PDF(1578 KB)
Reflection on Digital Media and Pandemic: A General Review from the Perspective of Political Economy of Communication
CAO Jin, ZHANG Aichen
Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication ›› 2022, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (4) : 30-52.
PDF(1578 KB)
PDF(1578 KB)
Reflection on Digital Media and Pandemic: A General Review from the Perspective of Political Economy of Communication
The global pandemic of COVID-19 has revealed the significant unequal gap between countries in terms of class, race, gender, technology, market economy and states. The information technology and digital platforms have been deeply involved in shaping the social, political, economic and cultural structures of human beings. Focusing on the expansion of platform capital and the development of digital media, the article reviews a series of critical discussions of scholars of political economy of communication in the west around digital platforms and western capitalism in the situation of COVID-19. With an emphasis on subjects of global environment crisis related to communication, surveillance and privacy protection, disinformation and conspiracy theories, and online production and living, the article examines the research results of western scholars in political economy of communication since the outbreak of the pandemic, reflects on the impact of the platform capitalism and digital media communication system shaped by the capital-driven development model on all levels of society, and asks how critical communication studies should respond to the challenges brought by the current capital-driven platform media to the overall values of society.
COVID-19 / platform capitalism / digital media / political economy of communication
| [1] |
大卫·哈维(1999/2017). 《资本的限度》(张寅译). 北京: 中信出版社.
|
| [2] |
克劳斯·施瓦布, 蒂埃里·马勒雷, (2020/2020) 《后疫情时代:大重构》(世界经济论坛北京代表处译). 北京: 中信出版社.
|
| [3] |
胡勇慧(2011). 《社会批评与社会学的使命——麦克·布洛维的社会学马克思主义和公共社会学研究》. 南开大学博士论文.天津.
|
| [4] |
孔宇, 张艾晨(2020). 全球传播政治经济学的理论前沿与现实批判——传播政治经济学家格雷厄姆·默多克(Graham Murdock)教授访谈录. 《新闻大学》,(6),109-120+126-127.
|
| [5] |
麦克·布洛维(2005/2007). 《公共社会学》(沈原等译). 北京: 社会科学文献出版社.
|
| [6] |
让-吕克·南希(2020/2020). 病毒性例外.载《澎湃新闻》2020年2月29日(诗婷等译). 检索于 https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_6236325.
|
| [7] |
萨米尔·阿明(1997/2013). 《全球化时代的资本主义:对当代社会的管理》(丁开杰等译,李智校). 北京: 中国人民大学出版社.
|
| [8] |
文森特·莫斯可(待出版). 新自由主义与下一代互联网. 载曹晋,文森特·莫斯可(主编),《新媒体的理论化研究(英文读本)》. 上海: 上海译文出版社.
|
| [9] |
温旭(2021). 数字资本主义下数字劳动的意识形态批判. 《马克思主义研究》,(9),149-158.
|
| [10] |
斋藤幸平(2021). 气候危机时代的资本主义与民主主义(谢宗睿、陈世华译). 《南京工业大学学报(社会科学版)》, (6),35-41.
|
| [11] |
|
| [12] |
|
| [13] |
|
| [14] |
|
| [15] |
|
| [16] |
|
| [17] |
|
| [18] |
|
| [19] |
|
| [20] |
|
| [21] |
|
| [22] |
|
| [23] |
This article asks: How can understanding the relationship of exploitation and oppression inform the study of digital labour and digital capitalism? It combines the analysis of capitalism, patriarchy, slavery, and racism in order to analyse digital labour. The approach taken also engages with a generalization of David Roediger’s wages of whiteness approach, Marxist feminism, Angela Davis’s Marxist black feminism, Rosa Luxemburg, Kylie Jarrett’s concept of the digital housewife, Jack Qiu’s notion of iSlavery, Eileen Meehan’s concept of the gendered audience commodity, and Carter Wilson and Audrey Smedley’s historical analyses of racism and class. The article presents a typology of differences and commonalities between wage-labour, slave-labour, reproductive labour, and Facebook labour. It shows that the digital data commodity is both gendered and racialized. It analyses how class, patriarchy, slavery, and racism overgrasp into each other in the realm of digital capitalism. It also introduces the notions of the organic composition of labour and the rate of reproductive labour and shows, based on example data, how to calculate these ratios that provide insights into the reality of unpaid labour in capitalism.
