{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","uuid":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","normalized_title":"mediaandnewcapitalisminthedigitalagethespiritofnetworks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","isbns":["9781349379743","9780230106062"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":258,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Media%20and%20New%20Capitalism%20in%20the%20Digital%20Age%20The%20Spirit%20of%20Networks","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/search"},"page":{"printed_page":74,"pdf_page":78,"physical_index":78,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"795e0692aa030dd640fa5b88a4a434499c3dfd57b4e73fca65cc1083a156cac2"},"chapter":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","content":"What these analyses share in common is a perception of the digital discourse as an ideology in the Marxist sense: an ideational construction that conceals material reality. Such an approach is also articulated in the work of Best and Kellner (2000), who criticize Kelly’s analysis of contemporary society for ignoring the realities of capitalism that still prevail. They limit their discussion largely to refuting Kelly’s arguments about the network economy by upholding the centrality of capitalism in shaping contemporary society. The ideological thrust of Kelly’s discourse, according to Best and Kellner, is anchored in the biological framework he is using in order to provide a social analysis. Kelly, they contend, collapses the dividing lines between biology and society and transplants the new model of complexity theory from the natural world to the social world. They reject this unproblematic extrapolation of complexity theory from nature to society and see this blurring between nature, technology, and society as mystifying and depoliticizing the restructuring of capitalism along neoliberal lines by resorting to a language of inevitability.\n\nSuch analysis presents the digital discourse as a concealment of the new realities of capitalism. The thrust of the analysis offered in this chapter is different inasmuch as it situates the digital discourse on the network market in its historical context and interprets it within the analytical framework of legitimation discourse. According to this analysis it is not so much that the vector of capitalism is externalized from the digital discourse; instead, the realities of the new capitalism are very much internalized within the discourse, but they are masked and given technological clothing. Put differently, the digital discourse both articulates and legitimizes the transformations of capitalism.\n\nSomers and Block (2005) use the term “ideational embeddedness” to account for the relations between an ideology of market fundamentalism and policies that have direct economic and social effects; market practices are embedded within a broader set of ideas and ideologies, which, they say after Bourdieu, have the power to create what they purport to describe (Somers and Block 2005). Following Somers and Block, I see the digital discourse as providing the ideational embeddedness for the new realities of capitalism and its new spirit. To put it somewhat ironically, the approach I take is to accept the digital discourse as a true representation, albeit, a true representation of a different object than the one the discourse purports to represent. In other words, the digital discourse represents not merely a new techno-social reality but also a new dominant ideology, political culture, and spirit that accompanies and supports it.\n\nThe comparison of the digital discourse to the neoliberal discourse sought to go beyond their overt ideological affinity (promarket and antigovernment) and explore the rationalizations and theorizations that underlie these assertions. What we have seen is that the digital discourse does not simply reiterate neoliberal tenets but translates many of the neoliberal tropes into a digitalistic language, rendering the deeper theoretical claims of neoliberalism digital. In that sense, the distinctions between the two discourses are no less revealing than the similarities, since most of these dissimilarities are a result of the digitalization of the tenets of neoliberalism. This is perhaps epitomized in the notions of markets and networks, as they are used in the digital and neoliberal theory, respectively. The market is an abstract construct, a scientific discovery, a social fact, in Durkheim’s terminology. Networks (as they are construed by the digital discourse), on the other hand, stem from, and are anchored in, a material reality: the web of information and communication technology spanning virtually all geographical and social space. In that manner, a priori intellectual assumptions put forth by neoliberal theory are reaffirmed a posteriori by technological evidence in the digital discourse.\n\n74\n\nMedia and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","previous_page":73,"next_page":75}