Critical Perspectives on Media, Power and Change

Ilija Tomanić Trivundža, Hannu Nieminen, Nico Carpentier, Josef Trappel, Ilija Tomanić Trivundža, Hannu Nieminen, Nico Carpentier, Josef Trappel

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351591201
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book aims to feed into the critical debates about media, power and change through the respectful inclusion of a wide variety of critical approaches and traditions. This diversity is simultaneously structured and balanced by a deeply shared set of concerns, that are mobilised to defend core societal values including social justice, equality, fairness, care for the other and humanity. Critical Perspectives on Media, Power and Change raises questions about how the omnipresent media can contribute to the materialisation of these core values, and how it sometimes works against them. Rethinking social change, mediatisation and regulations are thus significant issues – explicitly addressed in this book. In addition the authors show how the role of the critical media and communication scholar merits and requires (self-)reflection; critical voices matter, but they also face structural limitations. This book was originally published as two special issues of Javnost – The Public.

INEQUALITY AND DIGITALLY MEDIATED COMMUNICATION: DIVIDES, CONTRADICTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES

Robin Mansell

This article examines relationships between economic and social inequality and digitally mediated communication. Differences between instrumental and critical approaches in the digital divide literature are considered to highlight the limitations of the former approaches and the ways these are reflected in European policy. What we know about the relationship between technological innovation and society and its consequences for economic and social inequality is summarised and emerging expressions of inequality between humans and their digital machines are discussed. With computational models, algorithms and machine learning becoming more pervasive, it is argued that human beings are at risk of losing the ability to control the digitally mediated environment. Policy measures create incentives for small shifts in corporate digital platform strategy that amount to tinkering with the overall direction of technological innovation. The article emphasises the need for an inclusive dialogue to reveal potential alternative directions that might take better account of what people value in their digitally mediated lives.

Introduction

This article examines some of the relationships between economic and social inequality and digitally mediated communication.¹ Researchers generally agree that there is a reciprocal relationship between expressions of inequality and changes in the digitally mediated world, but there are large differences in their views about how these relationships work and whether inequality is likely to persist into the future. In the digital divide research tradition, there are instrumental and critical approaches and some of the limitations of the instrumental approach are highlighted. The implications of asymmetries of control and authority between human beings and their machines and the consequences for economic and social inequality are addressed with the aim of assessing the opportunities for evaluating them and for encouraging a shift in the contemporary direction of digital technology innovation.

The article begins with a brief historical reflection on what we know about the relationship between technological innovation and society. This is followed by a summary of several instrumental and critical approaches to digital divides and a consideration of how research in this area treats issues of economic and social inequality. The way in which the results of some of this scholarly work become embedded in policy in the European context is then discussed to prepare the basis for a discussion of the emerging contradictory relationships between humans and their machines. In the conclusion, I reflect on what might be done to address risks associated with the dominance of corporate control and with a potential loss of human control over the digitally mediated communication environment.

Relations between Technological Innovation and Society

In the social sciences, technological systems are acknowledged as being instruments of power. The literature on the history of technological innovation, for example, demonstrates that power relations are hidden within these systems. Hecht and Allen (2001, 1) begin their essay honouring the work of historian of technology Thomas Hughes with the statement that “we have understood for centuries that technology is an instrument of power … statements about the nature of technology were thus themselves political or cultural strategies”. Winner ([1980] 1999) insisted that all technology artefacts have a politics, writing within the political science discipline, and, with an understanding of technology located within the sociology discipline, Foucault argued that technologies of power “ … determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination” (as quoted in Martin, Gutman, and Hutton 1988, 18). Castells (2009, 4), especially, in Communication Power highlights that “the communication process decisively mediates the way in which power relationships are constructed and challenged in every domain of social practice, including political practice”.

The fact that society is becoming ever more dependent upon digital systems means that there is arguably a special need for an investigation of how mediation operates in the media and communications field. Silverstone’s (2007, 26) claim in Media and Morality was that “mediated connection and interconnection define the dominant infrastructure for the conduct of social, political and economic life across the globe”. With the fragmentation of academic fields of research and the continuous creation of new fields, information systems scholars and many scholars working in the socio-technical tradition are emphasising the “materiality” of the digital environment in what has come to be known as information infrastructure and platform studies (Gillespie, Boczkowski, and Foot 2014; Plantin et al. 2016). In many traditions in the social sciences, it is being acknowledged that an understanding of the way power relations are mediated by digital technologies is essential for the analysis of the cultural, social, political and economic features of society. The interpenetration of technology-mediated structures and processes is not something encountered only in the digital era, however, and there has been a continuous struggle between those who regard the trajectory of technological change as inevitable, progressive and good for society and those who regard it as a process that requires careful evaluation.

