• Chapter 6: How can Dallas Smythe’s notions of the audience commodity and audience labour inform the analysis of the political economy of targetedad–based Internet platforms?
• Chapter 7: What are the features and problems of big data analytics? What are the features of critical digital and social media research?
• Chapter 8: How can we critically analyse and understand social media and big data’s political economy?
• Chapter 9: What have been the roles of social media in crises of capitalism?
• Chapter 10: How can understanding the relationship of exploitation and oppression inform the study of digital labour and digital capitalism?
• Chapter 11: What is the relationship of digital labour and imperialism?
• Chapter 12: How can Karl Marx’s labour theory of value inform the analysis of the information economy?
There is a number of key thinkers whom you encounter in this book. I want to introduce these thinkers briefly to the reader.
Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. In 1999, he won a BBC online poll that determined the millennium’s “greatest thinker” (BBC 1999). His key works include Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, The Manifesto of the Communist Party (together with Friedrich Engels), Grundrisse, and the three volumes of Capital. Karl Marx plays a role throughout this book in all chapters. He is the most important thinker for a critical theory and critique of the political economy of communication (see Fuchs and Mosco 2012, Fuchs 2020a, 2020b, 2016b).
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) was Marx’s closest comrade, collaborator, and friend. He co-authored The Manifesto of the Communist Party together with Marx, funded and supported Marx’s works, edited volumes two and three of Capital, and made original contributions to critical social theory with works such as The Condition of the Working Class in England and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Chapter 2 (“Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism”) is dedicated to the analysis of the relevance of Engels’s works and especially The Condition of the Working Class in England for the analysis of digital capitalism (see also the collected volume “Engels@ 200: Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism”, Fuchs 2021a).
Georg/György Lukács (1885–1971) was a philosopher who is often considered the most influential theorist of the 20th century. In his book History and Class Consciousness he coined based on Marx the notion of reified consciousness that influenced ideology critique and the development of the Frankfurt School’s notion of instrumental reason. Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins (The Ontology of Society’s Being) is Lukács second masterpiece (see Fuchs 2016a, chapter 2, and Fuchs 2018). Chapter 3 (“History and Class Consciousness 2.0: Georg Lukács in the Age of Digital Capitalism and Big Data”) is dedicated to the discussion of how History and Class Consciousness can inform the critical analysis of digital capitalism.
Chapter One | Introduction: What is Digital Capitalism?
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