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From dialup dreams to digital enclosures: Epistemological frameworks of the modern internet

Dear friends,

🧸 Bear with me, I swear this is cultural studies.

I've been thinking about how internet topologies shape the nature of communications, and the culture of 'place' in the hyper-online world. This started with me reminiscing about the dialup years, impatiently waiting for awkwardly themed phpBB forums to load, the disconnect mid-download from a phone call, and the internet being a place[1]. The early foundations of internet technology arose from a desire to network, specifically to network beyond the intranet (i.e., the office, your house). There were competing modes of connecting, from different cables, standards, and approaches to different protocols and communication stacks (particularly across operating systems: UNIX, MacOS, Windows for Workgroups, Novell, etc.)[2]. But somewhere in these early days standards were achieved™ and computers could talk.

But I don't want to write a history of internet communication protocols and methods. That's been done, and it's really that interesting... except to consider how late-stage capitalism would approach that problem today. Can you imagine the micro-quantifications of connectivity shaped with mandatory advertisement viewing, cost per click, commercialised interconnection, concentration of services onto oligarchic platforms, propaganda and information filtration, god it makes me feel sick just thinking about it. Oh, that's the current internet. But the foundations of the network is the computer gave us great freedom of connectivity, even if it was and remains largely bourgeois. Information passage and collectivity fundamentally underpin the computer today – what is a computer without the network in 2025? Can you imagine not having internet access now?[3]

Getting funky, and applying some philosophical concepts to technology I'd like to ask: what assumptions have we made about the internet? Does it really offer universality, human connection, ease and convenience, and what might we be letting go of to allow this? How do our assumptions influence (or otherwise) our thinking about the largest non-organic connection in our lives? And, importantly, what ontological necessities frame our communication modes? See, I told you it was cultural studies[4]!

The modern internet depends on quite a few "layers" of technology. First, we have a physical layer the actual cables, infrastructure, satellites, switches, routers, servers, and storage (and many other bits and pieces). This layer makes some assumptions about place, politics, and physics. In order to have a physical layer, we might say, the ontological space requires:

  • Reality to have measurable physical phenomena – for instance transmission of electrical pulses, flashes of light, or radio waves.
  • Relatively reliable tools which enable construction and transmission across place and time.
  • Reality as non-abstract: photons, electrons, electromagnetic fields, cause and effect.
  • Human labour to construct the network: the hardware and the installation of that hardware.

We also have certain epistemological assumptions embedded in this layer. These include:

  • Even if none ontological assumptions are "real", we must hold a belief that the above are somewhat real which underpins the infrastructure (let's not get nihilistic about it).
  • We can know the physical world well enough to engineer mostly reliable transmission of signals.
  • Those signals can be measured, noise can be distinguished from data, and errors can be understood and corrected.
  • This knowledge foundation is largely quantitative, empirical and replicable.

Jumping up a few steps we have a protocol layer. The protocol layer enables the machines to talk (we're not quite at the level of human interaction, though some talented humans know far too much about this). In 2025 we mostly use Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) at this layer[5]. On an ontological front we could assert:

  • Communications can be broken down into packets (described and relatively stable units).
  • Networks, building on the physical layer above, are about connecting separate entities, these entities remain "separate" but connected.
  • Implicit atomisation, the network is made of nodes (mostly computers, etc.) which have boundaries based on the physical.

On the epistemological front, we might say:

  • There are "universal" protocols which allow different types of systems to communicate.
  • Strong beliefs that there is possibility of unambiguous communication, that standardisation, specification, and protocols can be made and, to an extent, enforced.
  • There are methods which can enable us to detect what information is correct and what is corrupted.

At the application layer (not to be confused with apps), we start to see a more human organic nature emerging. This space has more 'tribes' and diverse standards, rather than requiring one agreed approach. For the web (http/https) there are some more interesting ontological concerns:

  • Information can be separated from context.
  • Information can be transported to different environments.
  • Information retains a coherent identity.
  • Information has (relatively) stable identifiers.
  • Resources (combinations of this information) may have stable identities and identifiers.
  • The presentation of resources can be separated from the resource itself (think different web browsers, email clients, etc.).

