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Due to the introduction of the internet, social media, webpages- anything that creates data is contributing to big data. “Big data is a popular term used to describe the exponential growth and availability of data, both structured and unstructured.” (Laney 2001) Without data, there would be no saved content, which would result in computers being useless, similar without big data, the internet would not exist.  Every time a website is opened or a status is updated, it generates data; big data is being used to make sense of all this data.

  Big data is often broken down into the three v’s; volume, variety and velocity. Volume focuses on the size of volume of the data, how big a status update or tweet is in terms of data. Variety looks at data coming from a range of sources now instead of just one, it can be structured or unstructured, internal or external and/or from a whole multitude of places. The velocity focuses on the speed data is stored and processed. Big Data was original used to reflect on previous results e.g. a company’s sales over the past year, however now it is being used to predict what will happen. Predicting failures occurring before they even happen, (Pearl 2012)

    While the evolution of new media is great, it also has a down fall in terms of big data. In 2011, 1.8 zetabytes of data was created and replicated to make that simpler, it would take 57,500,000,000 32GB iPods to hold that much data. (The Economists 2012) It is almost concerning that the humans are creating this much data at such a rapid pace, but what’s even more concerning is that it’s only going to increase more and more. With the constant update of technologies, data is going to get created and replicated a lot more frequently. It’s not just the increase of data that is being stored that’s the issue though; privacy is no longer available when using the internet. Without changing settings, anyone with Facebook can see your personal details and more product policies are allowing third party companies to track internet activity. If you post something online, it is going to be stored as data and accessible even if is deleted. (The Economists 2012)

  Though there are two sides to big data, I believe that without the proper introduction of privacy and tight security networks, the internet could eventually become too revealing to use. If it’s possible to pull out images and statuses that were deleted from the archives, then what could that mean for the future generation. Everyone has put up their fair share of silly information or imagery up online, but could this data come back to haunt us in our later lives?

Laney, Doug. 2001. 3D Data Management: Controlling Data Volume, Velocity, and Variety. META Group Inc. Accessed 11th May 2014.  http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf

  Pearl, Daniel. 2012. Volume, Velocity and Variety of Big Data. Accessed 11th May 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FidKQsJdIG0

  The Economist. 2012. The Dark Side of Big Data. Accessed 11th May 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raJOkguPrH4

Woodford, D. 2014. “KCB206 Internet, Self & Beyond.” Week 9 Lecture Notes. Accessed 8 May 2015. https://lecturecapture.qut.edu.au/ess/echo/presentation/11dcf106-e7c9-44eb-a753-74dfff689043?ec=true

Big Data, Crime, and Free Will

“Big data” is large data sets of recorded facts and figures. Almost everything today is encoded as data (Siegel 2013). Big data is also relates to the “tools, processes and procedures” that allow an organisation to “create, manipulate and manage” massive amounts of collections of data (data sets) and storage facilities (Kusnetzky 2010). Some of the challenges involve are trying to make sense of big data and the huge amount of data that’s created every day, as well as processing and organising all the information and data that’s out there into knowledge and wisdom, and trying to actually utilise it for a purpose (What is Big Data? 2012).

See a video explaining Big Data here.

By analysing big data we’re now able to find correlations that “spot business trends, determine the quality of research, prevent diseases, link legal citation, combat crime, and determine real-time roadway traffic conditions” (Data, data everywhere 2010). Computers are now able to automatically develop new knowledge and capabilities by “feeding on” data (Siegel 2013). Data creates insights into things and insights then help machines develop predictive capabilities (Siegel 2013). Big data analysis can be used to predict a vast variety of things, such as stock prices, election outcomes, consumption behaviour, pregnancy patterns, student essay grades, school attendance, as well as the accidents that people have, hospital admissions, risk of death in surgery, as well as even predictions on murder for at risk people and the list goes on (Siegel 2013).

Big data analysis has obvious advantages in its benefits, but it isn’t without its dark side and its downfalls. For example with its use to prevent crime.

See a video on how Big Data and analytics technology has helped a police force reduce crime here.

Predictive analysis and its use in crime can only be helpful to a certain extent. We’ll never be able to predict with 100% certainty that someone’s going to commit a certain crime. But there are people who say that the government will eventually implement a program that intervenes and tries to “help” someone after they’re predicted to have a 90% chance they’ll commit a crime in the next year (Fighting [the Propensity for Crime] with Big Data 2014).  

