[Martyn Thayne // Digital Profiling: The Accumulation of Personal Data in the Attention Economy] 1

Digital Profiling: The Accumulation of Personal Data in the

Attention Economy

Martyn Thayne // University of Lincoln

Abstract

Emerging from a critique of recent celebratory studies of new media, I incorporate a Deleuzian conceptual
framework to analyse the economic motivations associated with the production and consumption of user
generated material. In particular, I examine the Deleuzian concept of ‘control societies’ within the context of how
digital media databases may be associated with the ‘re-territorialisation’ of global capitalism. As computer
algorithms increasingly collate personal information, ubiquitous interactive technologies not only suggest,
influence and promote, they may also begin to produce and ‘sort’ all aspects of networked culture. This is not to
deny the significance of potential forms of empowerment which are played out in participatory cultures, but it
does draw attention to the complex nature of user agency. I suggest that digital interactivity is being increasingly
implemented into the monetization strategies of user-generated platforms. It is highly lucrative for commercial
interests to integrate themselves within online communities in order to extract the financial benefits from the
practice of social participation, in addition to stimulating the individual user to interact closely with relevant
goods and services. I demonstrate a number of ways that the personal information transferred within these
networks may be utilised in an economic context, as well as exploring the technological infrastructure used to do
so.

Keywords

User generated content / Business models / Production / Consumption / Social Networks / New Media / Control /
Interactivity / Database / Personal Information

Email
martynthayne@yahoo.co.uk // mthayne@lincoln.ac.uk

[Paper originally delivered at ESF-LiU Conference: Paying Attention: Digital Media Cultures and Generational Responsibility - Scandic
Linköping Vast, Linköping, Sweden, 6-10 September 2010. All rights reserved]
 [Martyn Thayne // Digital Profiling: The Accumulation of Personal Data in the Attention Economy] 2

Digital Profiling: The Accumulation of Personal Data in the Attention Economy

The aim of this paper is to address a variety of recent socio-technological developments to digital media
technologies and suggest a number of areas which require closer academic scrutiny. By discussing how
information produced within participatory networks is increasingly integrated into online monetization
practices I demonstrate that relationships between consumers and commercial markets have become
increasingly intimate in the digital age. Subsequently, these interactive networks have become a valuable
source of personal data, which may not only be used to profile individual users but also influence and control
forms of consumption.

In recent years, scholarly approaches to studying user generated material have tended to focus on new modes
of interactive production and decentralised exhibition which challenge traditional concepts of the media
‘audience’. This can be viewed from the context of the emergent Media Studies 2.0 movement as championed
by David Gauntlett (2007) and William Merrin (2008). I would also argue it includes other recent theoretical
works which celebrate new modes of cultural participation, self-expression and multimedia communication -
experiences which have been aligned to a supposed ‘digital revolution’ (see Tapscott, 2006; Benkler, 2006;
Rosen, 2006; Jenkins; 2008; Bruns, 2008). These studies suggest that democratic participation has changed the
face of media creation, distribution and consumption. Whilst participatory media technologies have indeed
radically transformed these areas, there are a number of other contributing factors which must be addressed.
We need to move beyond marvelling at the phenomenon of user-generated content to understanding its place
in economic and socio-cultural circuits. As Terranova has noted, changes to the relationship between
production and consumption are played out within a field that is “always and already capitalism” (2004: 79).
Consequently, the social and radically novel aspect of these transformations may be persistently undermined
or appropriated by commercial processes. This is not to deny the significance of potential forms of
empowerment which are played out in participatory cultures, but it does draw attention to the complex nature
of user agency.

Consumption as Production

One of the most significant cultural transformations in recent years has been the convergence of media
technology, information machines and social communication networks. Platforms which encourage and exhibit
user-generated content exist in a symbiotic relationship with applications that allow users to converse in
shared dialogue and connect with multiple users in online communities. As users upload, share, review, rate,
embed, bookmark and discuss they contribute to the whole process, the result is a participatory culture which
allows public citizens to express themselves in new and exciting ways (Gauntlett, 2007; Jenkins, 2008; Merrin,
2008). Van Dijck examines such activity on user-generated sites according to the intensity and frequency of
engagement and reveals that there are several levels of participation 1 (2009: 44). Whilst new media interaction
does not always necessarily represent the conscious contribution of data, all modes of digital participation may
be utilised to some extent since such activities are routinely monitored by ubiquitous, networked technologies.
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This paper explores the socio-cultural and economic impact of these multiple forms of digital participation as
individuals relay information about themselves across new media networks both intentionally (through
weblogs, status updates, posting personal media content, etc.) and inadvertently (through browser cookies
which are assigned to track user’s online habits and various forms of ‘data mining’, etc.).