Epistemologically, then, there is an assertion of certain cultural aspects:

  • Hypertext, this page you are reading for instance, is an associative model of knowledge.
  • "Understanding" hypertext emerges from relationships. Finding this page, for instance, requires me to either communicate with you in the meat suit world: offering the link, or you use another linking service (i.e., search engine) which brings you here.
  • Hierarchies and taxonomies are largely moot – links may receive "preference" based on search algorithms, but these aren't fundamental to how we know in application spaces.
  • These relationships, the "world wide web", embeds assumptions about how humans navigate information and what constitutes meaningful connection between ideas.

Cool, so we've given a genealogy of knowledge to the internet. It's so academic that it hurts. But, I think there's some use in trying to understand what conditions our communications. These building blocks, while clearly contestable and very surface level, might help us to understand the socio-cultural construct which sits atop them, similarly to how ontological and epistemological examinations give us necessary context for positioning theoretical understandings – and the politics therein. And on that note, let's briefly examine the politics of network construction.

The politics of these technological layers is probably more visible when we think about who controls the infrastructure, how access is distributed, and what assumptions about our behaviour are present in these systems. Let's consider the seemingly neutral act of laying undersea fibre optic cables, rather than 'construction projects', we could see decisions about physical routing as geopolitical relationships. Our communication infrastructure reinforces existing knowledge power structures. The quantity, for instance, of optic routes between Australia and the US is much higher than between Australia and Vietnam. Increasingly as corporations fund these constructions, they are not doing so because they are benevolent, rather they are literally reshaping the topology of information flow according to their commercial and political interests.

At the protocol level, the apparent universality of TCP/IP masks its (western) cultural heritage. The packet-switching paradigm assumes that information can be meaningfully decomposed into discrete units and reassembled elsewhere. Intriguingly this is based on enlightenment ideas, fundamentally Eurocentric, an analytical approach to knowledge which has not been fully critiqued in relation to, say, high context ways of understanding information. Moreover, the "robustness" of the internet, its ability to "route around damage", embeds military thinking about decentralisation and resilience, carrying those assumptions about threat and survival into civilian communications decades later.

The application layer is more overtly political, it promises universal access but collides with the reality of platform capitalism. The epistemological shift toward hypertext and associative knowledge, above, has been commodified. Google's PageRank algorithm manufactures hierarchies based on what serves advertising revenue. Google's platform dominance as the search engine centres this even further (though threat from ChatGPT as the new information synthesis machine threatens this dominance, even if it is stupid). The democratisation of publishing offered in the early days of the internet to bourgeois folks, through blogs and web publishing tools, enabled new voices, but social media has conversely concentrated unprecedented power in the hands of a few platform owners who frequently amplify and suppress content to feed their priorities.

Each of these layers politics shape the kinds of subjects, agents, or people we are online. The atomised nodes of network topology, in 2025, reinforce neoliberal conceptions of the individual as a discrete, competitive unit seeking optimal connections. What emerges across these strata is a constellation of philosophical commitments that are not made explicit, or really examined. The entire edifice rests on profound faith in reductionism. Quite literally a belief that the irreducible complexity of human communication can actually be decomposed into standardised packets, protocols, and formats without losing what makes it meaningful. This assumption underpins everything from the way TCP/IP breaks messages into fragments to how HTML separates content from presentation. Alongside, a commitment to universalism show us that technical standards can transcend the messiness of cultural difference (ha!), that a protocol designed in California can seamlessly facilitate communication between contexts as different as a Scandinavian internet café and a Nigerian research lab. There's also an extraordinary optimism about mediation embedded in these systems. A belief that technical infrastructure can serve as a neutral conduit for human intention and that meaning can traverse fibre optic cables and wireless signals without fundamental distortion or transformation. Perhaps most significantly, the network architecture enshrines liberal individualism as its organising principle, positioning discrete agents as the primary locus of choice and value creation, even as it enables unprecedented forms of collective action and emergent social phenomena that exceed individual intention.

And we've barely even scratched the surface of how the entire architecture of the internet is based on colonial capitalism.

