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Argumentative Capitalism Paper

Decent Essays

To describe her view on society’s highly mediated, digitised systems of communication and current political organisation, Dean uses the term, "communicative capitalism". Communicative capitalism designates, “the contemporary ideological formation that is present in the hegemonic merger of new economy discourse and participatory democracy” (BIT THOMPT, 2013) whereby, “the injunction to get connected and participate [online] is also an injunction to buy and make oneself available to marketers to capture our data and sell it” (BIT THOMPT, 2013). Online user participation on websites such as Facebook and Twitter, whose aims are to, “attract advertisers to our platform and increase the amount that advertisers spend with us” (United States Securities …show more content…

Nicholls, CULTURES OF SPEED, April 5, 2015) as the militarisation of culture employs intelligence to gather metadata on individuals so that patterns of consumption can be anticipated and calculated (B. Nicholls, CULTURES OF SPEED, April 5, 2015). Another aspect of Dean’s communicative capitalism, which Virilio’s views align with, is the idea that when users voice their opinions online, it inhibits the actuality for political change (B. Nicholls, speed culture, April 5, 2015). When users post on the Internet, it creates “talk without response, in which the very practices associated with governance by the people consolidate and support the most brutal inequities of corporate-controlled capitalism” (Dean, 2009, p.24). Virilio calls this “talk without response” (Dean, 2009, p.24) disinformation, as speed technologies provide an “excess of contradictory information” (B. Nicholls, speed culture, April 5, 2015); everyone’s opinions within communications environments are all validated. This validation allows people with political power to be relieved from having to listen to the public, as their own interests can be served due to their advantaged positions while the voices of those online simply remain in circulation (Dean,

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