Power Shifts or Not? The Political Economy of
Power Shifts or Not? The Political Economy of Social Media in Reform China Dr. Ji Deqiang National Center for Radio and Television Studies Communication University of China 1 Political economy as moral economies (Murdock, 2011) 2 The borderless market penetration: bypass the geopolitical barriers 3 4 Two entry points • Commodification (Mosco, 1998) of social media: marketizing, gaming and datamization, with physical labor • Resistance or social movements against predatory logic of capitalism within the process of commodification (Zhao, 2008) 5 commodification • "The process of transforming use value to exchange value" (Mosco, 2006) • Commodification of communication: • Content, audience and labor (Mosco, 2006) • My working definition: Infrastructure(network), content and labor 6 Commodification of social media Network • 1. Marketing for the entire economy • 2. Gaming • 3. Datamization • 4. physical labor in an era of “immaterial labor” Content Labor 7 Social media and the overall economy Overall economy Social media / connection / sharing economy Why • The coincidence of the proliferation of social media and the decline of world and national economy since 2009 • Structural problems of Chinese economy: • Over-production and over-investment: debit crisis? • Capital shifts from traditional industries to two new profitable areas: real estate and the widely-defined cultural industries (the CCP’s congress report) How • Marketing: • Adevertising • Directing the attention or "flow" to target markets 10 The shift of advertising from conventional media to social media 11 From e-commerce to mcommerce and social commerce • M-commerce: mobile-based social media • The battle of Tencent and Alibaba on taxi-hailing apps in early 2014 • The battle for not only the loyalty to each app or company, but also the online payment channel: Alipay and Weixin Payment 14 • Social commerce: the commodification of social relations • The investment of Alibaba to Sina Weibo • Chinese social networkers show more trust on friends' recommendation on certain products. 15 Gaming as a new pillar for economic growth 16 • “In the fast-growing mobile game market, we launched our Game Center on Mobile QQ and Weixin, including a range of self-developed and third-party smart phone games. Riding on the extensive user reach and social network effect offered by Mobile QQ and Weixin, these games generated a revenue contribution of over RMB600 million for the fourth quarter of 2013, validating the distribution capabilities of our mobile platforms.” (Ma Huateng, Chairmen of Tencent Group, Tencent 2013 Annual Report) Datamization • Analyzing, tracking and the formulation of social networkers • Data itself as a commodity 19 Physical labor as the base of the pyramid of internet economy • The express delivery industry as a case • It is estimated that along with the rapid rise of this industry, the labor condition is turning bad which deserves serious studies • Comparative advantages or cheap labor in a fiercely competitive labor market – “race to the bottom” • Income per task / parcel per courier is around 1 RMB (0.12 Euro). Each courier is estimated to deliver around 100-200 parcels everyday with more than 12-hour daily working time 20 Resistance or social movements armed by social media usage • Self-organized • Connections to the Socialist State 25 Power shifts? • NO: The increasing commodification of social media space: the expansion of capital powers • BUT: Social resistance or organization via social media leads to the shifts of power from the bottom 26 The "embeddedness" (Polayni, 1941) of social media in broader social settings • Political economy • Culture • Social transition 27 The political economy of communication • Emerged in 1960s • Being a critical intellectual tradition in communication and social studies • Targeting both： • the uneven distribution of communication resources and the discursive power among social classes and individuals (Murdock, 1997; Zhao, 2011) • And the resistance and empowerment of the powerless 28 www.chinamediaresearch.cn 29 Thanks! 30
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