Each assumption is thrown in to stark relief when viewed through the lens of plural Indigenous epistemologies. The internet's foundational logic reproduces colonial patterns of knowledge extraction and appropriation. This extraction logic operates across the internet, euphemistically called data mining, and betrays the colonial underpinnings at work. Heck, just think about how AI training complicates this ever more. Just as European colonisers extract gold, timber, and other resources from Indigenous lands while treating those territories as empty space available for appropriation, platform capitalism extracts value from user-generated content, social relations and behavioural patterns, treating these as freely available resources.

The internet's assumption of placelessness, that information can be abstracted from its context and transmitted anywhere without loss of meaning, directly contradicts Indigenous ways of knowing that understand knowledge as fundamentally relational, emerging from specific places, communities, and responsibilities to the land. Not to mention the internet's modern transience – following us everywhere we go, even when we don't carry a smartphone. When ecological knowledge is synthesised into Wikipedia articles, or cultural practices are subsumed into virtual reality experiences, there's no preserving of context, culture, knowledge genealogy, and these practices are regularly forms of epistemological violence that severs knowledge from relationships – even when the internet offers ways to preserve this. Such extraction renders knowledge meaningless, as the process remains colonial and harmful. The evolution from early internet collectivism toward extractive platform capitalism sits with deeper transformation (late stage capitalism) which informs how we understand knowledge. No room for "collectively held" and "contextually bounded" ways of knowing with Facebook on the scene, everything is individual property that can be owned, traded, and accumulated – by Facebook.

Indigenous knowledge systems remind us all that knowledge carries responsibilities as much as or more than rights, that certain understandings are meant to stay within specific communities and contexts, and that the commodification of knowledge is a categorical error about what knowledge is and how it should circulate. Not to say there should be no trade of ideas, ways of working, and ways of being. But that these should be bounded in place, community, and context. Not promulgated as advertising material, hypercapitalist money grabs, and fear mongering to drive engagement metrics.

The concentration of our collective digital life onto a very small handful of platforms is tantamount to the enclosure movement across Europe, then around the world, which displaced Indigenous peoples globally, rendering many no longer Indigenous to place[6], and converted communal resources into private property – HELLO CAPITALISM. What began as a decentralised network has been systematically enclosed by Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Alphabet (Google, Gemini), Amazon, and so on. Their privatising has captured in hegemony the commons of human connection and knowledge-sharing.

The vague and naïve pioneering promise of the internet's relatively equal peer-to-peer communication has been replaced by platform-mediated relationships where our most intimate conversations become raw material for algorithmic processing and targeted advertising. The emergent fiction is that unenclosed resources are waste, that can be more efficiently managed through private ownership, and that Meta should be the ones to do it.

Golly this really became a spread of arguments. Let's wrap up before we become a puddle of plato on the kitchen floor.

Emergent critiques, in whatever my ramble is above, can still point us toward alternative possibilities. All hope is not lost. We are seeing the emergences of different philosophies of knowledge online – just look at federation[7]. Perhaps we can move toward "access to vital information" which recognises praxis in relation, in right relation. Knowledge sovereignty demands recognition of community ownership of information and ways of exchanging it, while embedded reciprocity challenges extractive data relationships. Perhaps we might consider the internet itself as a kind of Country that deserves care and respect, where communal proppa protocols govern our connections and enable us to know and respond to place. Not to scream at each other over deliberately divisive micropolitics while Zucc sleeps soundly on his pile of money built on genocide and expropriation. This work of reimagining digital relations isn't individualist – it is based on reframing ontological and epistemological foundations of our networks, to build new forms of digital practice that recognise the relationships between knowledge, place, and community that sustain us, as social animals. And I don't even have to leave us on a negative note – new ways like this are happening, right now, probably somewhere near you.

And, as a last word, if we reconsidered each of these epistemological and ontological frames through a different meta-theory, we could already point to the ways that computer networking gives rise to respectful and proppa ways. Go on, think about it[8].

