Reputation, corporate social responsibility and market regulation

The paper investigates the role of the government and self-regulatory reputation mechanisms to internalise externalities of market operation. If it pays off for companies to invest in a good reputation by an active policy of corporate social responsibility (CSR), external effects of the market will be (partly) internalised by the market itself. The strength of the reputation mechanism depends on the functioning of non governmental organisations (NGOs), the transparency of the company, the time horizon of the company, and on the behaviour of employees, consumers and investors. On the basis of an extensive study of the empirical literature on these topics, we conclude that in general the working of the reputation mechanism is rather weak. Especially the transparency of companies is a bottleneck. If the government would force companies to be more transparent, it could initiate a self-enforcing spiral that would improve the working of the reputation mechanism. We also argue that the working of the reputation mechanism will be weaker for smaller companies and for both highly competitive and monopolistic markets. We therefore conclude that government regulation is still necessary, especially for small companies.Corporate social responsibility; market regulation

The importance of truth and sousveillance after Snowden

This article aims to provide a novel conceptual understanding of the nature of the global mass surveillance policies and practices revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in collaboration with the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers. The critical analysis and conceptual reinterpretation of state and corporate surveillance and its impact on the political agency of civil society is multidisciplinary. An intersection of surveillance studies, political philosophy, and global politics/international relations provides an overview of the policies and practices that states and corporations develop and implement in relation to information and communications technologies (ICT). Clarifying how contemporary society is global and digital, it analyzes the way in which political economies inform contemporary policies and practices of surveillance. A critical analysis the relation of political economy to neoliberal governmentality, biopolitical technologies of power, and contemporary regimes of truth, leads to posit that global mass surveillance is a technology of power deployed by a contemporary biopolitics of information and communication. A conceptual reinterpretation of Foucault’s notion of parrhesia and Mann’s notion of sousveillance leads to posit that parrhesiastic sousveillance is a socio-political and technologically-enabled modality of resistance that can resemantize contemporary politics of truth and lead towards a newborn digital agency for global(ized) civil society

Metabolizing Capital: Writing, Information, and the Biophysical World

While the discipline of rhetoric and composition has looked at a variety of topics related to the materiality of writing, the majority of materialist approaches limit their scope to local, situated writing practices. However, with the spread of digital media and the establishment of a global, networked infrastructure for communication and inscription, the abundant textuality that has emerged in the early 21st century demands that we develop more rigorous materialist approaches to the study and teaching of writing. This growing textual environment has been called, in popular and academic discourse, Web 2.0—a more “social Web” than its early form in the late 1990s, one that encourages more interaction and collaboration between users. The ethos of sharing that defines Web 2.0 has been celebrated by writing scholars as a qualitatively new public sphere where we are writing and participating more than ever. Yet, underlying our exuberance of Web 2.0 is the problematic assumption that more writing is an intrinsic good. As more writing is produced, the logic goes, the richer the opportunities for human agency. In a world of infinite resources, such a productivist ethos makes sense; but in a world of finite resources, one whose health is intertwined with our global network of writing technologies, unrestrained textual production has become a threat to other human and nonhuman systems. In this dissertation, I analyze current materialist approaches to writing to theorize how the usefulness of Web 2.0 technologies--and the writing labor they harness—have become necessary agents in the production of capitalist, consumer culture. Drawing on ecological models of writing and supplementing them with Marxian concepts of value, metabolism, and capital circulation, I explore the historical and dialectical relations that have given rise to a new phase of digital culture, one called Web 3.0, where the celebrated use value of Web 2.0 writing is eclipsed by the ascendant exchange value of Big Data--the massive substratum of consumer data that is produced as a by-product of our writing. Because the economic value of user data depends on two critical resources--the labor of our writing and the finite natural resources of the planet—our celebration of the productivity of Web 2.0 is in direct antagonism with other natural systems, including the organic system of the writing body. I conclude with a sequence of writing activities designed to help students foster critical, ecological literacies that will prepare them to grapple with the social and ecological problems emerging in Web 3.

Assessing the African mobile telephony boom : the impact of the mobile phone and its relationship to the digital divide

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-81).This dissertation provides an overview of the boom in mobile telephony in Africa, experienced in terms of exceptional and increasing subscriber growth. It provides a description of the mobile telephony boom, as well as its social political and economic impacts. It investigates what effect mobile telephony has had on the bridging of a broader digital divide, conceived of in terms of inequalities in access to information and communication technologies between Africa and the rest of the world, as well within Africa itself. It concludes that the boom in mobile telephony has had far-reaching impacts on the continent at all levels of African society. In particular, mobile phones have had a significant economic impact on the continent, which the author argues has been from the bottom up -affecting greatly the base of the economic pyramid and the informal sector. Mobile telephony has however not made a significant impact in the bridging of the digital divide conceived of in terms of access to the internet. A broader digital divide still exists which mobile telephony may not provide the tools to bridge

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

How Chanel adapted its storytelling to the digital era within its masstige segment : a case study of the perfume Chanel number 5

