JournalTOCs

tripleC : Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.363

Citation Impact (citeScore): 1
Number of Followers: 6

This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 1726-670X
Published by U of Westminster

[1 journal]

Governable Stacks against Digital Colonialism
- Authors: Nathan Schneider
  Pages: 19 - 36
  Abstract: Critics have been converging around the logic of colonialism to describe the Internet economy. If we are serious about the laden language of the colonial, we should be ready to learn from struggles against pre-digital empires and colonial regimes. Although acts of insurrection may attract more attention, one thing leaders and theorists of anticolonial resistance have stressed persistently is the centrality of self-governance in everyday life as both a means and end of their movements. But the dominant platforms for online communities are not well-suited for durable self-governing. Resistance often relies on the same colonial firms it opposes. What would community-governed technologies look like' This paper introduces the concept of “governable stacks”, a framework for self-governing as resistance to digital colonialism.
  PubDate: 2022-01-12
  DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v20i1.1281
  Issue No: Vol. 20, No. 1 (2022)
Book Review: Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture – Audiences, Social
Media, and Big Data by Jacob Johanssen & Event Horizon – Sexuality,
Politics, Online Culture, and the Limits of Capitalism by Bonni Rambatan &
Jacob Johanssen
- Authors: Jamie Ranger
  Pages: 37 - 44
  Abstract: Jamie Ranger reviews Jacob Johanssen’s Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture – Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data. The book offers a comprehensive account of our contemporary media environment – digital culture and audiences in particular – by drawing on psychoanalysis and media studies frameworks. Event Horizon, written by Johanssen in co-authorship with Bonni Rambatan, applies a psychoanalytic lens to online culture, modern sexuality and politics to examine the functioning of capitalist ideology.
  PubDate: 2022-02-07
  DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v20i1.1325
  Issue No: Vol. 20, No. 1 (2022)
The Fourth Industrial Revolution: A New Ideology
- Authors: Ian Moll
  Pages: 45 - 61
  Abstract: The hegemonic construal of the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ portrays rapid technological developments as a bold, new industrial revolution. Since there is sparse evidence of any such revolution across the totality of social, political, cultural and economic institutions, locally and globally, the focus must turn to how this ideological frame functions to further the interests of social and economic elites worldwide. This article examines the way that Klaus Schwab, as the principal intellectual of the World Economic Forum and the interests it represents, has formulated and disseminated this ideology. The article argues that the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ frame bolsters the contingent neoliberalism of the post-Washington consensus period, and therefore serves to obscure the continuing decline of the globalised world order with a ‘brave new world’ narrative.
  PubDate: 2022-02-17
  DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v20i1.1297
  Issue No: Vol. 20, No. 1 (2022)
Mainstream News Media's Engagement with Friedrich Engels’s
Concept of Social Murder
- Authors: Piara Govender, Stella Medvedyuk, Dennis Raphael
  Pages: 62 - 81
  Abstract: Literature now exists on how the media reports on health inequalities. One compelling concept as to the sources and impacts of health inequalities is “social murder” as articulated by Friedrich Engels in his 1845 volume, The Condition of the Working Class in England, whereby the capitalist economic system sent workers prematurely to the grave to serve the profit motives of the bourgeoisie. There is a reemergence of the concept in the academic literature in response to growing social and health inequalities, but is this material being reported to the public' We examine news content since the turn of the 21st century and find a significant increase since 2017 in reporting that evokes the social murder concept in relation to the Grenfell Tower Fire, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the imposition of austerity in Canada and the UK. We consider these developments in relation to journalists’ roles and their reporting on health inequalities.
  PubDate: 2022-02-26
  DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v20i1.1323
  Issue No: Vol. 20, No. 1 (2022)
Labour Struggles in Digital Capitalism: Challenges and Opportunities for
Worker Organisation, Mobilisation, and Activism in Germany
- Authors: Holger Pötzsch, Kerem Schamberger
  Pages: 82 - 100
  Abstract: In this article, we investigate labour struggles under the condition of digital capitalism. The main research question we address is: How do German unions evaluate and respond to the rapidly accelerating digitalisation of economy and work' Based on a series of interviews with union representatives in Germany, we trace recent developments within an increasingly digitised economy, outlining challenges and opportunities for unions. Our findings show that the large-scale deployment of digital technologies fragments the workforce, reduces social standards, worsens working conditions, and exacerbates power imbalances to the detriment of the employed. These disadvantages are only insufficiently met with new opportunities to raise public awareness and connect with and mobilise workers by means of digital communication technologies. Our study suggests a growing significance of technological expertise for unions, a need to meet global capital with enhanced international and regional cooperation among labour organisations, and the importance of uniting established unions and grassroots workers’ movements in shared struggles to improve the situation of workers under technology-enhanced conditions of globalised exploitation and control.
