Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CMST 2DD3
24 November 2009
citizens globally and enhance the decency of the human race, corporate strategy has
begun its decadence into the public sphere. Although Facebook itself is a corporation, its
original intent to act as a base for accessible and easy flowing of personal information
examining traditional historical hegemonic forces, media capitalist mindset and the
Facebook Inc. has estimated revenue of 300 million USD per year, and is
estimated to have 300 million active users (Facebook). Founded at Harvard University in
Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2004, the online utility has transformed itself from a public
sphere connected network of students, into a marketplace that breeds both capitalist
have integrated themselves into the fabric of online social networking for the greater
commodification of the Facebook audience, any media operation with enough capital to
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commit to a business plan has the ability to spread its messages and products across a
Drawing from McLuhan, consumers are now "doing" new media, as opposed to
'old media' such as television and radio in which they were the audience (Creeber and
Royston 35). Advertisers can manipulate this approach to new media in order to spread
consumerization to unknowing users. The abstract concept of enriching users with such
commonplace (Althusser and Foster in Carilli and Kamalipour 1). While many users are
criterion fits well, according to Stuart Hall, with users who accept and normalize
sponsorship and media placement (Creeber and Royston 150). Just as television watchers
have accepted commercials aired during their regular programming, Facebook is moving
closer and closer to reproducing this same type of cultural hegemonic thought embedded
in its social networking tool - while millions of users are the none the wiser.
sharing dependent solely on which corporations have merger deals associated with
the migration of previously offline activities into the social realm of online activity
(Creeber and Royston 34). By breaching the public sphere under a banner of social
networking, Facebook has opened the doors for third-party users to access personal
information. While this is ultimately an invasion of privacy and breach of many laws,
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users ‘trust’ Facebook, and thus agree to initiation waivers in order to interact with
applications via the site. This agreement removes any sort of privacy rights on behalf of
the user and creates another network of advertising space for companies.
regarding systemic distortion come as no surprise (Kellner 146). The culture of Facebook
itself is unregulated by any sort of government body, save the Canadian Privacy
Commission (BBC) which only breaks the surface by informing citizens about the
dangers of online social networking rather than actually intervening. The unrestricted and
unregulated nature is what makes Facebook that much more of a threat. What Marx calls
“false consciousness” (Kellner 148) is the sense of security users feel and the trust they
trust also lies within what Hall refers to as the “agent of production” in that Facebook
users feel that if Facebook trusts a corporation to advertise, it must be safe to allow them
As Edward Herman and Robert McChesney stated, there is a need for non-
commodified public sphere that can serve "as places and forums where issues of
importance to a political community are discussed and debated, and where information is
Facebook, at its earliest conception, had the possibility to embody such a non-
commodified approach, one in which the audience or user did not become a commodity
to be bought and sold (Smythe 50). Rather, corporate ambitions and capitalist market
strategy helped Facebook grow into a media conglomerate worth more annually than the
GDP of some of its users’ home countries (Forbes). By blurring the lines between public
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and private sphere, Facebook has successfully created a safe-space where corporations
can remove any sort of oppositional thought. This process of hegemonic culture is yet
another staple of how the buying and selling of audience members lead to the corruption
allowing technology to dictate the future of sociotechnical global societies, there must be
a consensus that corporations cannot be allowed to have such strong stakeholdings in the
digital media landscape (Kellner 658). The cross-linked integration of Facebook with
such Web 2.0 utilities as Youtube, Twitter and RSS feeds represents an overwhelmingly
high degree of control over the usage of internet, not only as an information hub, but as a
way of connecting on a personal level. By interfering with the human condition through
hegemonic cultural control, there is a definite link between how technology is viewed
culture, and a stripping away of intellectual property from users without any regulation or
“Convergence”, as defined by Marshall, “is of the content itself, such as embedding one
(Marshall in Creeber and Royston 120). By engaging with Facebook at home, work and
cyberculture, riddled with advertisements and corporate facades (Creeber and Royston
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118). Before the time of mobile media, such as cell phones with wireless internet
internet access. The primary issue in the new information age, as regarded by Castell, is
not the end of work but the condition of work that consumers are doing when they
interact with media (Trifonas 17). Hegemonic forces at work once again made it possible
for Facebook to become so fully integrated into society that users found it necessary to
have an application or mobile version of the networking utility even when engaging in
of media devices allows content to diverge into the realm of "real" while still maintaining
virtual status (Galloway in Creeber and Royston 36). This transcendence of socio-
technical pervaise is what was once referred to as media space, and has inevitably created
a hybrid form of connectivity between users and social media, enabled by new
technology (Creeber and Royston 36). The allowance of Facebook users to integrate this
internet utility into entrenched society norms is an indication that Facebook is not
driving force behind Facebook is, as predicted by Marx and Engels the same class of
societal that produces the majority of advertising and controls production across various
platforms (Kellner 150). Culture can now be defined not only by the relationships
between people, but also the way in which people interact with the elements that connect
work cultural hegemony, can enhance the influence of corporate power over all aspects of
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daily life (Trifonas 10). From an economic perspective, neoliberalism has resulted in
Facebook granting access for select, private corporations to personal user information,
and, in the absence of regulation, a level of consumerism that is unrivaled in online social
networking (Trifonas 13). As David Gauntlett states, the “creative potential of the global
network [online media] has been killed off by big business” (Creeber and Royston 34).