Despite the apparent empowering nature of cultural participation, the traditional values of privacy and the
construction of self-identity must also be re-examined in greater depth by media scholars. Further qualitative
research is needed to address the social and political implications, as previously undisclosed, personal
information is made public through ephemeral multimedia forms and exchanged within digital communication
networks. The analysis of these issues must take into account the evolution of economic systems in the digital
age as new modes of self-expression and social relations are increasingly monitored by market forces. Indeed,
Zwick and Knott suggest, “the ultimate objective of the deployment of modern surveillance technologies in
marketing has been the disciplining and controlling of behavioural variations” (2009: 225). Therefore, as social
software become increasingly embedded within the everyday experiences of the user, the computer
infrastructure of these technologies allows data to be utilised as a means of directly profiling and influencing
the consumer, often in ways which escape recognition. Since the modes of surveillance flow freely through
domestic spaces, in telephones, televisions, computers, and even in the metering of utilities (Lyon, 2002: 2),
personal data produced and transferred in digital cultures may be used to monitor and target an individual
user in a multitude of ways. A more contextualised understanding of such developments must be integrated
into a contemporary media studies discourse, one which commonly engages with concerns voiced by scholars
of the surveillance society (see Poster, 1990; Graham, 1998, 2005; Lyon, 2002; Arvidsson, 2005) by aligning
such conceptual work to interrogate the social and economic impact of new forms of media production and
exhibition.

Given the increase of networked technologies that facilitate the regular production and surveillance of
personal information, conversations about user generated material must be framed within a more economic
context as this data is increasingly central to new modes of digital advertising and marketing. This is ultimately
where the discourse of Media Studies 2.0 becomes problematic as it largely ignores the commercial strategies
which have emerged in relation to the technological architecture of participatory media. As Van Dijck suggests,
we need to account for the multifarious roles of users in a media environment where the boundaries between
commerce, content and information are currently being redrawn (2009: 42). As the distinctions between
media producers and consumers continue to blur digital content becomes increasingly decentralised and user
generated. Dan Tapscott has called this prosumption, whereby the consumer, in part, defines the end product
and content is determined as a result (1999: xxi). The proliferation of personal data transferred within these
networks has become central to the development of new social relations alongside innovative business
models. The ability to interact directly with users has become a pre-requisite for almost all corporate
marketing in the digital age, with networked technologies allowing companies to implement a two-way
rhetoric between commercial products and potential consumers. Locke, et al. illustrate how the Internet has
radically reframed business approaches in the digital economy by insisting that ‘markets are conversations’
and to succeed companies must embrace the customer as an individual and allow them to be a part of the
product they are consuming (2001: xxi). In addition to encouraging consumers to tailor services specific to
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them, Zwick and Knott have noted that the accumulation of modular connections produced when interacting
with information machines has also enabled marketers to ‘manufacture’ relevant customers for pre-existing
products - thus demonstrating the efficiency of contemporary capitalism. Therefore, although there are
genuine socio-cultural benefits aligned to the use of digital technologies, it would be naive to accept that
global corporatism and political control is any less significant in the new media environment than it was during
the centralised broadcast-era.

The blurred boundaries between producers, consumers, and the cultures in which they operate must be seen
as interdependent of the same ecosystem. Users of new media are both potential receivers and potential
producers of content as the interactive nature of networked media create an environment which relies on the
collaborative, widely distributed, ‘produsage’ of information and knowledge (Efimova, 2008: 532). Whilst the
technological affordances of digital media may appear to have innovative and productive consequences, many
of these forms have been historically underpinned with the rhetoric of capitalism. This genealogical approach
is important if we are to develop a more critical understanding of user generated content since it captures the
fluid and flexible nature of global capitalism in the digital age. Deleuze and Guattari (1987), amongst others
(Terranova, 2004; Thrift, 2005) have adapted this approach to discuss how systems of political-economy
constantly evolve and ‘re-territorialize’ new sites of productive power. Here, the ontological and autonomous
input of content is acted upon and integrated into the valorisation process. Rather than merely celebrating
how these new technologies liberate the media consumer from traditional broadcast structures, it is vital that
contemporary scholarship actively considers the commercial, non-commercial, and political motivations
involved in this process. By doing so we may identify any recognisable patterns which are emerging within
sites of peer-production.

