Technoliberalism and Current

Question: How do convergence industries

impact deliberation in democracy?

How: Ethnographic Research

with the Producers of Platforms for Political Participation

Findings: Cultural myths impact the success of digital democracy

as much or more than new technology.

Diversify voice in the American or hegemonic public sphere through counter-hegemonic programming

hegemony: dominant cultural forms

counter-hegemony: transform hegemony

anti-hegemony: revolutionize hegemony

Use ethnography to transcend the political economy vs. cultural studies debate

Terranova (2009) "free labor"

Benkler an Nissenbaum (2006) "virtuous" peer production

Transcend armchair polemics through ethnography that reveals agencies at both worker and executive levels within the production chain but also how profit and social capital pools particularly well within elite executives

Fish, Adam and Ramesh Srinivasan. 2012. Digital Labor is the New Killer App, New Media and Society. 14:137

Fish, A., Murillo, L. F. R., Nguyen, L., Panofsky, A. & Kelty, C. M. (2011). BIRDS OF THE INTERNET — Towards a field guide to the organization and governance of participation. Journal of Cultural Economy, 4(2), 157-187.

1) contradictions of "digital social entrepreneurship"

2) discuss the mixed moral and technical identities within participatory television

3) challenge theoretical fidelity by claiming that all three theorists discussing current were convergence (H. Jenkins, 2006), crowdsourcing (J. Howe, 2008), and neoliberal participation (J. Hands, 2011)

Fish, Adam. 2013. Participatory Television: Crowdsourcing, Convergence, and Neoliberalism. Communication, Culture, Critique, 3: 6

Technoliberalism

networked technology

economic freedom

free speech

political participation

citizen responsibility

1991 "high speed networks must be built that tie together millions of computers, providing capabilities that we

cannot even imagine"

1994 “networks of distributed intelligence…will spread

participatory democracy”

2005 “Our aim is to give young people a voice, to democratize television”

2007 “One of the happy problems we’ve had is explaining Current TV to investors and distributors. Nobody believes how low our production costs were, or how good the

business model was”

The convergence myth is an example of a digital discourse: talk that attempts to mitigate of labour alienation and contradictions of capitalism through recourse to talk on technology and social liberal principles: e.g. “democratization” (Eran Fischer 2010)

the belief that technologies can solve social problems that might be best addressed through pragmatic approaches.

the problem in American democracy is not technology but

rather the lack of political participation.

opens up financial imaginations while shutting down pragmatism

Fish responded by saying: ‘But it doesn’t create a living wage for 200 people’ (interview April 12, 2010). Neuman replied,No it doesn’t … I didn’t think that was really what the company was about, the company was about facilitating the democratic dialogue, the company wasn’t about how many full time jobs we can create with benefits in San Francisco for an elite cadre of young creators. In fact, we never intended it to be that. In fact, I wanted to have no fulltime employees, really. To me the ideal would have been eBay. … my desire was, let’s have 30,000 people making content for Current TV. That would be beautiful. (interview December 4, 201

Internet on Television

Intellectual Property Rights

Silicon Valley vs. Hollywood

Proformations

TECHNOLIBERALISM

Democracy and the Myths of Convergence Industries

Adam Fish

Lecturer, Sociology

Global Media Conglomeration

producer-reformers

Digital Solutionism

Digital Labour and the Consequences of Technological Myths

Convergence Myth

Current TV

CURRENT AS A PROFORMATION

Socio-technical myths: internet-centrism, solutionism, convergence

Technoliberal orders of worth: democracy + capitalism

Organize publics: viewer-created content, Hack the Debate

Policy capital: Gore’s cultural capital and global expansion

Media granularity: multipurpose convergence binary video data

Capital intensifications: Shareholders benefit from $500 million sale

Labour hierarchies: executive mythmakers and digital labourer mythbusters

"Democratize Television"