capitalist strategy for globalised and unregulated market dominance. In classic Gramscian style, we - a 1/12th of humanity - have willingly and gladly colluded in the creation of this new marketplace, now worth $50bn

Contact

Dr David KrepsDirector, Centre for Information Systems, Organisations and Societyhttp://www.isos.salford.ac.ukhttp://snipr.com/davidkrepsd.g.kreps@salford.ac.uk