The DOI matches its DataCite record; 15 of the 16 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Valorization of Surveillance: Towards a Political Economy of Facebook
Open accessAbstract
Much excitement surrounds Facebook, the social networking site based on user-generated content that has attracted 64 million active users since its inception in 2004. This paper begins to outline a political economy of Facebook in an attempt to draw attention to the underlying economic relations that structure the website, and the way in which the site fits into larger patterns of contemporary capitalist development. Although Web 2.0 has presented a shift away from “old” top-down media models, there remains continuity through change: Facebook continues familiar models of extensive commodification, with surveillance playing a key role in this process. The emerging reliance on general intellect and free labour for the purpose of capital accumulation does represent a move away from a more passive conception of the audience commodity, yet it demonstrates the continuous march of capitalism into cyberspace under post-Fordist conditions.
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“The challenge is how to valorize these traces (Cohen, 2008) and ensure that behaviour leaves a trace that can be valorized.”
From Free Labour, Social Media, Management: Challenging Marxist Organization Studies (2015) · cites this paper as Cohen, 2008
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Cited by
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The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media
van Dijck, J. (2013) · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199970773.001.0001 · Cited by 2,688
Value in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet
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The limits of transparency: Data brokers and commodification
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The ingredients of Twitch streaming: Affordances of game streams
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Metadata
- Authors
- Cohen, N.
- Corresponding author
- Cohen, Nicole
- Venue
- University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
- Publisher
- University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
- Published
- 2008
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 5-5
- OpenAlex
- W1569869845
- Cited by
- 228
- References
- 16
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 31 · 2014: 22 · 2013: 26 · 2012: 25
- FWCI
- 28.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Licence
- public-domain
- creativecommons.org/licenses/authors
- Locations
- Scholarworks (University of Massachusetts Amherst) (submittedVersion, public-domain)
- University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst
- Democratic Communiqué
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Economy and Marxism
- Social Sciences › Communication › Cultural Studies and Postmodernism
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Economy and Work Transformation
- Keywords
- Facebook, surveillance capitalism, commodification, Web 2.0, general intellect, free labor, capital accumulation, post-Fordism, audience commodification, user-generated content
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