In this research, Wired is seen as a key articulator of a discourse that not only reflects the realities of a new digital capitalism but also endows them with a “spirit” and makes sense of new constellations of power and new forms of life. The digital discourse is a “historically, socially, and institutionally specific structure of statements, terms, categories, and beliefs,” perceived as offering a transhistorical “truth”; “Precisely because they are assigned the status of objective knowledge, they seem to be beyond dispute and thus serve a powerful legitimating function” (Scott 1988). The purpose of this work is to uncover the historical, social, and institutional specificity of these new statements, terms, categories, images, and beliefs about contemporary capitalist society as they are crystallized in the digital discourse and point to their legitimation function.
Utilizing Wired magazine as a case study will allow me to expose and penetrate the outer shell of the black box of the digital discourse. A case study is a research model that focuses on a singular social entity or cultural artifact, treats it as a bounded system, and utilizes various methods to study it (Marshall 1994; Stake 1994). A case study is a naturally occurring social phenomenon, selected not chiefly for its typicality, but on the basis of its theoretical significance. The purpose of a case study is to provide the materials for what Geertz (1977) calls a “thick description,” which is essential to reach an understanding of the broader context (Kuper and Kuper 1996). On the other side of the coin of a thick, deep, and meaningful description is the question of how well the case study represents the sociological phenomenon at hand. This makes the selection of the case to be studied critical. A case study must find the global within the local, the general within the specific (Hamel, Dufour, and Fortin 1991, v, 36–38).
Wired is precisely this unique representative of a broader, social digital discourse. It is unique in the sense that it represents this discourse at its most concentrated and crystallized form. It is a more valuable case study than other publications that are part of this public discourse in that it is committed wholly and solely to this particular subject. The value of a case study is measured by how much it facilitates analytical, rather than statistical, generalization (Yin 1989, 21). So while Wired can correctly be characterized as a more extreme case than, say, the New York Times in both quantitative and qualitative terms (i.e., in how much it deals with network technology and in what ways), it is precisely these characteristics of being explicit, straightforward, and mobilized to the digital “cause” that yields more fruitful and cogent results.
This, however, is not a book about Wired; the magazine serves merely as an “instrumental case study” (Stake 1994). The case itself—notwithstanding the deep analysis it receives—is only of secondary significance;
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Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age