|
| [24] |
In 2020, the coronavirus crisis ruptured societies and their everyday life around the globe. This article is a contribution to critically theorising the changes societies have undergone in the light of the coronavirus crisis. It asks: How have everyday life and everyday communication changed in the coronavirus crisis? How does capitalism shape everyday life and everyday communication during this crisis?\r\nSection 2 focuses on how social space, everyday life, and everyday communication have changed in the coronavirus crisis. Section 3 focuses on the communication of ideology in the context of coronavirus by analysing the communication of coronavirus conspiracy stories and false coronavirus news. \r\nThe coronavirus crisis is an existential crisis of humanity and society. It radically confronts humans with death and the fear of death. This collective experience can on the one hand result in new forms of solidarity and socialism or can on the other hand, if ideology and the far-right prevail, advance war and fascism. Political action and political economy are decisive factors in such a profound crisis that shatters society and everyday life.\r\nTwo episode sof the tripleC-podcast focus on this paper:https://triplec.podbean.com/e/everyday-life-and-everyday-communication-in-coronavirus-capitalism-part-1/https://triplec.podbean.com/e/christian-fuchs-podcast-communication-capitalism-critique-episode-2-everyday-life-and-everyday-communication-in-coronavirus-capitalism-part-2-1586813458/
|
| [25] |
|
| [26] |
|
| [27] |
|
| [28] |
Widely and intensively used digital technologies have been an important feature of international responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. One especially interesting class of such technologies are dedicated contact and tracing apps collecting proximity data via the Bluetooth technology. In this article, I consider the development, deployment and imagined uses of apps in two countries: Singapore, a pioneer in the field, with its TraceTogether app, and Australia, a country that adapted Singapore’s app, devising its own COVIDSafe, as key to its national public health strategy early in the crisis. What is especially interesting about these cases is the privacy concerns the apps raised, and how these are dealt with in each country, also the ways in which each nation reimagines its immediate social future and health approach via such an app.
|
| [29] |
|
| [30] |
|
| [31] |
IPCC. (2018). Global Warming of 1.5℃. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, and T. Waterfield (Eds.), in press.
|
| [32] |
|
| [33] |
|
| [34] |
|
| [35] |
|
| [36] |
|
| [37] |
We have yet to know the ultimate global impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic. However, we do know that delays, denials and misinformation about COVID-19 have exacerbated its spread and slowed pandemic response, particularly in the U.S. (e.g., Abutaleb et al., 2020).
|
| [38] |
The article is an invited contribution to the special issue to mark the anniversary of the publication of Jim McGuigan’s ‘Cultural Populism’. Drawing on work on authoritarian populism produced by the scholars grouped around the Frankfurt Institute of Research during their war-time exile in the Unites States, this article explores the right-wing populist platforms developed by Donald Trump during and after his presidential campaign and by the two Leave campaigns in the British referendum on European Union membership. It argues that understanding their popular appeal requires us to pay particular attention to the performative styles employed and the ways they mobilise motifs from popular media and direct forms of communicative address to connect with lived experiences, articulate anxieties and present policies that benefit the already privileged as true expressions of the popular interest.
|
| [39] |
|
| [40] |
|
| [41] |
|
| [42] |
|
| [43] |
|
| [44] |
|
| [45] |
The media has even been very critical of some East Asian countries’ use of digital contact-tracing to control Covid-19. For example, South Korea has been criticised for its use of privacy-infringing digital contact-tracing. However, whether their type of digital contact-tracing was unnecessarily harmful to the human rights of Korean citizens is open for debate. The purpose of this paper is to examine this criticism to see if Korea’s digital contact-tracing is ethically justifiable.
