Hypercapitalism New Media, Language, and Social Perceptions of Value

Every day trillions of dollars circulate the globe in a digital data space and new forms of property and ownership emerge. Massive corporate entities with a global reach are formed and disappear with breathtaking speed, making and breaking personal fortunes the size of which defy imagination. Fictitious commodities abound. The genomes of entire nations have become corporately owned. Relationships have become the overt basis of economic wealth and political power. Hypercapitalism explores the problems of understanding this emergent form of global political economic organization by focusing on the internal relations between language, new media networks, and social perceptions of value. Taking an historical approach informed by Marx, Phil Graham draws upon writings in political economy, media studies, sociolinguistics, anthropology, and critical social science to understand the development, roots, and trajectory of the global system in which every possible aspect of human existence, including imagined futures, has become a commodity form.

The Author: Phil Graham is Associate Professor in Communication at the University of Queensland’s Business School and Canada Research Chair in Technology and Communication at the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Arts. He is co-editor of the journal Critical Discourse Studies and is on the international advisory board of the journals New Media & Society, Cultural Politics, and Critical Perspectives on International Business. Dr. Graham is the author of numerous articles and book chapters.