The information and communication technologies - which became popular worldwide since the 1990s - have transformed the contemporary world; thus, altering interpersonal, labor and consumption relationships. Thanks to the connectivity and interaction between people, without limits of time and space, the collectivity was empowered. In this globalized world - with an endless supply of possibilities, experiences, information and products - it is crucial to offer users great content to stand out in the crowd. In this context, nothing is more effective than using storytelling to involve and engage consumers. Stories arouse interest and empathy for brands, as well as for the values they transmit; thus, strengthening emotional bonds with customers and consequently increasing the desire of purchasing their products. Luxury brands are aware of the relevance of engaging customers and creating emotional bonds. This research is a case study of the perfume Chanel Number 5, that consists of a one single phase; which is the qualitative content analysis of all advertising films the perfume, released from 1973 to 2020. This study investigated the evolution of the storytelling of Chanel - within its masstige segment - and how it has adapted to the digital age. Another objective was having a broader understanding of the use of storytelling in the advertisement of luxury and masstige brands, specially in the new digital context. The storytelling of Chanel Number 5 evolved over time and accompanied the technological changes that transformed the contemporary society; but, without ever losing its essential attributes, like glamour, luxury, allure and singularity.As tecnologias da informação e comunicação - que se popularizaram mundialmente desde a década de 1990 - transformaram o mundo contemporâneo, e alteraram as relações interpessoais, de trabalho e consumo. Graças à conectividade e interação entre as pessoas, sem limites de tempo e espaço, a coletividade foi potencializada. Neste mundo globalizado - com uma oferta infinita de possibilidades, experiências, informações e produtos - é fundamental oferecer aos usuários um ótimo conteúdo para se destacar na multidão. Nesse contexto, nada é mais eficaz do que contar histórias para envolver e engajar os consumidores. As histórias despertam interesse e empatia pelas marcas, bem como pelos valores que transmitem; fortalecendo assim os laços afetivos com os consumidores e, consequentemente, aumentando o desejo em adquirir seus produtos. As marcas de luxo estão cientes da importância de envolver os clientes e criar laços emocionais. Esta pesquisa é um estudo de caso do perfume Chanel Número 5, que consiste em uma única fase; qual seja uma análise qualitativa de conteúdo de todos os filmes publicitários do perfume, lançados de 1973 a 2020. Este estudo investigou a evolução da narrativa da Chanel - dentro do seu segmento masstige - e como ela se adaptou à era digital. Outro objetivo foi ter uma ampla compreensão do uso da narrativa na propaganda de marcas de luxo e masstige, especialmente no novo contexto digital. A narrativa do perfume Chanel Número 5 evoluiu ao longo do tempo e acompanhou as mudanças tecnológicas que transformaram a sociedade contemporânea; sem perder de vista seus atributos essenciais, como glamour, luxo, fascínio e singularidade

The Political Economies of Media

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Some advocates and more than a few critics have misconstrued the political economy of media as a unified field of inquiry. The authors from this volume, by contrast, draw from a more diverse stream of the schools of thought signified by this tradition: Neoclassical Economics, Radical Media Political Economy, Schumpeterian Institutional Political Economy, and the Cultural Industries School. The book as a whole is as alert to developments in our main objects of analysis - media institutions, technologies, markets, uses and society - as it is to changes in the world around us, including current trends in communication and media studies. The contributors show that digital media are disrupting entire media industries, but without erasing the past. Throughout, the impact of the unprecedented wave of media consolidation in the late-1990s and the financial crisis of the past few years loom large. The authors also suggest that there is no 'supra logic' of 'total system integration' that spans the network media, while insisting that one media sector is not the same as the next. Social networking activities often beg, pilfer and borrow 'content' from 'traditional media', but it remains the case that Time Warner, Comcast, the BBC and News Corp. are very different creatures than Apple, Baidu, Facebook or Google. In other words, even in the age of convergence and remix culture, different media continue to display their own distinctive political economies, as the volume's title - The Political Economies of Media - signals

Creative Transformation and the Knowledge-Based Economy: Intellectual Property and Access to Knowledge under Informational Capitalism

This dissertation contributes to critiques of informational capitalism by analyzing the role intellectual property (IP) law plays in the appropriation and commodification of knowledge. Using an interdisciplinary framework rooted in the critical political economy of communication and critical legal studies, this dissertation focuses on how IP law is used to appropriate knowledge as a commodity and support accumulation in a so-called knowledge-based economy, better understood as informational capitalism. Informational capitalism is legitimated by neoliberal, libertarian, and technologically-determinist beliefs, which I demonstrate to be fallacies that support political economic concentrations and inequitable processes of commodification, spatialization, and structuration. International organizations and governance regimes, such as the international trade-based IP system, diffuse these beliefs and thereby legitimize practices that remove knowledge and information from their social contexts. This dissertation propounds the use of a knowledge/information dialectic to highlight the mutually constitutive relationship between knowledge-based resources and informational assets. As I demonstrate, digital and peer-based production alternatives challenge IP law by highlighting the socio-cultural aspects of knowledge/information necessary for commodification to occur. Such alternatives represent an emerging informational politics responding to the inequities of informational capitalism. Using Karl Polanyis double movement thesis, I focus on alternative practices of knowledge production and management as counter-movements to IP seeking to support a greater variety of socio-cultural concerns and more equitable political economic structurations. In particular, through a critical analysis of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) Movement (an umbrella term covering various civil society and non-Western approaches to IP), I demonstrate how informational politics simultaneously resist and extend the economically reductionist and technologically determinist fallacies they purport to oppose. By tracing the emergence of the concept of A2K and performing a critical discourse analysis of key primary and secondary Movement texts, I show it to be a counter-movement that concurrently opposes and reinforces key neoliberal, libertarian, and technologically-determinist assumptions. I conclude that human rights-based discourses and human capability approaches to development provide alternative normative frameworks that oppositional movements might use to address the political economic inequities posed by IP-based informational capitalism