Information as Commodity

In the digital age information has become a ‘commodity’ which is transferred amongst users within new media
networks, as well as representing economic value to advertisers, marketers and site owners. The development
of contemporary capitalism has been facilitated, in part, by information machines which trace the data
produced by everyday digital practices and systematically reorganize these flows into structured patterns of
economic value, “the configuration of which depends on the code used by the controlling agent” (Zwick &
Knott, 2009: 240). This process has been discussed by Deleuze and Guattari as a schizophrenic mode of ‘de-
territorialisation and re-territorialisation’ (1987). In short, de-territorialisation describes capitalism’s tendency
to break down all that is fixed by abstracting individuals and specific points of interest from their territorial
settings and separating them into discrete flows of information (Haggerty and Ericson 200: 606). Therefore, all
forms of new media activity and digital participation feed into a vast collection of interrelated data
assemblages. As Zwick and Knott identify, “the digital traces of our existence become culturally and
economically meaningful only when they are not only captured but organized, interpreted and acted upon”
(2009: 228). Re-territorialisation, therefore, describes the moment when data relating to specific preferences,
interests, desires, wants and needs are extracted from these data assemblages and recoded, thus
accumulating tangible economic value. The networked nature of new media intensifies the multitude of
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modular connections that can be made as users integrate participatory digital practices into their daily
routines, resulting in a proliferation of data flows which may be continually abstracted, reinterpreted and
valorised by various computer based algorithms.

In online texts, such as news articles, substantive information is shared to enhance the knowledge of online
communities. In social networking and new modes of micro-blogging, however, there is less reliance on the
exchange of significant information; instead, large amounts of small ‘bits’ of data are continually generated
and transmitted (Miller 2008: 398). The majority of this is often personal and, as such, the data stored in these
networks has great potential for marketing and advertising. Couldry reveals a pressure to limit the length of
digital narratives, whether to take account of people’s attention when reading text online, or to limit the file
size of video or sound (2008: 382). Whilst these limitations have been stimulated by the technical constraints
posed by bandwidth, it is evident that these limits may also be implemented to encourage the input of
information which can be easily integrated within databases. Manovich argues there has been an increasing
shift from linear narrative forms of cultural expression towards a new digital culture defined by the database,
which are structured collections of data, organised for fast search and retrieval by a computer (2001: 218). By
analysing these patterns in greater depth we may begin to understand the economic motivations associated
with such trends.

Vincent Miller (2008) proposes that pervasive, networked connectivity stimulates an ephemeral media culture
increasingly defined by ‘phatic’ communications. These ‘purpose-less expressions’ and ‘accounts of irrelevant
happenings’ are purely social and hold little-to-no informational or dialogical relevance. Thus, the most
considerable aspect of this ‘phatic’ culture is to continually sustain social connections within the network,
exemplified by the communicative practice of ‘status updates’ on sites like Facebook; or posting personal,
seemingly random videos on YouTube. These are “largely motivated less by having something particular to
say... as [they are] by the obligation to say ‘something’... to let one’s network know that one is still ‘there’”
(Miller, 2008: 393). Twitter and other similar micro-blogging applications focus on maintaining a ‘connected
presence’ by prompting users to post generic updates of up to 140 characters, stimulating a pattern of online
communication which is devoid of meaningful dialogue. It also encourages users to regularly reveal intimate
‘snippets’ of information about themselves which may be mined and stored within marketable databases.
Phatic communication, then, illustrates a blend of social forms, with a focus on brevity associated with the
imposed limits of what can be posted or uploaded. In order to establish a more critical understanding of the
impact that this may have on user behaviour, I suggest experimental research approaches that focus on the
technological architecture within sites of production and exhibition must be developed. This may reveal how
the routines and practices of users are conditioned to adopt forms which may be utilised by in the
monetization process.