  PubDate: 2022-03-27
  DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v20i1.1314
  Issue No: Vol. 20, No. 1 (2022)
The Power of Neoliberalism: Transformation, Neo-Elitism and Class
Continuities in the Post-Apartheid Media
- Authors: Prinola Govenden
  Pages: 101 - 120
  Abstract: Critical political economy of the media investigates how changes in the array of forces that exercise control of media institutions liberate or limit the public sphere. South Africa’s political economy of transition from apartheid to democracy was notably characterised by the emergence of new black capitalist interests merging with established white capital to refashion multi-racial capital, facilitated by a Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) strategy that aimed to address the racial injustices of the past. These changes greatly impacted media ownership, diversifying a previously racially homogenised and localised apartheid media market. The ‘new’ South Africa also moved from racial capitalism to neoliberalism as its economic system. This study investigates whether these ownership diversity changes in the South African print media market in the first twenty years of its democracy (1994–2014) liberated or limited the public sphere. A total of 684 newspaper front-page and editorial articles were analysed using both quantitative and qualitative content analysis, to aggregate as well as investigate deeper meanings and associations in diversity trends. South Africa’s neoliberal economic context substantially informs the nature of print media content transformation and diversity, which is found to be elite driven, marking the emergence of class continuities. This despite a specialised BEE affirmative action programme envisaged to cultivate transformed and diverse media content through transformed ownership. The study concludes that attempts to transform, diversify, de-westernise, and decolonise the media systems in post-colonial countries will be futile if the power of neoliberalism to perpetuate class inequalities and the race dynamics of the past remain underestimated and unaddressed.
  PubDate: 2022-03-29
  DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v20i1.1301
  Issue No: Vol. 20, No. 1 (2022)
Challenging Brands’ Calculated Messages of Hope during a Pandemic:
Twitter-User Response to COVID-19 Advertising Campaigns
- Authors: Tony Kelso, Zeynep Altinay
  Pages: 121 - 137
  Abstract: Typically, consumer advertising is designed to promote or build brand identity for goods or services. Yet when a major crisis disrupts the everyday flow of life, advertisers often pivot from directly pitching their brands to conveying messages that somewhat reflect the tone of public service announcements. After examining the nature of much of the television advertising produced shortly after the United States was placed on lockdown following the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic, this exploratory study investigates posts to Twitter to begin to address the question: To what extent did viewers’ interpretations of pandemic-themed commercials either accord with or challenge the advertisers’ intended messages of hope' The results show that targeted consumers demonstrated a greater tendency to contest advertisers’ inspirational themes than to passively accept them. These findings are discussed within the context of advertising’s ideological function as propaganda aimed toward especially active audiences in the age of social media.
  PubDate: 2022-04-29
  DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v20i1.1310
  Issue No: Vol. 20, No. 1 (2022)
The Prison Media Complex: Labour, Technology and Communication
Infrastructures in the Prison System
- Authors: Fredrik Stiernstedt, Anne Kaun
  Pages: 1 - 18
  Abstract: Prisons are a recurring topic and backdrop in the popular culture of the Global North. They often serve as spectacular environments that seem far removed from most people’s everyday lives. This article develops the notion of the prison media complex and discusses material entanglements between prisons and private media industries via the production of media technologies, consumption of communication, and technology development in the prison sector. The article seeks to answer the question of how we can conceptualise the prison media complex (PMC) from a materialist perspective. Taking the Swedish context as a starting point, we analyse the economic and material connections that characterise the PMC in this national context. Drawing on archival data, participant observations at prison technology tradeshows and a prison sector conference, as well as freedom of information requests, we bring nuance to the picture of media and communication technologies, as technologies of freedom are also based on unfreedom and captivity.
  PubDate: 2021-12-13
  DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v20i1.1270
  Issue No: Vol. 20, No. 1 (2021)