The neoliberal approach to studying Facebook again shows that as society enriches itself
with the face values of online social networking, culture is susceptible to market
dominance by media firms, and the inherent value of information diminishes with every
Facebook, the creation of the application ‘Causes’ brought about a public consciousness
of right-doing by a corporation. This false sense of community network has netted $2.5
million for 40,000 different charitable and political causes worldwide (Watson 13) and
again shows the cultural dominance of Facebook from a humanitarian outlook. Not to be
outdone, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg graciously opened the network’s doors
beyond college students, to a vast array of untapped markets (Watson 25). To grasp the
hegemonic forces that are being engrained into society, it is important to consider that
even charitable organizations are, for lack of better terminology, cashing on in the
success of Facebook. What set Facebook apart from other modes of advertising is the
mentality that the entire system is fueled by the same conglomerates which control most
will have to focus its attention towards the grassroots nature of participatory culture. As
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online media continues its transition from purely information based to social networking
and integrated content variables, a corporate-based model will not suffice (Jenkins in
Creeber and Royston 557). By allowing the internet to become so deeply hegemonized,
much like radio and television, networking sites such as Facebook will lose their original
intentions to a sea of neoliberal mentalities, and moreover, the trust of its users. From
Smythe's dependency thesis, Facebook has changed its users into media audiences, and
their interaction with the domain allows for the marketing of capitalism (Bird in Fletcher
and Everett 434). In order to avoid this cultural dependency, users must be made aware of
critical assessments of the underlying intentions of Facebook, and advocacy must be put
(Marx in Hirst and Harrison 39) such as Causes, messaging, user interaction, gaming and
the spread of personal information, but in reality it is a reference point for advertisers to
use this social labour as a means of production for their goods and services (Mosco 146).
Once in place, Facebook users have been subject to constant hegemonic forces to
requirement for the utility's free usage (Lukács “Phantom Objectivity” in Hirst and
Harrison 42). In reality, the zero-cost of Facebook is a subsidized operation that requires
corporate investment and business partners as exchange value in order to stay functional
(Smith in Doyle 11). From an alternative perspective, the Facebook user community is
interact with Facebook. While users consider posting a link to a favoured Youtube video
promotion for the Youtube website itself. As another avenue of revenue, Google Inc. is
the owner of Youtube, which increases its exposure from another stance; thus
forces. This top-down corporate strategy, coupled with bottom-up participatory culture is
precisely the hegemonic motives embedded within Facebook that are of greatest
The Facebook platform, with proper utilisation, has unlimited potential. If each
consumer is considered to have unlimited wants and only limited resources, this leaves a
market gap to be fulfilled by some sort of online organization (Parkin et. al in Doyle 4). It
is the law of diminishing marginal utility that has driven the market economics of social
companies. Until Facebook can find a way to meet every demand of consumers, there
will not exist a complete hegemonic dominance of its user community. In this timeframe
however, economies of scale will hopefully keep one giant media convergence to take
absolute control over Facebook, and its users as a whole (Doyle 9). The hegemonic
of theme of Murdoch-esque control over various non-online sectors. While users search
There is no definite market ideology that can narrow down how strong the
hegemonic forces will dominate users of the online social networking utility, Facebook.
clothing of capitalist online endeavours, or ridiculed for its false diasporic façade, there is
evidence to show just how powerful it has become in five short years. As online digital
media crosses from digital realms into everyday culture, the westernization of the global
market will create a hegemonic overspill of culture into various parts of the globe. Unless
consumers, users, audiences alike realize their imminent situation and stop normalizing
the pressures of online mass media, the information superhighway will slowly become a
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