Minority Report depicts a futuristic world where a police unit is able to prevent crimes before they happen and place people under arrest before they actually break the law. 

The problem about this is that big data only measures whether you have a propensity to commit a crime. It measures what you’re likely to do before you’ve done it. That’s something the criminal system has never had to deal with before – usually you commit a crime and you get punished. But if it’s found that someone is likely to, for example, shoplift in the next 12 months, they won’t be put in jail but what will happen is that someone will be sent around to intervene and to try and help and prevent this from happening (Fighting [the Propensity for Crime] with Big Data 2014). That could be done by trying to get you an afterschool job or talking to your parents and seeing if there’s a problem in your home life. But what will also happen because of that is that you’ll now be pigeonholed as a criminal, as someone who is going to shoplift, as someone who’s affiliated with crime. This in turn may affect the person’s mindset and may even end up leading to criminal behaviour (Fighting [the Propensity for Crime] with Big Data 2014).  

I believe, and so does Kenneth Cukier (a Data Editor for The Economist), that the idea of “human volition”, human freewill is what’s important and what needs to be emphasised and valued beyond the prediction of a person’s propensity for crime.

  References:

Data, data everywhere (2010), 25 February, [Online], Available: http://www.economist.com/node/15557443 [2014].

Fighting [the Propensity for Crime] with Big Data 2014, video recording, United States. Directed by Jonathan Fowler, Elizabeth Rodd, and Dillon Fitton

Kusnetzky, D. (2010) What is "Big Data?", 16 February, [Online], Available: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/virtualization/what-is-big-data/1708 [2014].

Siegel, E. (2013) 'Introduction: The Prediction Effect', in Siegel, E. Predictive Analytics: the power to predict who will click, buy, lie or die, Hoboken, NJ : Wiley.

According to McNair, new media allows a person to be informed about occurrences, to be educated on the meanings and significance of facts and events, and it can also provide an area where competing viewpoints can be heard and where informed public opinion can be heard also (McNair 2011).

As a tool for politicians, social media can be used as an advantage. It also provides a space where politicians can pick and choose what information they post and what they let others see more than ever. They can cater their posts to their own liking, and they can spread their message in more far-reaching ways. They can also survey citizens and the opposition. One can follow a news site or politician or even a party on twitter or facebook and be updated with events and occurrences, quotes, and so on.

“Presidential elections, of course, are a key example of mediatization, in which every utterance, campaign stop, handshake, and tweet is delicately engineered towards manipulating the 24-hour news cycle” (McKnight and Fish 2014).

According to Dr. Pamela Rutledge, “The 2008 Obama Presidential campaign made history”, partly because Obama was African American, but also because “he was also the first presidential candidate to effectively use social media as a major campaign strategy” (Rutledge 2013). Social media is extremely popular and widely used by the public and politicians, but in 2008 Obama was ahead of the times when he sent out voting reminders on Twitter and interacted with people on Facebook (Rutledge 2013). “When Obama announced his candidacy in 2007, Twitter had only just started and there wasn’t even an iPhone yet” (Rutledge 2013).

Youth who are politically active online are “twice as likely to vote than those who are not” (Rutledge 2013). This goes to show the extent to which social media can potentially effect/affect voters.

 Rutledge states that McCain’s use of social media in the 2008 campaign was as bad as Obama’s was good, and asserts that “like JFK was the first president who really understood television, Obama is the first social media president” (Rutledge 2013).

See video on Obama's successful use of social media for his campaigns here. 

Social media is about relationships. Obama succeeded in using social media and dominated his opposition in that area because he and his team understood how networks work (Rutledge 2013). “The real power of social media is not in the number of posts or Tweets but in user engagement measured by content spreadability” (Rutledge 2013). 

For example, Obama’s Facebook page had twice as many “Likes” and almost 20 times as many re-tweets as Romney during the 2012 campaign. Obama’s existing social media base and spreadable content meant that Obama’s reach was far superior to Romney’s (Rutledge 2013). Rutledge states that social media creates a new political dialogue. “It takes the power of political messaging away from the mass media mod

el and places it firmly into peer-to-peer, public discourse” (Rutledge 2013).