In the history of deliberation on the consequences of technological change for society, policy-makers have also, on occasion, noticed that the direction of technological innovation is implicated in rising social and economic inequality, especially in the context of development. The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation’s influential report in the 1970s, for example, emphasised that attention needed to be given not just to the rate of the production of new technologies, but also to the direction or pathway of innovation. This report said that:

producing technology … means producing instruments of control and influence over other individuals, firms and nations. The capacity of technology to transform the nature, orientation and purpose of development is such that the question of who controls technology is central to who controls development. (Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation [1975] 2006, 93)

The Foundation’s report called for “another development”, informed by a needs-based approach that could contribute to self-reliance. This was regarded as a counter to the then prevailing growth-oriented development strategies that sought to lock less wealthy countries into trajectories of technological, social and economic change which were being experienced in the wealthy countries.

Researchers engaged in critical scholarship—those concerned with power asymmetries and their consequences—have long been aware that inequality and social injustice abound in the world and that digitally mediated communication is a contributing factor. However, instrumental traditions of research—those offering solutions to narrowly defined questions about how social and economic inequality is generated rather than why it occurs—have also examined the role of digital technologies. It is therefore important to consider the implications of the way these different traditions tackle the development of digitally mediated communication and its economic and social consequences. The digital divide literature is located in both the critical and instrumental traditions, and the next section considers how the determinants and outcomes of digitally mediated communication are treated in these research traditions.

Digital Divides: Determinants and Outcomes

Digital divides are examined in several generations of research which seek an understanding of relationships between the spread of digital technologies and the factors contributing to the inclusion or exclusion of countries, regions and people in the digitally mediated world. The first digital divide tradition investigates the access divide. It is very prominent and is primarily an instrumental research tradition. The main goal in this tradition is to connect the unconnected to digital networks, typically using broadband technology (Katz and Berry 2014). Numerous reports of this kind are generated by consultancy firms, academics, United Nations agencies and The World Bank. These document the rate of diffusion and take up of digital technologies, networks and services, usually with the aim of ranking performance and assessing whether access gaps are being closed. These kinds of studies frequently mention that connection entails risks such as challenges to individual and corporate privacy and the growth of surveillance. They highlight the need for improved security and for addressing a growing skills deficit, as well as problems associated with rising energy consumption, and, often, the need to devise better means of child protection (The Earth Institute 2016). The assumption which informs this tradition is that greater connectivity is beneficial for all populations. It is assumed that connecting the unconnected progressively improves people’s lives and that any risks resulting from improved access are manageable.

Research in this instrumental digital divide tradition confirms that a rapid rate of investment in digital technologies and services is strongly associated with declining economic inequality, at least on a global scale. Absolute poverty—defined as a US$1.25/day income at purchasing power parity—declines as the rate of penetration of digital technology (mobile subscriptions) and Internet users increases (Pepper and Garrity 2015). As the chapter on digital technologies and income inequality prepared for the World Economic Forum says, “the impact of ICTs [information and communication technologies] on economic growth, along with targeted interventions to increase their impact on poverty alleviation, will help to relieve the plight of those in absolute poverty and improve the well-being of citizens everywhere” (2015, 36). Within countries, research in this tradition reveals a different picture. The consensus is that improved access or connectivity is associated with rising income inequality, although there are arguments about the direction of causality and the other variables that explain this relationship. An OECD (2015) report acknowledges this consensus in its recognition that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening within countries, that economic growth is disproportionally benefitting higher income groups and that digital technologies play a significant role.

A second or deepening digital divide tradition focuses on the skills, literacies and competencies required to make use of digital technologies once access is achieved. van Dijk (2013), for instance, theorises digital divides as being created by relational and resource factors including personal and positional inequalities, the asymmetrical distribution of resources, the differences in kinds of access and the differences in the nature of participation in society. He highlights the social, economic, political and cultural consequences of digital exclusion. In the Netherlands, for instance, empirical research in this tradition shows that only 15 per cent of the population can be counted among the information or digital elite, despite the relatively high levels of connectivity in the country (van Deursen and van Dijk 2014). This tradition is not confined to the media and communication field. In the science, technology and innovation policy field, Mendonça, Crespo, and Simoe (2015) focus on access (to ICT devices and connectivity), basic skills (individual know-how for basic uses) and complex capabilities (higher-level ability for creative engagement) in their examination of what gives rise to digital divides and social and economic inequality.