What a time to be alive,

Aidan

  1. c.f., https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf/comments/18nmyef/the_internet_used_to_be_a_place/ ↩︎

  2. Here's a low effort Wikipedia article for this. ↩︎

  3. Many can, because they are still denied access by extreme cost floors, genocidal regimes, and outrageous filtration, but if you're reading this, it's not that likely to be you. ↩︎

  4. A quick sidebar: The way we think – something we label as epistemology – is assembled through social processes. This reproduction of our ideas, thoughts and ways of being is quite deliberate. In the dominant western system, education has been formalised and mandated for all children from around the age of 5 to around the age of 17 (with a handful of exceptions). This education process, something which we often take for granted in itself, delivers a curriculum derived from a fragment of the status quo. Teachers may have some capability for autonomy (agency) within this (though, this is increasingly stripped away) to change how the curriculum is delivered, but it remains imbued with a western middle class way of thinking, working, being and doing. The difficulty with examining epistemology (or epistemologies) is that they are an endless cascade of ways of thinking all the way down. If we even begin to trace back the origins of the thinking which underpins education, as above, we get trapped in a cycle of “whose thinking” all the way back to Aristotle. Lest we accidentally stumble on the prehistoric, the internet is also framed in epistemological and ontological assumptions and ways of working which, just like a teachers' agency, shape the way we learn, interact, and act. ↩︎

  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite ↩︎

  6. https://doi.org/10.1017/jie.2017.25 ↩︎

  7. https://jointhefediverse.net/learn/ (and hey, surprise, this blog is federated like a cool cat) ↩︎

  8. Or I could do it, I guess:

    The physical layer recognises that knowledge cannot exist without material grounding. Like Aboriginal epistemologies that understand knowledge as inseparable from Country, the internet acknowledges that information requires physical substrate, that there is no "virtual" without the material. The ontological requirements of this layer resonate with Indigenous materialism: reality manifests through measurable phenomena, requires reliable tools for transmission across place and time, and depends fundamentally on human labour and relationship to construct the network. The epistemological foundations here parallel Indigenous empirical traditions that read Country through careful observation, pattern recognition, and intergenerational knowledge-testing.

    The protocol layer holds potential for deeper affinities with relational ways of knowing. While TCP/IP appears to atomise communication into discrete packets, it actually demonstrates that meaningful communication requires constant relationship and reciprocity. Packets acknowledge receipt, negotiate transmission rates, and adapt to network conditions, a dance of mutual recognition. The ontological identification that networks connect separate entities while maintaining their distinctness echoes understandings of autonomy-in-relationship, where individuals and communities maintain boundaries while participating in larger webs of connection. The epistemological commitment to "universal" protocols that enable different systems to communicate reflects Indigenous values of translation and diplomacy, literally the belief that different ways of knowing can find common ground without losing their specificity.

    The application layer has striking alignment with Indigenous knowledge systems. Here tribes and diverse standards abound, not monolithic approaches. The web's ontological assumptions about information connect with knowledge systems which travel between communities through story and practice, expertly tailored to to local contexts. The epistemological foundation of hypertext as an associative model of knowledge directly mirrors Aboriginal ways of knowing which have long understood truth as emerging from relationships rather than hierarchies. The recognition that understanding hypertext emerges from connections, that finding knowledge requires either direct communication or following networks of relationship, perfectly fits with how Indigenous knowledge systems operate through kinship, cycles, and connections that link particular places to broader patterns of meaning.

    There, I did your homework for you. ↩︎

,   &  Aidan Cornelius-Bell
capitalism, internet, technology, federation, decolonisation, digital literacy, hegemony, philosophy of science

Parasites in the care economy

Dear friends,

I've been reflecting on some often theorised yet under-discussed elements of capitalism, which I believe warrant further discussion. Parasitism, or privatisation, is a vampiric process which has driven a great deal of expansionism and exploitation[1]. It also draws wealth from the proletariat, and concentrates it in the bourgeoisie. Working class people, through taxes, payments for goods and services, and other forms of revenue generation, subsidise private corporations who extract 'surplus' from the revenue stream, this repeats all the way down. In some spaces, this exploitation is particularly obvious, and multiplies layers of extraction and wealth skimming. Surplus value that was once retained in the public sector (and theoretically benefiting society collectively) is now extracted as private profit. Joy.