Shirky believes that social media is empowerment, and that it provides long-term tools that can “strengthen civil society and the public sphere” by allowing people to articulate their thoughts or beliefs and debate conflicting views“ (Shirky 2010). Shirky views social media as participatory, and allows the public greater access to information, greater ability to engage in public speech, and a greater ability to undertake collective action (Shirky 2010). Shirky views this as positive for the public, as it gives them the opportunity to demand change and question the government.

Rutledge views social media and the “new political dialogue” as beneficial to politicians, as by users engaging in conversation and networks, this creates greater opportunity for politicians to connect and get their own message out and reach more citizens (Rutledge 2013).

  References:

McKnight, John Carter and Adam Fish. 2014. “Beyond Surveillance Fridges and Socialized Power Drills: Social Media and the Financialization of Everyday Life.” Culture Digitally Blog, April 14. Accessed April 14. Available at:httphttp://culturedigitally.org/2014/04/beyond-surveillance-fridges-and-socialized-power-drills/

McNair, Brian. 2011. An Introduction to Political Communication. 5th Ed. London: Routledge.

Morozov, Evgeny. 2011. “First Thoughts on Tunisia and the Role of the Internet.”Net.Effect Blog, 14 January. Available at: http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/14/first_thoughts_on_tunisia_and_the_role_of_the_internet

  Media has always been the way politics have been broadcasted, but now with the implementation of new media, popularity and voting in politics is evolving. To gain the public vote politics are now using social media sites such as Facebook and twitter, to not only keep people up to date, but to also try and sway votes in their favour.

  An excellent example of a politician gaining popularity through the use of multiple different social networks is Barack Obama. Though original media was used to inform, educate and publicise results of all politics, new media, in particular social media sites, is the new way to reach the audiences. On Barack Obama’s Facebook, there is a display of things that will warm your heart and make you laugh, an example of this is Obama joining in on the “It’s gonna be May” meme (Waxman 2014). Although these posts are all fun and games, they are being used for politicians on a different agenda; these posts are being posted to attract you in and social media sites are generally just one big advertising campaign for politicians such as Barack Obama.

  New Media isn’t only being used for advertising campaigns for politicians, it’s also being used to reveal the truth and distribute information to whoever has access to new media devices. Wikileaks is a great example of a new media device that reveals truths and distributes information over the web (Sifry 2011). Wikileaks was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange and it is a non-profit journalism website that distributes hidden secrets, leaked information and much more from anonymous sources. The main goal of websites and organisations such as Wikileaks is to make governments and corporations account for their wrong doings by revealing secrets they have kept.

  Discovering secrets hidden by corporations and governments used to lead to activists marching and rioting, however with the implementation of new media, majority of todays strong believers are more “slacktivists” than activists. A slacktivist is “Anyone who does something in support of an issue or cause that requires minimal personal effort” (TheRashLab 2014). Remember KONY 2012? Well that was a prime example of slacktivism, people sharing a video all over the internet to try and make a change without knowing the real course or issue. Now I’m not saying that all slacktivism is bad, but sometimes slacktivism can turn into a bandwagon of people following a cause they know nothing about.

  With New Media having such a heavy influence of the current society’s political views, it is important that as a population, we don’t start being persuaded by simple posts on Facebook and other social networks. For the political system to stay fully functional, propaganda methods need to be kept to a minimum and decisions need to be based off facts, rather than cute posts with cats.

Reference List

  Sifry, Micah. 2011. “WikiLeaks, Assange, and Why There's No Turning Back (Exclusive Excerpt)”. The Huffington Post, November 2. Accessed April 14, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/micah-sifry/wikileaks-assange-micah-sifry_b_820671.html

  Waxman, Olivia B. 2014. “Barack Obama’s Facebook Page Joins “It’s Gotta Be May” Meme. Time, May 1. Accessed May 2nd, 2014. http://time.com/84527/barack-obamas-facebook-page-joins-its-gonna-be-may-meme/

In this weeks blog post I will be talking about the role of new media in politics. This weeks topic looked at political engagement in regard to how it can serve politicians and the state as well as the citizens themselves. This role can be broken down into 3 aspects including Mobilisation/ Activism, Transparency and Campaigning. For this weeks blog I will be looking into campaigning on the Internet.

