Chapter 10 The Infrastructural turn in Media and Internet Research

In recent years, media studies and internet studies have paid increasing attention to the concept of infrastructure, and to the related concept of distribution. In this chapter I discuss some of the benefits for media and internet research brought about by the turns to infrastructure and distribution, notably a welcome concern with the mundanity and ordinariness of existing systems rather than optimistic speculation about future impacts, and an invigorating interest in questions of representation and meaning in relation to often taken-for-granted technologies. But I also discuss some of the problems surrounding the infrastructural turn in media and internet research: a tendency to use the term “infrastructure” in such a variety of ways that it risks losing its analytical value; an uncertain engagement with ideas of materiality and “relationality”; and a tendency towards banality and vagueness (including dubious defenses of vagueness itself). I close by reflecting on how the problems identified seem to have led to a neglect of other traditions of research, such as political economy of media, that might provide insights into the workings of media infrastructures as traditionally understood, but in a call for synthesis, I also point to those other traditions have also failed to pay due attention to the best contributions of recent media infrastructural studies

User-generated content, free labour and the cultural industries

A dominant theme of recent critical analysis of digital media, user-generated content and cultural industries is that they involve unpaid work ('free labour') on the part of participants. This theme has been developed alongside other critical studies of labour in the cultural and IT industries, which focuses more on professional and semi-professional work. Critiques of free labour have provided some stimulating and necessary interventions against complacent celebrations of cultural-industry work, and of the relations between production and consumption in the digital era, but some significant conceptual issues concerning capitalism, exploitation, power and freedom remain underexplored. In addition, these critiques potentially serve (unintentionally) to marginalise the political importance of the conditions of professional cultural labour. After locating the critiques of free labour in the context of autonomist Marxist thought, the article a) argues that the frequent pairing of the term 'free labour' with the concept of exploitation is unconvincing and rather incoherent, at least as so far developed by the most-cited analysts; b) explores what political demands might and might not coherently be derived from critical accounts of free labour (and argues that the internship system is by far the most significant example of free labour in the contemporary cultural industries; c) assesses a previous critical attempt to address questions of unpaid labour, involving the concept of the 'audience commodity', and judges that it takes a much more pessimistic view of populations than that of free labour, but shares a lack of engagement with lived experience and political pragmatics; d) argues for the continuing political importance of the conditions of professional cultural production, against the implicit marginalisation of that importance in some versions of the free labour debates, and summarises conclusions from some recent research on the subject

O fracasso da mídia em representar a classe trabalhadora: as explicações da produção de mídia e mais além

The article shows how, even though Media Production Analysis (MPA) has mostly neglected class, it might be fruitfully adapted to explain inadequate media representations of the working class, as long as it draws upon 1) an understanding of political-economic and policy factors beyond the situational contexts that might be observed, or discovered through interviews; 2) an attention to how subjective experiences of class shape production, via combination of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus with Erik Olin Wright’s recognition of “contradictory class locations;” 3) attention to the changing political status of the working class, and how this might shape production and representation.O artigo mostra que, embora a Análise da Produção de Mídia (APM) tenha negligenciado, na maioria das vezes, a classe, ela pode ser adaptada produtivamente para explicar as representações inadequadas da classe trabalhadora elaboradas pela mídia, desde que se baseie em: 1) uma compreensão dos fatores político-econômicos e políticos, além dos contextos situacionais, que podem ser observados ou descobertos por meio de entrevistas; 2) uma atenção a como as experiências subjetivas de classe dão forma à produção, através da combinação do conceito de habitus de Bourdieu com o reconhecimento das “posições de classe contraditórias” de Erik Olin Wright; 3) a atenção à mudança do status político da classe trabalhadora, e como isso pode moldar a produção e a representação

Tempos internacionais: fusões, exotismos e antirracismo na música eletrônica dançante

Este ensaio busca analisar a complexa política de tecnologia, representação e instituição na música popular. Traça a história das gravadoras independentes britânicas, particularmente da música eletrônica dançante, com base em pesquisa realizada em Londres na década de 1990. O estudo etnográfico da companhia Nation Records é discutido à luz da complexa política cultural da conjuntura da década de 1990

Watching nightlife: affective labor, social media and surveillance

This article examines the affective labor of nightlife photographers within the surveillance economy of social media. I examine nightlife photographers as “below the line” cultural laborers who employ their identities and communicative capacities to create and circulate images of nightlife online. These images stimulate interaction that can be watched, tracked, and responded to by the databases of social media. The study draws on interviews with nightlife photographers to examine how they account for the creative and promotional aspects of their labor. I argue that the analytical capacities of social media databases, and the modes of promotion they facilitate, depend in the first instance on the affective labor of cultural intermediaries like nightlife photographers

The problem of globalization

There is a general consensus that the contemporary world is best under-stood through the prism of globalization. This view is shared by most social scientists, politicians, journalists, businesses, and indeed broad sectors of the general population. Opinions differ as to whether global-ization is a positive or a negative development, but there is general agreement that whatever is going on is either a symptom or a consequence of globalization. There are many good reasons for this view. The number of passengers on scheduled international flights has risen by a factor of six between 1975 and 2000. The number of international tourist arrivals rose by three and a half times during the same period. Much less happily, the number of internationally displaced refugees rose by around 50 percent in the 20 years before 2000. During the quarter of a century after 1975, the duration of international voice telephone calls rose by around 25 times. We could go on multiplying such striking figures i

Towards a Critical Understanding of Music, Emotion and Self-Identity

The article begins by outlining a dominant conception of these relations in sociologically informed analysis of music, which sees music primarily as a positive resource for active self-making. My argument is that this conception rests on a problematic notion of the self and also on an overly optimistic understanding of music, which implicitly sees music as highly independent of negative social and historical processes. I then attempt to construct a) a more adequately critical conception of personal identity in modern societies; and b) a more balanced appraisal of music-society relations. I suggest two ways in which relations between self, music and society may not always be quite so positive or as healthy as the dominant conception suggests: 1) Music is now bound up with the incorporation of authenticity and creativity into capitalism, and with intensified consumption habits. 2) Emotional self-realisation through music is now linked to status competition. Interviews are analysed

Sound Factory

Le livre Sound Factory a reçu le soutien de la Sacem et de l’université Paris 8.Il est publié conjointement par les éditions Uqbar et Mélanie Seteun. Stéphane Dorin (dir.), Sound Factory Présentation “D’une révolution à l’autre”. C’est le titre que Jeremy Deller avait choisi pour son exposition au Palais de Tokyo afin de souligner les liens inattendus entre le déclin de l’industrie manufacturière et la naissance de l’industrie musicale. Les contributions de chercheurs en sciences sociales, ré..

Sound Factory

Le livre Sound Factory a reçu le soutien de la Sacem et de l’université Paris 8.Il est publié conjointement par les éditions Uqbar et Mélanie Seteun. Lire en ligne Consulter l’ouvrage gratuitement en ligne sur le site OpenBooks. Stéphane Dorin (dir.), Sound Factory Présentation “D’une révolution à l’autre”. C’est le titre que Jeremy Deller avait choisi pour son exposition au Palais de Tokyo afin de souligner les liens inattendus entre le déclin de l’industrie manufacturière et la naissance de..