Over time we see this process expanding, subsuming public moneys into bourgeoisie wealth. This creates a contradiction where taxpayers pay more for the same service because we are now funding both the actual work and the profit margins of the private company[2]. Meanwhile, these workers experience more immiseration as conditions worsen despite their labour remaining equally productive and costing more. The broader pattern, where this underpaid worker experiences a chain of privatised services throughout their own life, illustrates how working class folks become trapped in a web of capitalist relations (and we'll look at an example of this in the context of disability services below). We are exploited as workers, then exploited again as consumers of privatised utilities, healthcare, transport, and so on. Each privatised service extracts profit while delivering what were once public goods – yet the same service is delivered – often for less pay for the worker.

We have seen that capitalism holds a strong tendency to expand into all spheres of social life, transforming public goods into commodities and creating new avenues for surplus value extraction. Concentrating vast wealth amongst the wealthy. The state facilitates this process by transferring publicly-owned assets and services to private capital, subsidising capital accumulation with public resources while workers bear the costs through reduced wages and higher prices for essential services. And have you met Woolworths and Coles?

Continuing in this same examination, this morning some news about vital public services flashed briefly across a fast moving news live blog. I'm intrigued by this format for the news, too, where counter-hegemonic observers actually stand a chance at critical analysis because the live blog is not subject to as much editorial and political review as regular articles (thereby exposing casual observers to a more realistic feed of politics).

This post about public service design also had me questioning the propagandist rubbish that the Labor party progress as "good government". The NDIS is a terribly managed service which exemplifies the behaviours above we just discussed the extreme[3]. Parasitic companies skim wealth out of the NDIS and provide subpar or underdeliver promised services to already exploited people with a disability. We see the capitalist state prioritising profit, again, over supporting social reproduction. Yet the Labor government wonders why no one is having babies... But let's spend a moment analysing the supposed overspend of the NDIS in the way the propagandists have advanced it. Taking a step back, we should have a look at the word from the horses mouth[4].

Grattan has spent more time evaluating how to reform Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Reportedly, the scheme has become financially unsustainable and has failed to deliver "optimal" outcomes for people with a disability. The NDIS, introduced in 2013, provides individualised funding packages to people with permanent disabilities. Because of systematic mismanagement and large scale privatisation (oops am I editorialising myself?) costs have skyrocketed from around $2.4 billion to over $41 billion annually, growing at roughly 24% per year. Their report proposes a "rebalancing" of the system by creating stronger "foundational supports" (general disability services available to all people) while making individualised funding "more targeted" (harder to attain) for those with the "most severe needs". They argue this can be achieved by redirecting existing NDIS funds rather than requiring new government spending - essentially moving about 10% of current individualised payments into commissioned services(!!!).

The report reveals the contradictions in the "support" of social reproduction under capitalism through market mechanisms. The NDIS was designed as a market where people act as consumers purchasing services with government-allocated budgets. However, this commodification of care has created exactly the problems we expect in unchecked market capitalism: inefficiency, inequality, and unsustainable cost growth as private providers extract extreme "surplus" value while people with a disability navigate a complex marketplace[5]. Grattan's "rebalancing" could be a partial recognition that market-based individual consumption cannot efficiently organise social care. Jackpot? Not by a long shot. Their answer, moving toward commissioned services and reducing reliance on individualised purchasing, could move toward socialised provision, except we're dealing with a Labor government. The fundamental issue remains: disability support is still conceived as a cost to be managed rather than a collective social responsibility, with the reforms primarily motivated by fiscal sustainability rather than human need.

The institute places emphasis on "foundational supports" essentially acknowledging that "the market" cannot, will not, and could never provide the basic infrastructure of care that people require[6]. Yet the solution remains trapped within neoliberal logic. They seek to reorganise service delivery to be more cost-effective rather than questioning why our obligation to support people with a disability should be subject to budget constraints at all – or even conceived as a cost in the first place. The report's proposed success is that reforms could be achieved "without spending more money" this shows the fundamental ideological limitation: improved care is only acceptable if it doesn't threaten capital accumulation elsewhere in the economy. And certainly, under these same broken logics, reform is not appropriate if it affects private provider wealth skimming.

