Net 102 – Topic 2.1 Power and Economy

Internet Studies 102/502: The Internet and Everyday Life

 Net 102

 Topic 2.1: Power and Economy
Having built up a collection of experiences from a variety of perspectives, including personal, scholarly, journalistic and so forth, we now look into how these illuminate different facets of the Internet's relationship to society and ourselves: community, economy, power and identity. By this time, you would have, through your reading, work on your first essay and discussions with others, accumulated a fair few number of examples of changes to everyday life mediated by the Internet. These were accumulated via different topics (sex, health etc). You were also asked to organise your thinking along four main analytical areas: community, power, economy and identity. Now, we've come to the point where we review these categories and how each topic has illustrated some aspect of how daily life is intertwined with the Internet in terms of identity, community, politics and the economy. You will be presented with how some other people have written and studied the Internet in terms of these themes, in order to make broader connections with your own work. (Curtin, 2010)

 READ

Brendan Gilbert et al., "Web Content/Social Networking," Blog, Corporate Power in New Media, May 14, 2008. Archived by WebCite.
This student blog states, "People's barriers are down and they fail to realize the extent to which corporations affect their online behavior". How true is this statement?

Mansell, R. (2004). Political Economy, Power and New Media. New Media & Society, 6(1), 96-105. In E-Reserve.This scholarly article makes the case for analysis and research into the political and economical aspects of the Internet. Note down the reasons Mansell gives and think of examples to illustrate.

DISCUSS

1. Power operates in many ways on the Internet, let's take one example, that of Internet access, to discuss power (no more than half a page):
   1. Are there limits to when, what (sites), how much, and where you access the Internet?
   2. How can you transgress those limits and what are the possible consequences?
   3. Is it possible to lose your access and what are the ways this might happen?
2. How do economic relationships conflict with or support existing power structures through the Internet? Choose an example from your first module and discuss on the discussion boards.

Submission to discussion board: Laura Herbert
In the article "Political economy, power and new media", it was interesting to note that the internet is affected by economy, "The rate of entry of new dot com's is now being tempered by disaffected investors and by a general downturn in the rate of investment in digital technologies."(pg96). I am assuming from the readings and research that we have done for the course that the internet is a business (a very big multi dimensional conglomerate) and as such economic down turn and upswing create discord across the broad financial foundation platform. The article was a little frustrating in respect (and I agree with Katrina on this) that whenever it looked like the author was getting into more depth on subjects such as economy or new and old media innovation, the matter was left unresolved with "we need comparable empirical Studies" or "more research is needed". What I found quite interesting in the conclusion is the summation of "the way that power is embedded in new media practices and influences how people's lives are being mediated by new media". Quite ponderous that it seems a reality now that people live their lives by new media, phones - twitter/Facebook, internet cafe's and the like, so why shouldn't the large corporations utilise that factor and economise on it.