Value, Labour, and Work in Corporate Social Media: A Marxist Study of User-Generated Data and the Online Targeted Advertising Strategy from the Perspective of Production/Valorisation

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to examine the targeted advertising model utilised by corporate social media such as Facebook and the specific way data are being produced by their users. Mine will be a discussion based on the Marxist theory of value and concepts such as 'use' and 'exchange value', 'work' and 'labour', and 'alienation'. Two divergent approaches to user-generated data, both of which focus on the production/valorisation phase, will be considered: Christian Fuchs’s ‘digital labour’ thesis and David Harvey’s ‘free gifts’. Although the latter does not directly refer to user-generated data, my slight reworking of it will make the connection obvious. These two distinct points of view essentially emerge from the question: do user-generated data contain themselves value? Fuchs says “yes”; Harvey says “no”. I consider the latter to be more consistent with the peculiar character of user-generated data and the role that these play in the information capitalist mode of production. Consequently, a recast of my argument from the perspective of alienation—the feeling of estrangement caused by separating one from the products of her work—will further illustrate how the case of exploitation in corporate social media is more complex than the ‘digital labour’ (Fuchs’s) thesis takes it to be. This is because the circulation of information among the users is being relatively unaffected by the circulation of information among the capitalists participating in the targeted advertising model, i.e. the social media platform and the third parties in need of promotion. The two spheres are experientially disjointed; the users of Facebook and the like cannot witness the nature and magnitude of exploitation taking place. Nevertheless, data and metadata are important raw materials which we should preserve and attempt to utilise alternatively.