A third tradition in the digital divide literature gives greater attention to the outcomes of connectivity. van Deursen and Helsper (2015), for instance, are interested in measuring the differential economic, social, cultural and individual outcomes of Internet use. They examine the tangible differences that users associate with their use of the Internet and what they can achieve in their lives. Castells and Himanen (2014) also focus on outcomes. They link indicators of digital access with differences in economic development, human development, ecological sustainability and cultural development to assess the extent to which human dignity is enhanced as a result of Internet access and use. They aim to assess “how the potential of creativity and wellbeing unleashed by the informational revolution can be harnessed for the progress of humanity instead of becoming a factor in reinforcing the unsustainable, destructive process of development that characterizes much of our interdependent world” (2014, 3). Human dignity is understood to refer to the freedoms, justice and well-being which may be achieved through greater economic and social equality.

Sometimes other digital divides are discussed in the literature, referring to gaps in Internet use between the old and the young, to gender differences, to the exclusion of the disabled or to gaps in access between urban and rural areas. The labels of these traditions and the categories vary, and much of the research in the digital divide tradition focuses on quantitative indicators and is undertaken at a relatively high level of aggregation. However, this work is complemented by numerous case studies, many of which employ qualitative methods to examine access and technology use barriers. For example, exclusionary business practices may be revealed—such as the levying of service fees of as much as 16 per cent of the value of transactions on mobile money transactions in some African countries, which serves as a barrier to use and reinforces economic divides (Kalba 2016).

The main message from several waves of digital divide research, in summary, is that socio-cultural, political and economic factors are associated with the way people experience the digital environment. Bauer (2016) highlights the complexity of the relationship between digital technology and economic, political and social factors, a relationship that is further complicated when studies focus on the local or national level. Historical differentiations shape the way digitally mediated communication is experienced in different societies and it is generally agreed that experience is influenced by the “general circumstance of an individual’s life” (Wessels 2013, 26). Yet it is the first and second digital divide traditions that seem to have the most influence in policy-making, despite the fact that these traditions give the least attention to questions about why digital technology innovation yields persistent unequal outcomes in society.

Digital Inequality and Policy

The prevailing view is that connecting the unconnected using digital technologies is necessarily a good thing for society as a whole, for the economy and for the individual. Although the relationship between infrastructure and digital platform development and inequality is complicated, policy-makers tend to assume that their interventions will have a direct and positive impact on the take up and use of digital technologies and services, and a consequential beneficial impact on society. The main focus in policy is to reduce the access and literacy divides and, as a result, attention is given principally to the rate of investment in digital infrastructures and in digital skills acquisition.

In Europe, for example, the policy focus is on three pillars in the European Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy: the economy; broadband connectivity and access; and skills and employment (EC 2015a). Regarding the economy, concern in Europe about the very considerable market power of large platform operating companies leads to measures intended to remove barriers to the growth of the single market. Policy interventions include the lengthy Competition Directorate case against Google that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Inequality and Digitally Mediated Communication: Divides, Contradictions and Consequences
• 2 The New Spirit of Capitalism, Innovation Fetishism and New Information and Communication Technologies
• 3 Inequality and Liberal Democracy: A Critical Take on Economic and Political Power Aspects
• 4 For Public Communication: Promises and Perils of Public Engagement
• 5 Beyond the Ladder of Participation: An Analytical Toolkit for the Critical Analysis of Participatory Media Processes
• 6 Explaining the Mediatisation Approach
• 7 Mediatisation and the Transformation of Capitalism: The Elephant in the Room
• 8 Changes in Contemporary Communication Ecosystems Ask for a “New Look” at the Concept of Mediatisation
• 9 Particularistic and Universalistic Media Policies: Inequalities in the Media in Hungary
• 10 A Radical Democratic Reform of Media Regulation in Response to Three Levels of Crisis
• 11 Put a Ring on It! Why We Need More Commitment in Media Scholarship
• 12 Being (Truly) Critical in Media and Communication Studies: Reflections of a Media Scholar Between Science and Politics
• 13 Grounding Communication Studies in Enlightenment Criticality: Scaling Up Theoretical and Dialectical Ambition
• Index