Keywords
Communicative Capital
Communicative Production
Signification
Cultural Consumption
Dallas Smythe
Karl Marx
Raymond Williams
David Harvey
Exploitation
Rent
Interest
How to Cite
Abstract
This article contributes to a political economic theory centred on the concept of “audience labour”. First, the previous use of the concept of audience labour is briefly traced and the process of rethinking the concept as the basis of a political economic theory is begun. Second, a theory of the audience labour process is developed, drawing on previous theories of audience activities of cultural consumption as productive activities of signification and adapting Marx’s theory of the human labour process to the audience labour process. Third, a political economy of audience labour is outlined. As a theory of the basic processes through which communicative capital can control and extract value from audience labour, it describes the exploitation of audience labour and accumulation of communicative capital through distribution relationships of rent and interest. Finally, the continuing centrality of audience labour exploitation in the digital era is discussed.
References
Andrejevic, Mark. 2002. „The Work of Being Watched: Interactive Media and the Exploitation of Self- Disclosure.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19(2): 230–248.
Andrejevic, Mark. 2007. iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Andrejevic, Mark. 2011. „Surveillance and Alienation in the Online Economy.” Surveillance & Society 8(3): 278– 287.
Benkler, Yochai. 2008. Bogactwo sieci: Jak produkcja społeczna zmienia rynki i wolność. Tłum. Rafał Próchniak. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Akademickie i Profesjonalne.
Caraway, Brett. 2011. „Audience Labor in the New Media Environment: A Marxian Revisiting of the Audience Commodity.” Media, Culture & Society 33(5): 693–708.
Chen, Chih-hsien. 2003. „Is the Audience Really Commodity?: An Overdetermined Marxist Perspective of the Television Economy.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association, San Diego, CA.
Cohen, Nicole S. 2008. „The Valorization of Surveillance: Towards and Political Economy of Facebook.” Deomocratic Communiqué 22(1): 5–22.
Fiske, John. 1987. „Active Audiences.” W Television Culture. London: Metheun.
Fuchs, Christian. 2010. „Labor in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet.” The Information Society 26(3): 179–196.
Fuchs, Christian. 2011a. „An Alternative View of Privacy on Facebook.” Information 2(1): 140–165.
Fuchs, Christian. 2011b. „Web 2.0, Prosumption, and Surveillance.” Surveillance & Society 8(3): 288–309.
Fuchs, Christian. 2012. „Dallas Smythe Today – The Audience Commodity, the Digital Labour Debate, Marxist Political Economy and Critical Theory: Prolegomena to a Digital Labour Theory of Value.” tripleC: Cognition, Communication, Co-operation 10(2): 692–740.
Gillespie, Tarleton. 2007. Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Hall, Stuart. 1987. „Kodowanie i dekodowanie.” Tłum. Wanda Lipnik i Ireneusz Siwiński. Przekazy i Opinie 1–2: 58–71.
Harvey, David. 2002. „The Art of Rent: Globalization, Monopoly and the Commodification of Culture.” Socialist Register 38: 93–110, http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5778/2674
Harvey, David. 2006. The Limits to Capital. London: Verso.
Harvey, David. 2010. A Companion to Marx’s Capital. London: Verso.
Harvey, David. 2012. „History Versus Theory: A Commentary on Marx’s Method in Capital.” Historical Materialism 20(2): 3–38.
Hebblewhite, William Henning James. 2012. „»Means of Communication as Means of Production« Revisited.” tripleC: Cognition, Communication, Co-operation 10(2): 203–213.
Horkheimer, Max i Theodor W. Adorno. 2010. Dialektyka oświecenia. Tłum. Małgorzata Łukasiewicz. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej.
Jhally, Sut. 1982. „Probing the Blindspot: The Audience Commodity.” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 6(1–2): 204–210.
Jhally, Sut i Bill Livant. 1986. „Watching as Working: The Valorization of Audience Consciousness.” Journal of Communication 36(3): 122–142.
Lessig, Lawrence. 2005. Wolna kultura. Tłum. zbiorowe. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Szkolne i Pedagogiczne.
Livant, Bill. 1982. „Working at Watching: A Reply to Sut Jhally.” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 6(1–2): 211–215.
Marks, Karol. 1951. Kapitał: Krytyka ekonomii politycznej. Tom 1. Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza.
Marks, Karol. 1986. Zarys krytyki ekonomii politycznej. Tłum. Zygmunt Jan Wyrozembski. Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza.
Meehan, Eileen R. 1984. „Ratings and the Institutional Approach: A Third Answer to the Commodity Question.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 1(2): 216–225.
Nixon, Brice. 2012. Dialectical Method and the Critical Political Economy of Culture. triple-C: Cognition, Communication, Co-operation 10 (2): 439–456.
Nixon, Brice. 2013. „Communication as Capital and Audience Labor Exploitation in the Digital Era.” Praca doktorska, University of Colorado Boulder. ProQuest (UMI 3592351).
Peck, Janice. 2002. „The Oprah Effect: Texts, Readers, and the Dialectic of Signification.” The Communication Review 5(2): 143–178.
Peck, Janice. 2006. „Why We Shouldn’t Be Bored with the Political Economy Versus Cultural Studies Debate.” Cultural Critique 64: 92–126.
Schiller, Dan. 1996. Theorizing Communication: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shimpach, Shawn. 2005. „Working Watching: The Creative and Cultural Labor of the Media Audience.” Social Semiotics 15(3): 343–360.
Smythe, Dallas W. 1977. „Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism.” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 1(3): 1–27.
Smythe, Dallas W. 1978. „Rejoinder to Graham Murdock.” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 2(2): 120–127.
Terranova, Tiziana. 2000. „Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy.” Social Text 63: 33–58.
Williams, Raymond. 1980a. „Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory.” W Williams, Raymond, Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso, s. 31–49.
Williams, Raymond. 1980b. „Means of Communication as Means of Production.” W Williams, Raymond, Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso, s. 50–63.
Williams, Raymond. 1981. The Sociology of Culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Williams, Raymond. 1989. Marksizm i literatura. Tłum. Antoni Chojnacki i Edward Kasperski. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
License
“Theoretical Practice” seeks to put into practice the idea of open access to knowledge and broadening the domain of the commons. It serves the development of science, thinking and critical reflection. The journal is published in open-access mode under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license (detail available here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). Articles published in the journal may be freely distributed, stored, printed and utilized for academic and teaching purposes without restrictions.
They should not be, however, used for any commercial purposes or be reconstructed into derivative creations. Access to the journal may not be limited or offered for a fee by any third party.
Prospective authors are obliged to fill in, sign and send back the publishing contract compliant with the CC licencing. [PL.pdf, PL.doc, EN.pdf,EN.doc].
According to this contract, authors grant the journal a non-exclusive right to publish their work under the creative commons license (CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0) without any financial obligation on both sides of the contract.
Before submission authors should make sure that derivative materials they use are not protected by copyright preventing their non-commercial publication. Authors are responsible for any respective copyright violations.