Labor's panic over the NDIS growing "too big" is a manufactured crisis to distract from the fundamental wealth redirection from public to private. Under capitalism, care for people with a disability is treated as a cost to be minimised rather than a social necessity[7]. The framing of disability support as an unsustainable financial burden shows both capital's logic, and the inhumanity of the Labor party: only labour that produces surplus value is valued, while the costs of maintaining those who cannot be fully exploited for profit are seen as drains on accumulation. Neoliberal capitalism has systematically defunded universal public services where they existed. Research here shows that market mechanisms and commodification only entrench disadvantages faced by people with a disability[8]. The push of the 1970s and 80s towards socialising care, support, and other vital social reproduction services is long gone, and Labor has long been twisted by greed and exploitation and forgotten their working class roots. What we see now is artificial scarcity, and not just in the NDIS, people are forced to compete for individualised underfunded packages, purchase private health care, or languish in underfunded emergency care services because collective, comprehensive support systems have been dismantled. This has happened under Labor and Liberal leadership. And this only serves capital's interests by keeping support costs highly visible and therefore "contestable" – the source of panic in propaganda, rather than embedded in universal, collective, social infrastructure.

This is a key part of capitalism's contradictory relationship with social reproduction[9]. Capital needs a healthy, educated workforce, but doesn't want to pay for maintaining those who may not be able to contribute as much (even temporarily) to surplus value extraction. The NDIS individualises what should be collective social responsibility, making each person's needs appear as separate cost items rather than part of society's obligation to care for all members. Importantly, though, it is maintained in this way because it funds another parasitic industry – providers and service coordinators who exploit all in their care and employment. Deserving and important people coordinate care, provide care, and seek care. All these people offer great value to society, and yet are depicted in media and discourse as a drain. This is exemplary of capital's consistent dehumanisation and the stripping of human values from civil society (in Gramscian terms). The proposed "foundational supports" will move toward ever more more "means-tested", residual welfare - providing minimal support while maintaining the pressure on individuals to prove their worthiness for assistance. This keeps the focus on managing costs rather than addressing the systemic exclusion that capitalism breeds.

Ultimately, this reflects capitalism's fundamental inability to adequately provide for human needs that don't generate profit. Let's not even get started on housing, real estate companies, and tenancy authorities – parasitic rent seekers. Deep breaths, folks.

Rather than "managing" disability through state bureaucracy and boundless layers of private rent seekers, an indigenist approach could centre our concepts of collective responsibility and kinship [10]. Care might then be organised through community collectives based on Country and recognising that colonial capitalist structures created many disabling conditions through dispossession, cultural destruction, and environmental degradation. Disability support would be understood as a healing of collective trauma while recognising the validity of may diverse ways of being, contributing, and behaving. No more would we need to medicalise and pathologise difference. Alongside this, a Marxist transformation could eliminate the entire market apparatus. No more purchasing services, provider profits, or competitive tendering. Instead, we might see care organised as freely associated labour where communities directly organise to meet each other's needs[11]. People with a disability wouldn't be consumers or clients but participants in democratic planning of support systems. Care workers would be community members rather than employees, with work organised around social need not profit extraction. Resources could then flow based on principles of reciprocity, relationship and (feminist) ethics of care, recognising how racism, sexism, transphobia, and ableism intersect[12]. Rather than individual assessments and budgets, communities might collectively determine support based on relationships and protocols. Queer and trans disabled people, disabled women of colour, and Indigenous disabled peoples would have their experiences centred in how care is organised, moving beyond normative assumptions embedded in current systems. These normative assumptions would be dismantled – not centring (manual) labour in conceptions of wellness.

