Content Form:APRJA 13 Edoardo Biscossi

Edoardo Biscossi

Labour, speculation and self-reflexivity in technologically mediated content economies

Abstract

This article proposes platform pragmatics as a framework for understanding collective behaviour and forms of labour within platform ecosystems. It contributes to the field of platform criticism by problematising a certain view of users as passive victims of surveillance and algorithmic governmentality. The main argument is developed by thinking through the production of content and forms by users, and their circulation through computational logic and affective contagion. Through some illustrative cases and analyses of cultural habits, the article addresses the political and aesthetic configuration of these forms of production — not only of content/forms, but also of culture and subjectivity. This is explored by thinking through three themes: the subsumption of creativity and opportunism in platform economies; the mobilisation of speculative temporalities not only in computation but also across user practices; and the generalisation of self-reflexivity as a feminised cultural behaviour and aesthetic mode. Finally, I propose to understand platform pragmatics as a mode of subaltern power, that might be alien to traditional political reason, but precisely because of this needs to be grappled with through inventive cultural and social criticism.

Introduction

This article proposes platform pragmatics as a framework for understanding collective behaviour and forms of labour within platform environments. The main argument is developed by thinking through the production of content and forms by platform users and creators, and how they circulate through dynamics of imitation and virality. It contributes to the field of platform criticism by pushing against a certain view of platform users as passive victims of surveillance and algorithmic governmentality, while also problematising the putatively autonomous position of the User as the universal agent of technology. I will start by thematising how a certain disposition to performance is increasingly important for a widening range of jobs, especially those connected to platform and attention economies. The article draws from digital media theory to understand content and forms as produced through a mesh of computational logic and affective contagion. Then, it considers the political and aesthetic configuration of this form of production — not only of content/forms, but also of culture and subjectivity — through some illustrative cases and analyses of cultural habits. This configuration is explored by thinking through three themes: the subsumption of creativity and opportunism in platform economies; the mobilisation of speculative temporalities not only in computation but also across user practices; and the generalisation of self-reflexivity as a feminised cultural behaviour and aesthetic mode. Following these threads, I finally propose to understand platform pragmatics as a mode of subaltern power, that might be alien to traditional political reason, but precisely because of this needs to be grappled with through inventive cultural and social criticism.

Platform mediated content economies

Over the last decade, the proprietary platform technologies served to us by Big Tech have become key infrastructures of social life, of work and research, of cultural imaginaries and collective action. Although spheres of techno-cultural diversity still exist and thrive within the “platform society” (van Dijck et al) — the “Corporate Platform Complex” (Terranova “After the Internet”) is deeply embedded in the background of everyday life, in a baroque mesh of networked user profiles, data interfaces and affective flows. Platforms mediate sociality even when people or organisations actively withdraw from them — see the case of Transmediale opting out of social media. Attending to them is necessary to those who champion their ethosjust as much as to those who critique it. Platforms mediate the art biennale and its boycott, the university’s neoliberal policies and its occupation by students.

Given their growing pervasiveness, a diverse body of research has developed criticisms of digital platforms. These are now widely understood as centralised architectures exercising integrated control over networked users’ interactions (Bratton), strategically leveraging their infrastructural position to harvest data from these networks (van Dijck et al). A significant object of critique has been the models by which platforms valorise the data gathered from social interaction (Srnicek) and how these models function through impersonal and cybernetic modes of power grounded in protocol and control (Galloway; Hui; Williams). Specifically, platform control operates by anticipating, modelling and influencing behaviour through statistical patterning and “algorithmic governmentality” (Rouvroy & Berns).

In the platform mediated social, economic survival requires at least the adoption of platform services, while access to the pleasures of sociality, consumption and aesthetic enjoyment often necessitates a willing self-investment in their logic. Our desires for traveling, for cultivating interests, even for sexual encounters, are strategically channelled through platform models of attention capture and networked sociality. Sustaining a working life that fulfils one’s ambitions often requires platforms to mediate our connections, reputation, if not direct earnings. However, this doesn’t mean that our proximity to networked computation is only forced by social necessities. For many of us, interaction with media and computation can be a pleasurable and interesting experience in itself, something we actively seek out.

For these and other reasons, subjective investment in the logic of the platform complex keeps the collective body/mind at work around the clock, as a creative production unit: scripting narratives, producing content, devising promotional strategies, developing networks of contacts, partners, supporters, cultivating audiences and hopefully expanding them, ‘hacking growth’. Personally, working freelance without possessing any particularly scarce technical skill, keeping my feet in more than one industry (‘at the intersection’ as the saying goes), while trying to do research in a way that is economically sustainable, requires me to mobilise all my inventiveness and opportunism — always keeping an eye on platform dynamics.

But such demands are not a cross to bear only for ‘cognitive’ or ‘knowledge’ workers, researchers or creatives. This is not only because all labour involves knowledge, cognitive activity, and has at least some immaterial component — as highlighted by autonomist Marxism — but also because the production of content and forms has become important for a widening range of professions. Running a popular Substack, operating fluently as a digital creator of some sort, or even just having a good social media presence, all function as good indicators of the entrepreneurial disposition that is usually required for white-collar or creative careers. But a similar disposition towards content and platform presence is increasingly important for professions that are not traditionally associated with performance or self-spectacle.

Companies increasingly understand their employees as content publishers and even influencers, capable of generating value for them not only through direct labour time, but also through their free engagement with content/forms on digital platforms, which is something they can also be trained and encouraged to do. Inevitably, “employee-generated content” becomes a management category and a consultancy genre (Goodall). Unsurprisingly, Amazon is an early pioneer in this: from 2018 to 2022, the company had reportedly set up an internal ambassador scheme, paying employees for positively representing the company on social media — especially regarding the controversial issue of working conditions (Suciu). But besides the interests of their employers, content production engages workers first and foremost as self-entrepreneurs. In my PhD research on platform labour, I observed how gig workers often supplement scarce or unreliable earnings through content creation and other platform mediated side-hustles. For instance, online content around delivery work is often produced by workers themselves, in a proliferation of formats including tutorials, vlogs, newsletters, challenges, reaction videos, forums and group chats. People usually try to grow a community of followers, promoting content about their work with practical or entertainment purposes, sometimes even selling gadgets or coaching services (Biscossi). The capacity to create media forms, assigned by McKenzie Wark to the “hacker class” (Wark), appears increasingly essential to the working class as a whole.

Because of the ease of access to digital marketplaces, the practice of side-hustling, historically necessary to precarious workers for making ends meet, becomes more and more generalised. Precarity is reframed as a chance for empowerment, which resonates with a general need for opportunities in the face of economic vulnerability, but also with a certain desire for self- realisation and liberation from the drudgery of day-jobs. Platforms democratise entrepreneurial hustle by enabling anybody anywhere to access extremely dynamic content marketplaces, connecting with audiences and finding inventive ways to monetise attention, to live off one’s previously un-expressed talent. After all, a key promise of the platform economy is that of connecting self-expression to monetisation, potentially freeing oneself from the dread of salaried work by pursuing their passion.

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