Gone are the days where campaigning was limited to being broadcasted on traditional media. Nowadays the campaigning has spread through Facebook, twitter, youtube and many other social media websites. Today political marketing can tap into their market and target campaigns accordingly (Sauter, 2014). “The Internet would allow democracy to flourish as citizens went online to debate important issues and politicians spoke directly to the people.” (Gilespie, 2007). Thanks to the internet the government becomes more liable where sites such as wiki-leaks can publish secret information, news leaks and classified media from anonymous sources. But along with this politics are more engaging and interactive then ever before where you can follow heads of governments on twitter and facebook.

A successful politician is said to manipulate media and put in place successful strategies. “Presidential elections, of course, are a key example of mediatization, in which every utterance, campaign stop, handshake and tweet is delicately engineered towards manipulating the 24-hour news cycle” (McKnight and Fish, 2014).

Image Source - http://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/p/41010504/Obama-best--way-to-move-the-Country-forward-is-if-Pelosi-is-Speaker-again.aspx

Lets just say, Barrack Obama knows how to campaign in an online environment. This picture below demonstrates this. Out of everything he has done in his busy day he chooses this picture to post on twitter. This post shows his voters that he cares about the countries future - because after all, the children are our future.

Image Source: https://twitter.com/BarackObama/statuses/459402803509616640

An example of how the internet has made people more engaged with policy making is the queensland’s governments website “Make Strong Choices” you can find it at http://www.strongchoices.qld.gov.au/. I thought this was a perfect example of a method of campaigning in queensland. Really, this site is a good idea it makes their point whilst giving queensland citizens a feeling of importance. The site explains Queensland’s debt problem with a net interest of $80 Billion. This site basically asks the queensland population to make a decision on how they would like to raise money for the debt we owe. Making out that there is only 3 choices, we either increase taxes, cut services or sell and lease some assets. Obviously selling and leasing assets seems like the best of three options. This is a way of educating the population so that when they announce leasing and selling assets the population can’t be upset by the outcome because they had the chance to vote on what the government should do.  

Image Source - http://youtu.be/LzrCKegLVV8

We are starting to see how immensely important it is for politicians to move their campaigns online and become interactive. As Shirky outlines, “social media (has) become coordinating tools for nearly all the world’s political movements” (2011) and I believe it is a very good tool for transferring information to the public. Politicians today have to be a lot more proactive, interactive and creative in their new media campaigns. But as citizens I think if we look at multiple resources (that the internet lets us retrieve) we are able to make much more educated decisions about politics then ever before. This, of course, only works if people are willing to look.

References List -  

McKnight, John Carter and Adam Fish. 2014. “Beyond Surveillance Fridges and Socialized Power Drills: Social Media and the Financialization of Everyday Life.” Culture Digitally Blog, April 14. Accessed May 4, 2014. Available at:http://culturedigitally.org/2014/04/beyond-surveillance-fridges-and-socialized-power-drills/

McNair, Brian. 2011. An Introduction to Political Communication. 5th Ed. London: Routledge.

Morozov, Evgeny. 2011. “First Thoughts on Tunisia and the Role of the Internet.”Net.Effect Blog, 14 January. Available at:http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/14/first_thoughts_on_tunisia_and_the_role_of_the_internet

Queensland Government. 2014. “Strong Choices”. Accessed May 4, 2014. http://www.strongchoices.qld.gov.au/

Sauter, Thersea. 2014. “KCB206 Internet, Self and Beyond: Week 8 New Media Politics and Engagement lecture notes.” Access May 4, 2014.http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_4_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fcontent%2FlistContent.jsp%3Fcourse_id%3D_108110_1%26content_id%3D_5232450_1

New media has changed the entertainment industry by offering new ways of marketing, distributing and receiving media. The convergence of many platforms has become very popular for creative projects such as Hollywood blockbusters as it allows the consumers to receive the story on more than one level. Transmedia is delivering a new experience for audiences by allowing access to a range of content through multiple platforms. However, when it comes to new media and the entertainment industry, convergence is only one proposition. Another proposition is known as the “inclusionary vibe” (Flynn 2001), where filmmakers include the audience, allowing them to contribute to projects by online fan sites and forums.