Social Networks as Markets

The emergence of a database culture indicates what Zwick and Knott (2009: 236-238) call the ‘logic of capitalist
accumulation’ as all forms consumption and everyday life are broken down into measures of information so
that each consumer action becomes a statement to be inserted into the various flows of data. They suggest
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that the electronic consumer list has come to visualize consumption, leading to a reorganization of the gaze of
marketers and the way marketing practice configures and controls spaces of operation, production, and
economic valorisation (Zwick & Knott, 2009: 222). In other words, the collection of consumer data has become
increasingly central to contemporary capitalist societies, with a host of digital technologies being developed to
facilitate such practices. Miller offers a useful analysis of this shift and demonstrates that the data-intensive
nature of phatic culture is being supported and encouraged by new social media enterprises (2008: 397-399).
For example, Facebook’s ‘Beacon’ application tracks the purchases and interests of ‘friends’ within the
network by aggregating data about users' activity on external sites. Despite ‘Beacon’ now being ‘opt-in’,
meaning that users have more control over which programs may access their details, the collection of data is
still prevalent in social networks through applications which require the user to agree that their information
may be accessed and shared with affiliate programs. This trend is set to increase with Facebook recently
launching its new ‘Open Graph’ and ‘Connect’ applications 2. These social plug-in allows content and comments
which are viewed and contributed elsewhere on the Net to be shared within the user’s Facebook feed. These
applications not only make it easier for users to share information and content, they also discretely aggregate
and produce a multitude of modular connections between specific users, products, services, geographic
location, and personal preferences, making individuals increasingly marketable.

The automated accumulation capacity of new media technologies therefore enables all forms of social activity
within digital cultures to be included in the valorisation process. Several scholars (Müller, 2006; van Dijck,
2009) have argued that instead of describing the interactive user as ‘prosumer,’ participants of the new media
environment are best figured as producers who are continually targeted as consumers, what Müller calls the
‘conducer’ (2006). Interaction and contribution online leads to the continual production and transference of
personal information, which may be utilised by commercial interests without prior knowledge of the
individual. As a result, to quote Müller, “the ‘conducer’ has no option but to collaborate, intentionally or
unintentionally, at any given time, being seduced by the ever increasing entertaining value of contents,
applications and services” (2006: 15). The array of interactive features facilitated by digital media enables the
user to be individually profiled and targeted through the automated compilation of personal data. Andrejevic
sees this as a form of exploitation:

The contemporary deployment of interactivity exploits participation as a form of labour. Consumers generate
marketable commodities by submitting to comprehensive monitoring. They are not so much participating, in the
progressive sense of collective self-determination, as they are working by submitting to interactive monitoring.
The advent of digital interactivity does not challenge the social relations associated with capitalist rationalization,
it reinforces them and expands the scale on which they operate.
(Andrejevic 2003: 196-197)

While it may indeed be evident that there is a level of labour relations at play here, Banks and Humphries
argue that the utilisation of user generated content is not merely outright exploitation of unpaid labour, but a
terrain of negotiation and power relations quite different from those of industrial-era production (2008: 402).
As a result, existing methods of cultural labour must be adapted to accommodate the arbitration between
commercial forces and the non-monetary, interpersonal relations which have emerged in the digital age.
Although interactivity has become increasingly central to financial economies, rather than simply implying the
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social has become commoditized, the extraction of economic value from social relationships is a dynamic and
emergent process which also transforms the practices of businesses and capital. Here, user engagement can
be seen as empowering for those who create, interact and contribute on the one hand, and central to
innovative, online business models on the other.

