MCS164, What I Learned
- IDEOLOGY: Social media has created many common ideologies, both positive and negative, that are seen in our society today. It is celebrated for bringing new forms of democracy, political change, and revolution, while also creating wealth, employment, and giving new strength to the public sphere. While doing these wonderful things, social media has also caused hatred, crime, and misogyny to become normalized. As Christian Fuchs says, “capitalism, crisis, and unequal power relations are the main contexts of social media and society today” (Fuchs 342). There is a simplistic picture presented of the role of the internet in society — critical theory and critical political economy analysis of the media show how exploitation, domination, commodification, and ideology work together to shape communication in the media (Fuchs 342).
2. EXPLOITATION: Companies like Facebook and Google exploit users and make financial gains by offering ‘free’ services where users are essentially unpaid workers. These companies commodify the free user data they are given and sell it to advertising companies who place targeted advertisements on user’s Internets. Google is not a communications company, but rather the world’s largest advertising agency where it collects a multitude of data on user interests and activities. Facebook has also developed a commodification system focused on commodifying networks (contacts, user profiles, and unpaid user-generated content).
3. INEQUALITY: Whose voices are heard and promoted in social media? Whose voices do social media companies not want heard? Voices that are promoted are often uncritical of media and serve corporate interests. These voices and opinions are usually rich, white men, while the poor, minorities, women, and LGBT community members are left out or flagged, reported and deleted.
4. CENSORSHIP & FAKE NEWS: In the fake news era of today we have to be more critical of the news we find in the media and on social media, remembering that media is a business where people like Trump are a benefit to business, getting more clicks/reads, therefore selling more ads.
5. Governments are trying to control and restrict access to content on the internet through two main ways. “Online, they are engaging on social media to try steer the narrative, either through their own posts or using bots and trolls. Offline, they are taking legal actions that change who is held liable for certain kinds of language.” (Jacobson). There may be some legitimate reasons for trying to regulate speech online like limiting harassment, and hateful speech, however, laws that dictate what speech (and by who) is or is not acceptable are risky and can be a very slippery slope toward the censorship of ideas and thoughts that are inconsistent with those of the people in power.
SHARING ECONOMIES: Sharing economy companies like Uber and Airbnb that operate using social media platforms and applications also use exploitation, and inequality to operate while selling to consumers the ideology of sharing. Consumers are sold the idea that these companies are better for the environment and foster a more collaborative and cooperative society. When in actuality, Airbnb is know for its discrimination where people of color often will not receive houses even though the renters have the space available at the time and the people have the money to rent it out. Uber makes money off of exploiting the drivers on the app who get paid around $11 an hour — from this the driver must also pay for insurance, gasoline, car maintenance, and so on as compared to the national taxi driver wage of $12.90 an hour (where insurance, gas, and car maintenance are included) (Fuchs 289).