Gomez (2010) refers to transmedia as “The vanguard process of conveying messages, themes or storylines to a mass audience through the artful and well-planned use of multiple-media platforms.” Transmedia has been implemented in many films in the past decade, the Lord of The Rings trilogy (2001-2003) is a great example of successful implementation of transmedia with games and books available to add to the story (Gomez 2010).  The Bourne Legacy (2012) demonstrates another excellent example of transmedia. Before the film was released an iPhone game was released to gain hype for the film and work as marketing revenue. The game allowed the player to almost feel immersed in the Bourne world, by adding references to the film within the game. Basically every Hollywood blockbuster is released with a transmedia strategy (Maher 2014); these strategies keep the marketing and disruption of the product as the main focus by releasing it on multiple media platforms. However it is important to note that transmedia is not only used to market films, it has also been incorporated into other industries too. “The Art of the H3ist” was a transmedia marketing campaign that attracted millions of people to the Audi website by distributing information of a stolen A3 over different platforms. (Sauter 2014) Today, transmedia is being used for films or other products, and has evolved a long way with the help of the internet and marketing geniuses.

  Creating collaboration between the internet and new media entertainment has been a revolutionary step for creative projects as it allows them to really involve audiences through participatory fandom. Peter Jackson and Lucas George both being very successful filmmakers, require a big audience for their productions to be successful. With the introduction of new media and internet fan clubs, the audiences started requesting to have a say in the productions like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. The major difference in the production styles of Jackson and Lucas was that Jackson actively partook and listened to the online fan clubs while Lucas and Lucasfilm didn’t take much audience input on board. (Sherfin 2004)

  New Media has had a big influence over the entertainment industry in the past decades and is continuously changing the ways we consume and distribute media products. Transmedia and the inclusionary vibe have only been a small part of the new media and entertainment industries propositions, but they have had a huge influence on the way audiences experience productions, allowing fan bases to have input leaving them will a feeling of contribution.

  Reference List

  Burgess, Jean and Joshua Green. 2009. “You Tube and the Mainstream Media.” In YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture edited by Jean Burgess, Joshua Green and Henry Jenkins, 15-37. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press  

Flynn, G. 2001. Lord of the Rings: Ringmasters. Entertainment Weekly, pp. 36–46.

Gool, Daniël van. 2010. “Jeff Gomez Reveals Secrets to Transmedia Franchise Development at CineKid.” Accessed 17th March 2014. http://www.argn.com/2010/11/jeff_gomez_reveals_secrets_to_transmedia_franchise_development_at_cinekid/

Sauter, Theresa. 2014. “KCB206 Internet, Self and Beyond: Week 5 Lecture Slides.” Accessed March 20,2014. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_4_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fcontent%2FlistContent.jsp%3Fcourse_id%3D_108110_1%26content_id%3D_5232447_1

Shefrin, Elana. 2004. “Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Participatory Fandom: Mapping New Congruencies Between the Internet and Media Entertainment Culture.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 21 (3): 261-281

  In a new media environment where audience participation has grown rapidly, the practice of crowdsourcing has also inevitably grown and is now widely used. As this video explains the idea behind crowdsourcing is to “harness collective resources to solve problems and produce things,” (Sauter, 2014) creating an environment where there is a is a "linking of symmetrical participation and amateur production" (Fuchs) 

Cloud Labour is one such example. It functions on the premise of an on demand workforce to perform a variety of tasks for a small payment. Users are able to choose which tasks they wish to perform and by doing so generate new content. Like much of new media, there is a blurring of the traditional roles of producer and consumer and consequently crowd sourcing can be seen as a “manifestation of a larger trend towards a greater democratisation of commerce” (Benkler 2006, 15) This democratisation and participation creates an affordance of freedom of expression and a far more liberal media environment that often leaves the producers with a gain in their productive output and a sense of contribution.

A recent example of cloud labour and one that I found interesting given the seriousness of the subject is the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370. DigitalGlobe, a company that operates commercial imaging satellites, recently made public photos of the overwhelmingly large search area and appealed for people to “comb through images in the hope of locating something of interest.” (Ralston 2014) This is a good example of the positive nature of crowd sourcing as it provides the worker with a sense of contribution, more so than regular crowdsourcing. Being an object of such public interest and also one with an emotional element, the worker would be left with a more positive sense of contribution.