Digital Media as Architecture of Control

For Foucault (1975, 1988), the documentation of individuals can be seen as a form of control since the
continual exchange of personal information subjugates the individual as an object of knowledge. As modern
social systems require the transference and contribution of information that may not have previously been
made public, it is evident that individuals are subject to various means of constant observation. The body as a
site of power thus becomes docile and individuals may be subject to institutional regulation (1975: 136). In his
discussions of surveillance culture and social control, Foucault implements Bentham’s ‘Panopticon’ model as a
metaphor for society. The Panopticon was an architectural prison design which enables supervision and
scrutiny of every inmate without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched or not, thus
instilling a sense of continual surveillance which would condition individuals to alter their behaviour
accordingly (Bentham, 1995: 29-95). As Arvidsson has noted, since the 1950’s market researchers have
developed a series of techniques to observe and make use of consumer mobility (2005: 456), resulting in a
‘super market-panopticon’ (Poster, 1990) that facilitates the profiling, disciplining and sorting of consumer
behaviour. Therefore, surveillance must be seen as a historical development which has become endemic of
digital culture as these techniques are increasingly embedded into contemporary capitalist societies:

It is not merely that new information technologies have made everyday actions and communications
routinely visible as never before, or that networked technologies have helped to turn the rigid top-down
apparatus of surveillance into a flexible assemblage of pulsating, undulating observations, but that the
phenetic drive has been raised to a new level
(Lyon, 2002: 3)

Henriquez (2008) suggests electronic technologies intensify the capacity and ubiquity of surveillance, which
produces new forms of social control. Since digital networks compile vast ‘flows’ of personal information which
can be monitored remotely, it is noticeable that our physical identities are increasingly aligned to a ‘data body’
which exists in connection to these technologies. Digital interactivity encourages, and often demands, personal
data to be published publicly, thus increasing the possibility that users may be observed and monitored
without them knowing at any given time. Features like live feeds and picture-tagging on social networking sites
stimulate the growth of personal information connected to an individual’s data body. This data can be used to
profile online and offline habits, and increasingly forms of geo-tagging can be implemented by facial
recognition, location monitoring and other similar technologies. While this may be sufficiently acceptable in
terms of identifying and minimising security threats, the continual observation of citizens highlights the
potential infringement of personal privacy and requires closer academic enquiry.
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Deleuze (1992) has observed the evolution of ‘environments of enclosure’ and associated mechanisms of
control. He suggests there has been a fundamental shift from ‘disciplinary societies’, as located by Foucault as
separate social spaces where the individual is dominated (such as early family life, through to the school,
military and working environments), towards the “progressive and dispersed installation of a new system of
domination”(1992: 7). This is evident in the paradigm shift that has occurred in modern marketing, which has

evolved from the ‘containment’ of consumers within relatively fixed notions of taste, habits and preferences -
towards controlling consumers through the surveillance of mobility and movement between stories, sites and
lifestyles, which generates information that can be valorised and acted upon (Arvidsson 2005: 458). Within
’societies of control’, as Deleuze suggests, institutions are increasingly interlinked through computer
technology. As personal information is recorded and transferred from one institution to another, all aspects of
an individual’s ‘lived’ experience can be held accountable and used to control access and participation in
future activities. Therefore, Panopticism imposed on consumers by information machines is concerned with
the collection of personal data to produce, separate and ‘sort’ individuals into previously categorized lifestyle
groups or ‘profiles’ (Elmer 2004: 14; Zwick and Knott 2009: 223). Graham has discussed this development in
the context of ‘software-sorting geographies’ (1998; 2005), whereby the flows, mobilities and transactions of
information within contemporary capitalist societies are ‘controlled’ by vast realms of computer software
integrated into the fabric of everyday life. The commercial development of the Internet has ultimately helped
to shape the social character of networked technologies, applications and services; whereas packet-switching
of Internet data was originally designed to be handled equally, recent reconfiguration of Internet technology
has shown signs of corporate control. These developments have the potential to discriminate access by
prioritising those customers who represent a higher level of economic value:

Open network architectures are yielding to network designs that enhance network providers’ ability to
allocate resources, bandwidth, and speed to varying types of information and services. This is based on
their relation to the network owner, revenue potential, class of user served, and judgements regarding the
quality of content.
(Winseck, 2002: 182)

Media and cultural scholars must maintain a critical stance in relation to digital networks as they become
increasingly active in producing and controlling aspects of our lives. In his discussion of post-hegemonic power,
Lash (2007) proposes that domination now acts from within, through the continual self-organization of
everyday life and the emergent socio-technical systems which channel, block and connect global
communications. Rather than a model of control based on the external, the symbolic and the psychological,
Lash suggests that “in the post-hegemonic present, [forms of control] penetrate your very being. Power,
previously extensive and operating without, becomes intensive and now works from within” (2007: 59). In the
context of Deleuze’s ‘societies of control’, computer infrastructures help to extend the grip of global capitalism
in a flexible and ubiquitous capacity, one which adjusts to the changes and forms of resistance within the social
milieu. Thoburn suggests “the centrality of information technology to control societies is such that speech and
communication are thoroughly permeated by money” (2006: 43). As companies wish to harness the economic
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benefits and opportunities of peer production they increasingly integrate their products and services with
social networks in order to establish closer links to individual consumers.

