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"This third volume in Christian Fuchs's Media, Communication and Society book series illuminates what it means to live in an age of digital capitalism, analysing its various aspects, and engaging with a variety of critical thinkers whose theories and approaches enable a critical understanding of digital capitalism for media and communication. Each chapter focuses on a particular dimension of digital capitalism or a critical theorist whose work helps us to illuminate how digital capitalism works. Subjects covered include: digital positivism, administrative big data analytics, the role and relations of patriarchy, slavery, and racism in the context of digital labour; digital alienation, the role of social media in the capitalist crisis, the relationship of imperialism and digital labour, alternatives such as trade unions and class struggles in the digital age, platform co-operatives, digital commons, and public service Internet platforms. It also considers specific examples, including the digital labour of Foxconn and Pegatron workers, software engineers at Google and online freelancers, and considers the political economy of targeted-advertising based Internet platforms such as Facebook, Google, YouTube and Instagram. Digital Capitalism illuminates how digital capitalist society's economy, politics, and culture work and interact, making it essential reading for both students and researchers in media, culture and communication studies and related disciplines"--

This article addresses how digitalisation has altered our world from a critical political economy perspective. It grapples with the increasing perception of technological control and dominance and argues for renewed attention to the lifeworld concept transformed by technology and capital. It proposes an analytical distinction between the 'concrete lifeworld' and the 'abstract lifeworld' to capture the nuances of contemporary technologically mediated experience in the digital society.

Digital technologies are now central to the machinations of capitalism. How are they giving rise to new forms of capital accumulation and domination? And in what terms are these changes being promoted and justified by a new and incredibly powerful elite? This book takes on such questions. Beyond demonstrating how digital technologies make new forms of capital accumulation possible, Huberman interrogates the ideological transformations that have accompanied the emergence of digital capitalism. She examines how business gurus, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists make claims about how digital technologies contribute to the common good, foster collaboration and connectivity, and render life more convenient, even if this convenience comes at the expense of values such as privacy and liberty. Ultimately, Huberman argues that the spirit of digital capitalism is Janus-faced and reveals deeper cultural contradictions at the heart of contemporary American society: promising, in the same moment, to liberate us and surveil us, enrich us, and yet render our lives more economically precarious. Smart and thought-provoking, this book offers new perspectives that will speak to anyone interested in the contours of contemporary capitalism, particularly students and scholars of economic anthropology and sociology.

Are robots taking away our jobs? Those who ask this question have misunderstood digitalisation - it is not an industrial revolution by other means. The author searches for the actual novelties brought about by digitalisation and digital capitalism. In her analysis, she juxtaposes Marx's concept of productive force with the idea of distributive force. From the platform economy to artificial intelligence, the author shows that digital capitalism is less about the efficient production of value, but rather about its fast, risk-free, and permanently secured realisation on the markets. The examination of this dynamic and its consequences also leads to the question of how destructive the distributive forces of digital capitalism might be.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Science on 2 May 2017, available online: http://www.routledge.com/9781138922983.

"Modern institutional economics was created to study the institutions of pre-digital economies and is based on reductionist approaches. But digital capitalism is producing institutions of unprecedented complexity. This book argues therefore that not only the economic institutions themselves but also the theoretical foundations for studying those institutions must now be adapted to digital capitalism. The book focuses on the institutional complexity of digital capitalism, developing an interdisciplinary framework which brings together cutting-edge theoretical approaches from philosophy (first of all, object-oriented ontology), sociology (especially actor network theory), evolutionary biology, and cognitive science. In particular, the book outlines a new approach to the study of institutional evolution, based on extended evolutionary synthesis - a new paradigm in evolutionary biology, which is now replacing neo-Darwinism. The book develops an enactivist notion of extended cognition and cognitive institutions, rejecting the individualistic and mechanistic understanding of economic rationality in digital environments. The author experiments with new philosophical approaches to investigate institutional complexity, for example, the ideas of the flat ontology and the assemblage theory. The flat ontology approach is applied to the study of human-robot institutions, as well as to thinking about post-anthropocentric institutional design. Assemblage thinking allows for a new (much less idealistic) look at blockchain and smart cities. Blockchain as digital institutional technology is considered in the book not from the viewpoint of minimizing transaction costs (as is customary in the modern institutional economics), but by using the theory of transaction value which focuses on improving the quality of digital transactions. The book includes a wide range of examples ranging from metaverses, cryptocurrencies and big data to robot rules, smart contracts and machine learning algorithms. Written for researchers in institutional economics and other social sciences, this interdisciplinary book is essential reading for anyone interested in the interplay of institutional and digital change"--

How do digital capitalism and the evolving landscape of new media intersect, and what does this mean for the future of media? It is necessary to begin the excavation process, to unearth the insights of experts in these fields to better understand the transformation of the globalized world. In Digital Capitalism in the New Media Era , the intricate relationship between media and society takes center stage, examined through the lens of contemporary technology's impact on this dynamic. Within the confines of this meticulously researched book lies a comprehensive analysis of how the established political economy of traditional media has adapted and responded to the surge of new technologies. As our planet metamorphoses into an interconnected global marketplace, the book expounds on how this phenomenon has created a platform for both the enhancement of societal accessibility and the exacerbation of social disparities. The rise of new tools has inadvertently ushered in a new age of surveillance, marked by sophisticated techniques like digital trace tracking and micro-targeting strategies. This book covers comprehensive topics, including exploiting personal data for both commercial and political ends, the pervasive influence of algorithmic mechanisms and filter bubbles, and the dominion of tech giants in this digital landscape. By contextualizing these developments within the historical trajectory of capitalism, the book paints a vivid portrait of the emergence of digital capitalism. By offering a panoramic view of the contemporary media landscape, this book not only equips researchers, sociologists, and media professionals with an understanding of the intricate interplay between technology and society but also facilitates a deeper comprehension of pressing concerns such as open science, gender equality, and the digital divide