|
| [46] |
|
1. 本文修改自作者为2021年12月26日举办的“第二届中外马克思主义比较研究论坛”所撰写的会议论文，论坛由复旦大学马克思主义学院、复旦大学当代国外马克思主义研究中心主办，主题为“西方左翼对新冠疫情的反思与21世纪马克思主义的发展”。沿袭西方马克思主义传统，二战后，迥异于美国实证主义传播研究范式的西方传播政治经济学（Political Economy of Communication）作为一种跨学科的“情景化知识”（situated knowledge），深刻受益于西方马克思主义的批判现实关怀，其侧重于揭示政治经济的宏观结构权力控制，特别聚焦广告控制、产权集中与兼并、产业扩张与垄断、平台数据监控与滥用、技术迷思、数字劳工等等议题，展开关于全球传播产业、传播制度、传播现象的政经路径的批判研究并诉诸公正传播。另一方面，文化研究（Cultural Studies）则根植于社会运动、社会结构变迁以及重新发现意识形态的思潮，讨论消费主义、媒体文化以及新的资本主义霸权方式的再造。传播政治经济学与文化研究的学术渊源都秉承于西方马克思主义，两者从范式隔离到范式融合的学术交锋，正好体现了政治经济与意识形态的互相渗透，而不是非此即彼的单一决定论，其跨学科性本身就带有理论蕴含的综合性阐释力量（详细论述参见Douglas Kellner“Critical theory and cultural studies: The missed articulation”，Jim McGuigan，Ed.，Cultural Methodologies, London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1997, pp. 13-41，和曹晋、兰凯伦“中国大陆批判传播理论的建构与对话：以传播政治经济学和文化研究为中心的考察”，《新闻大学》2019年第12期，一文）。本文篇幅所限，就不赘述文化研究的成果，而专门透视在疫情肆虐的当下，传播政治经济学领域的西方左翼如何承继西方马克思主义传统来反思全球疫情与新媒体关联中的社会冲突与张力。英国拉夫堡大学社会学系教授、复旦大学新闻学院客座教授、西方传播政治经济学的主要开创者格雷厄姆·默多克（Graham Murdock）教授曾经创建享有国际声誉的传媒研究中心，并长期与曹晋教授进行深度学术与国际公益暑期学校课程合作。默多克教授直面当下大型互联网公司的数字圈地和绝对垄断已经在全球登峰造极，屡次演讲警示资本主义的高度垄断令全球贫富差距愈发扩大。他也密切关注近年来人工智能与物联网技术的发展对日常生活的冲击，个人隐私和数据在技术监控与商业滥用面前无所遁形，其控制权和所有权被移交给技术拥有者。此外，他还特别敏锐地洞察到资本主义市场经济环境中的传播基础设施及其物质性正在加速环境恶化，呼吁数字生活的重组是目前亟待解决的问题。
2. 参见卢卡奇（1971/1999）。《历史与阶级意识》（杜章智，任立，燕宏远译）。北京：商务印书馆。
3. 参见Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. (1987/2002). Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. (Jephcott, E. Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
4. 哈贝马斯的“交往行为理论”提出用“对话”加强人与人之间的沟通，在真实真诚、相互理解的基础上达成共识。参见哈贝马斯（1981/2004）。《交往行为理论》（曹卫东译）。上海：上海人民出版社。
5. 参见澎湃思想市场（2021年9月30日）。疲劳病毒：新冠疫情让我们陷入了集体疲劳。检索于
6. 参见澎湃新闻（2020年3月30日）。阿甘本的坚持：哲学家们在瘟疫中爆发，但是哲学呢?。检索于
7. 关于沃勒斯坦的“世界体系理论”可参考Wallerstein, I. (1974). The Modern World-System. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
8. 参见Srnicek, N. (2016). Platform Capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
9. 参见凯特·拉沃斯（2017/2019）。《甜甜圈经济学》（闾佳译）。北京：文化发展出版社。
/
| 〈 |
|
〉 |