Concluding thoughts

User generated material has become a blend of the commercial and non-commercial, with both individual
users and corporate industries wishing to take advantage of the technological affordances of digital multi-
media. As users are seduced by interactive features 3, networked media technologies facilitate new forms of
digital marketing as individuals may be directly profiled and targeted with relevant advertising. The social
aspect of digital culture is increasingly promoted through services which allow individuals and groups to shape
their own stories, interact with each other and, most importantly, the brand. This not only increases the
amount of data which is produced, but it also encourages the user to engage with various services, content
and products based on what similar users within the network may have previously contributed or consumed.
By integrating social networks into online business practices it is apparent that connected platforms help to
engage new audiences and stimulate the sharing of personal information. David Beer (2009) suggests that the
forms of culture we engage with are increasingly governed by the results of computer algorithms, based on
personal and collective preferences within the network. Whilst this may be seen as a convenience by some, it
may also indicate the ways in which digital technologies have begun to play a larger role in defining lifestyle
choices. As relational software ‘learn’ more about an individual, these technologies become active in
influencing the user’s everyday experience. Therefore, individuals are encouraged to incessantly produce
personalized content as a means of expressing identity and mediating social activity in ways which can be
easily mined, extracted and utilized within commercial databases. Since social software and participatory
networks have become increasingly integrated, this content can be shared, consumed and experienced by
similar users within the network; thus attracting a wider, more stimulated audience. Nonetheless, the
algorithms which underpin these technologies can also track the forms of culture and conversations we
participate in. This information may not only be sold to the highest bidder but, perhaps more worryingly, be
used to predict what we want and need before we may even know it.
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Notes

1. Those who produce and upload content to online sites such as YouTube are classified as ‘active creators’; people
who engage with user generated material and submit comments or start up online conversations in relation to
this content qualify as ‘critics’; ‘collectors’ describes those who save, share and distribute information and
content by bookmarking URL’s via social aggregation services like Del.cio.us or Digg; those who register to social
networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook are ‘joiners’ and can be active in other roles depending on
whether they create content, submit related comments or interact with services available on these sites or not;
those who join these networks in order to view content without contributing are classified as ‘passive
spectators’, those who join and do not engage in any further participation are ‘inactives’.
2. This software collates preferences and activity on external sites and allows users to engage with content more
contextually by sharing this information within Facebook. The existing share button currently adds a favourite link
to a user's profile, but the new 'like' feature makes that much more substantial, allowing publishers to offer a
wider range of social sharing tools and giving Facebook more data about what is being shared and who by. The
information can then be used to recommend similar content and target the user with relevant advertising.
3. A major issue that faces site owners is how to ensure that users are fully engaged with advertisements that
accompany user generated content. Recent developments now enable brands to connect with consumers in a
non-obtrusive and more meaningful manner. By analysing the technological architecture within sites of
production and exhibition we may distinguish a range of monetization strategies which encourage the user to
engage with products that appeal to them in a more interactive and personalised manner. Hotspotting is the
process of embedding hyperlinks in particular frames of video content. So, for example, clicking on an actor may
lead to a character biography, or rolling the mouse over a specific scene may present a link to a site selling
related items. This is similar to hypervideo tagging which are embedded overlays that activate relevant
information, adverts, and links to commercial products associated to the content in a side bar attached to the
video player. Contextual Overlays are adverts related to either the content or user data; whilst these adverts are
more intrusive as they appear over the top of the video player, they do enable the user to click-through and
interact further with the brand (Winegrad, 2008)
 [Martyn Thayne // Digital Profiling: The Accumulation of Personal Data in the Attention Economy] 11

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