Privacy and Capitalism in the Age of Social Media (Routledge Research in Information Technology and Society)

This book explores commodification processes of personal data and provides a critical framing of the ongoing debate of privacy in the Internet age, using the example of social media and referring to interviews with users. It advocates and expands upon two main theses: First, people’s privacy is structurally invaded in contemporary informational capitalism. Second, the best response to this problem is not accomplished by invoking the privacy framework as it stands, because it is itself part of the problematic nexus that it struggles against. Informational capitalism poses weighty problems for making the Internet a truly social medium, and aspiring to sustainable privacy simultaneously means to struggle against alienation and exploitation. In the last instance, this means opposing the capitalist form of association – online and offline.

Sebastian Sevignani is a member of the Unified Theory of Information Research Group, Austria, and Assistant Professor at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena’s Department of Sociology, Germany.