Democratic states and their respective civil societies face extraordinary difficulties in formulating and enforcing policies against leading transnational corporations. Social scientists, too, find it difficult to incorporate the diversity of new challenges into the national and global debate from a comprehensive perspective. This chapter is the result of scrutinizing the risks and challenges of platform and surveillance capitalism and the way in which the different forms of digital capitalism shape social and societal changes from a political-economic macro-perspective. A list of topics for future research and policy fields requiring action concludes the chapter. ; Go to the full book to find a version of this chapter tagged for accessibility.

In the light of the growth crisis of contemporary capitalism, the digitalisation of the economy fosters hopes for spectacular productivity gains, giving economic growth a new impetus. However, such predictions ignore the fact that the growth crisis of contemporary capitalism is mainly a result of weak private demand. I argue that digitalisation represents a macro-strategy for economic transformation explicitly tackling this aspect. However, while several strategies aimed at rationalising consumption can be observed in leading digital economy companies, instead of solving the consumption problem by increasing demand, they tend to exacerbate the structural weakness of consumption. I coin the term 'consumption dilemma' to mark this phenomenon and briefly stress its implications for union policies.

Preliminary Material /Christian Fuchs and Vincent Mosco -- Introduction: Marx is Back – The Importance of Marxist Theory and Research for Critical Communication Studies Today /Christian Fuchs and Vincent Mosco -- Towards Marxian Internet Studies /Christian Fuchs -- Digital Marx: Toward a Political Economy of Distributed Media /Andreas Wittel -- The Relevance of Marx's Theory of Primitive Accumulation for Media and Communication Research /Mattias Ekman -- The Internet and "Frictionless Capitalism" /Jens Schröter -- Digital Media and Capital's Logic of Acceleration /Vincent Manzerolle and Atle Mikkola Kjøsen -- How Less Alienation Creates More Exploitation? Audience Labour on Social Network Sites /Eran Fisher -- The Network's Blindspot: Exclusion, Exploitation and Marx's Process-Relational Ontology /Robert Prey -- 3C: Commodifying Communication in Capitalism /Jernej A. Prodnik -- The Construction of Platform Imperialism in the Globalisation Era /Dal Yong Jin -- Foxconned Labour as the Dark Side of the Information Age: Working Conditions at Apple's Contract Manufacturers in China /Marisol Sandoval -- The Pastoral Power of Technology. Rethinking Alienation in Digital Culture /Katarina Giritli Nygren and Katarina L Gidlund -- The Problem of Privacy in Capitalism and Alternative Social Media: The Case of Diaspora /Sebastian Sevignani -- "A Workers' Inquiry 2.0": An Ethnographic Method for the Study of Produsage in Social Media Contexts /Brian A. Brown and Anabel Quan-Haase -- Social Media, Mediation and the Arab Revolutions /Miriyam Aouragh -- Marx in the Cloud /Vincent Mosco -- Index /Christian Fuchs and Vincent Mosco.

The 'end of history' has not taken place. Ideological and economic crisis and the status quo of neoliberal capitalism since 2008 demand a renewed engagement with Marx. But if we are to effectively resist capitalism we must truly understand Marx: Marxism today must theorise how communication technologies, media representation and digitalisation have come to define contemporary capitalism. There is an urgent need for critical, Marxian-inspired knowledge as a foundation for changing the world and the way we communicate from digital capitalism towards communicative socialism and digital communism. Rereading Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism does exactly this. Delving into Marx's most influential works, such as Capital, The Grundrisse, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, The German Ideology and The Communist Manifesto, Christian Fuchs draws out Marx's concepts of machinery, technology, communication and ideology, all of which anticipate major themes of the digital age. A concise and coherent work of Marxist media and communication theory, the book ultimately demonstrates the relevance of Marx to an age of digital and communicative capitalism

This paper starts from an understanding of friendship as a series of gradients – a definition provided firstly by Aristotle – to observe the similarities and differences between interested friendship, disinterested friendship, and market relations. Introducing the notion of surveillance capitalism, the paper discusses the advent of social media and the implicit definition of friendship that underlies it. Social media favours the quantification and bureaucratisation of friendship, transforming it into a measure of personal achievement, i.e. widely promoting instrumental friendship. This transformation raises a number of issues related to alienation, self-exploitation, and the ability to relate to otherness.

In his article "Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and the Spirit of Digital Capitalism,"Collin Chua analyzes the myth of innovation and the fantasy of entrepreneurship. The article draws on foundational perspectives regarding the spirit of capitalism established by Max Weber, later extended by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello. The myth of innovation is interrogated, as innovation now operates as a rhetorical and managerial strategy that must be pursued in order to be competitive in today's capitalist system. The fantasy of entrepreneurship is explored, as it serves as a coping mechanism for the fragmentation and erosion of traditional work arrangements and structures. The article examines the anxieties evoked by disruption, in explaining the utility of the fantasy of entrepreneurship and the myth of innovation as significant drivers in our era of digital capitalism. A materialist approach to ideas is therefore taken up, in tracing social, political, economic, cultural realities shaped by powerful ideas.