Week 9 Notes Political economy of social media
What is political economy? -Political economy is a branch of social science that studies the relationship that forms between a nation's population and its government when public policy is enacted. - Political Economy draws on a range of economic thinking and ideas to apply different lenses – ie. class, gender, race etc – to analyse the economy and the big issues that impact it. -Example = TikTok as it was haled by congress as they wanted to regulate them as they were owned by a Chinese company that was suspected of stealing its users info. -Concerns about monopolistic practises, surveillance, data commodification and, the interplay between capital, labour, and technology. ( Fuchs, C. (2015). Culture and economy in the age of social media. New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.) Platform capitalism: -Platform capitalism refers to the activities of companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Uber, Airbnb, Amazon and others to operate as platforms....