However, many people believe that crowdsourcing and cloud labour is simply exploitation by another name. Fuchs states that “corporations and their logic dominate social media and the internet” and have turned it into a “predominantly capitalist” entity. This is tied in with the idea of surplus value and the disparity between what a worker gets paid for creating a product, and what a company sells the product for. Through having people contribute their skills and resources to products without being paid “corporations reduce their investment costs and labour costs, jobs are destroyed, and consumers who work for free are extremely exploited. They produce surplus value that is appropriated and turned into profit by corporations without paying wages.” (Fuchs 2014, 106) Consequently it can be seen that the democratic aspects of new media are compromised and instead it is a “stratified reality that is shaped by structures of domination.” (Fuchs 2014 104) 

Whether, cloud labour is positive or exploitative, is not a simple answer, however, it is clear that it must be used in such a way that "builds an environment that cultivates humanity." (Zittrain. 2014) 

Reference List

Fuchs, Christian, (2013). Chapter 5 : The Power and Political Economy of Social Media. In Fuchs, Christian, Social media : a critical introduction, (pp.97 - 125). London, UK: Sage Publications. 

van Dijck, Jose (2013). ’You have one identity’: performing the self on facebook and linkedIn.,Media, Culture & Society 35 (2) pp.199-215. 

Crowdsourcing.org 2012. "Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding Explained" Youtube video posted March 15 Accessed 27/3/2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-38uPkyH9vI 

Sauter, Theresa L. 2014. kcb206 Internet, Self & Beyond Week 4 lecture. Accessed 27 March 2014. https://lecturecapture.qut.edu.au/ess/echo/presentation/3f75f7d4-0dd5-4c27-87e1-1163805f5881?ec=true

Social Media is popularly viewed as positive and beneficial for society. It’s seen as participatory by consumers, and that it can lead to both social and political revolutions - witness in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia in 2011, where social media was considered a driving force behind keeping protests alive, leading to political changes. Fuchs acknowledges that social media supported those protests and revolutions but he argues that there are no social media revolutions, as technology in itself is not a revolution (Fuchs 2013).  He further states that corporate social media denies liberal freedom of association and that assembly is suspended (Fuchs 2013). Big corporations centralise the formation of speech, association, assembly and opinion on social media (Fuchs 2013). In this aspect Fuchs considers that social media isn’t participatory but employs negative critical terms like “class, exploitation and surplus value” (Fuchs 2013). His analysis explores Karl Marx as the founding figure of critical political economy. Contrary to Fuchs’ view, I think that social media has a tremendously positive benefit to countries where the government has been restrictive or corrupt such as some in North African and the Middle East where social media has been used to promote anti government protests. Some of those countries denied the right to assemble and where people did gather, they were at risk of physical harm. So rather than corporate social media suspending freedom of association, social media in those countries has allowed “freedom of association” by the internet.  Fuchs sees that social media is controlled by people whose beliefs reinforce capitalist domination (Fuchs 2013).  He lists the most popular sites on youtube and the most googled sites are those of popular singers and entertainers and that political sites have very small fan bases, especially those that are what could be termed “alternative” political sites (Fuchs 2013).  He believes that corporations dominate social media and that the internet is mostly capitalist in character (Fuchs 2013). Many corporate social media platforms exploit users to work for no pay, and then try and influence them to buy a product via the ads that pop up while using social media sites. The corporations gather data for on sale to advertisers.  These are “prosumers”, both producers and consumers (Fuchs 2013). The prosumer is getting some enjoyment from using the internet so that it all becomes part of what the author describes as “playbour” that is play/labour, part of the blurring of the lines between working and playing (Fuchs 2013).  The article then takes on an even darker note and describes what he calls the “islave” behind the iPhone (Fuchs 2013). He details the very poor working conditions of workers who produce Mac products. Exposure to chemicals, humiliation at work, low wages, bad work safety and high suicides to name just a few. He emphasises that the capital accumulation involved with the internet is not limited to unpaid users, but goes back to the very beginnings of internet use - that is the very making of the products used to access the internet. Fuchs also traces the exploitation of corporations involved in social media back to even the minerals required to make the products such as many smartphones and laptops. He cites the abuse in places like the Congo, where people are enslaved to extract those minerals from mines.  

In conclusion, Fuchs sees social media in a negative light, as it exploits unpaid internet users, and the workers who create the products. 

References: