8.3.2 Digital Alienation
Alienation (Entfremdung) is a term that Marx used for characterising conditions that humans are not in control of and under which they live. Alienation not just signifies an objective structural condition, but also a subjective feeling of dissatisfaction. In discussions about digital labour, there have been different approaches about how to think of alienation in the context of social media.
Mark Andrejevic argues that commercial social media only have an appearance of being non-alienating because they foster play and sociality. But in reality, using them means a form of digital alienation, “a form of the enclosure of the digital commons” (Andrejevic 2012, 84). “Users have little choice over whether this [surveillance] data is generated and little say in how it is used” (Andrejevic 2012, 85). Such “external, storable, and sortable collection of data about” users’ “social lives” is “separated from us and stored in servers owned and controlled by, for example, Facebook” (Andrejevic 2011, 88). “Algorithmic alienation” (Andrejevic 2014, 189) determines users’ lives by data mining, big data analysis, and statistical correlations.
Eran Fisher (2012) understands digital alienation in a different way. For him, it “signals an existential state of not being in control over something (the labour process, the product, etc.)” (Fisher 2012, 173). Less “alienation refers to a greater possibility to express oneself, to control one’s production process, to objectify one’s essence and connect and communicate with others. Thus, for example, working on one’s Facebook page can be thought of as less alienating than working watching a television program” (Fisher 2012, 173). Social media
establish new relations of production that are based on a dialectical link between exploitation and alienation: in order to be de-alienated, users must communicate and socialize: they must establish social networks, share information, talk to their friends and read their posts, follow and be followed.
Chapter Eight | Big Data and Critical Marketing
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Current Key Areas of Research