Page 163 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

142 Critical investigations in political economy

Caraway (2011). While some call for an expansive concept of labour and
exploitation attentive to unpaid domestic labour (Jhally 1990; Fuchs 2012),
others object to the application of Marxian labour theory to relatively uncon-
strained and voluntary leisure activities. Comparing my social media usage to
labour exploitation risks flattening important distinctions in information capitalism,
from the Congolese workers mining Coltan for mobile phones, to the health-
sapping intensive labour by Chinese workers producing high-tech gadgets.
A third criticism is that the critique of unpaid labour risks disparaging voluntary
activities, non-commodified exchanges and other aspects of gift economies
(Hesmondhalgh 2010). A fourth criticism is that the analysis of exploitation fails to
have sufficient regard for the value and benefits to users of digital services.
Unpaid work in producing content, building profiles and self-presentation may
be a form of deferred wages to those subsequently hired for paid work. However
what critical scholars highlight is the realisation of value by the businesses supplying
digital services from the unpaid activities of users (McGuigan 2012). In doing so
they advance a critique of a much more incontrovertible aspect of the ‘audience
commodity’ process: the creation of value by monetising users’ activities by selling
data and access to marketers.
Information gathered from users’ online activities is monetised by selling
marketers information, access to consumers and opportunities to reach them
with personalised, targeted communications (Turow 2011; Pariser 2011). The
evolving business models for commercial social media firms involve the generation
of income from marketers based on connection to the communications activity,
time spend, as well as content produced by users. Information about users’
uploaded data, social networks, their interests, demographic data, their browsing
and interaction behaviour is sold to the advertisers as a commodity in increasingly
sophisticated ways, including real-time bidding.
Facebook’s business model is principally based on advertising finance, with
subsidiary revenues from games and apps. Facebook offers advertisers targeted
advertising based on ‘demographic factors such as location, age, gender, education,
work history and the interests people have chosen to share on Facebook’.A
corporate spokesperson told a BBC reporter (Cellan-Jones 2012):

Facebook offers the most targeted advertising of any medium. If your business
is selling alloy wheels in Manchester, then you can deliver your adverts to
men aged 20–30 who live within 10 miles of the city and like Top Gear and
Max Power.

Facebook offers so-called sponsored stories, whereby marketers can purchase
‘stories’ created when someone likes or comments on a page, and send these to
other people who are either their friends or connected to the page. Users cannot
opt out of being featured in sponsored stories and can only act by restricting
whom they share their activities with. Facebook distinguishes sponsored stories
from advertising messages yet, while associated with peoples’ own communication,