Our goal should not be "independence" or fuller economic participation. We should strive toward social conditions where all bodies and minds can flourish. Work itself should be transformed: shorter hours, meaningful activity, accommodation as default rather than exception. Technology would be developed cooperatively to enhance autonomy rather than increase surveillance. The artificial separation between "disabled" and "non-disabled" would dissolve as society reorganises around collective interdependence rather than individual productivity[13]. We should also draw on indigenist approaches which recognise disability as part of natural human diversity while also addressing how environmental destruction creates disabling conditions. Care should be integrated with restoration of Country, sustainable food systems, and healing damaged relationships. Away from anthropocentric capitalism towards connecting personal healing and healing Country.

Just a casual restructuring of society. And you know what? The only barriers are human: greed and hate.

Brain and body work,

Aidan

  1. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X16689085 ↩︎
  2. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203119600 ↩︎
  3. https://theconversation.com/understanding-the-ndis-the-challenges-disability-service-providers-face-in-a-market-based-system-57737 and https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2023.2263629 ↩︎
  4. https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Saving-the-NDIS-Grattan-Institute-Report.pdf ↩︎
  5. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2020.1782173 and https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12607 amongst many others ↩︎
  6. Joseph makes sound arguments on this here https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/SWPS/article/view/14059 ↩︎
  7. Campbell looks at how ableness is produced and maintained, which sits well with our discussion of disability as social/political construct under capitalism https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230245181 ↩︎
  8. https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v4i2.211 ↩︎
  9. cf., https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1305301 ↩︎
  10. See https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115047 https://doi.org/10.1017/elr.2025.14 https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.14040 for indigenist perspectives – just three amidst many. ↩︎
  11. Again https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.14040 ↩︎
  12. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243218801523 ↩︎
  13. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726715612901 ↩︎
,   &  Aidan Cornelius-Bell
capitalism, NDIS, disability, privatisation, extractivism, parasitism, reproduction, health care

No Kings, Same Kingdom: How liberal resistance might reinforce the system

Dear friends,

Recently, we saw the largest protest movement in American history. We also saw this swept away by the capitalist media within a handful of news cycles. But what is practice without theory (well, ... anyway). I think it is worth spending a little time on analysing the underlying ideologies and values of protest movements, particularly when they hold such broad appeal. Through this kind of analysis we might be able to first recognise some fundamental assumptions and a shared epistemology (way of knowing) to elaborate or stretch. I also want to underlabour this writing with Marxist critique, noting that the collapse of Marxian praxis in popular thought is the point of radical departure from engaging the proletariat where they are at. Doing things backwards, let's start with some fundamental challenges of theory in this space first.

From Rosa Luxemburg[1] to V. I. Lenin[2] the beginning of the 1900s saw this rupture between theory and practice repeat. Notably, across the western world the working class were more allied around a union solidarity than our contemporary conditions. In practical terms we can then assume that there is less theory/practice dynamism now than then. If workers were already willing to grapple with issues of ("inferior") class positions then, workers now, for ideological and hegemonic reasons, are often unwilling to engage beyond immediate conditions. Evidencing this theory/practice rupture isn't difficult. Theoretical debates in the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been discussed elsewhere[3], the Sanders 2016 movement attempted to reconnect the divide but ultimately failed to meet its target[4] and armchair socialists have discussed this point of departure at length (I promise I'm not feeling guilty)[5]. And in other American discourse, protest and activist movements such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal program seek navigation of these spaces – treading lightly often to their detriment.

At this moment, we should detour through accelerationism theory, to lay out some groundwork for what's to come (identifying the point of departure). Accelerationism advocates for speeding up and intensifying capitalism's inherent contradictions and technological dynamics, rather than resisting them[6]. But accelerationism is a 'both sides' tactic – though a hegemonic tactic nonetheless. Right-accelerationists embrace intensification as a means to collapse existing (liberal) democratic structures, viewing societal breakdown as necessary for installing hierarchical, ethno-nationalist orders. Manifestos written by right-wing accelerationists – literal murderers – emphasise chaos[7]. Left-accelerationists advocate for using (capitalist) technology and automation to transcend capitalism. Putting it simply: more of this will equal less of this (I'm scratching my head too). They see a post-work society achieved through technological liberation rather than traditional labour organising. Between accelerationists there is also a point of departure between theory and practice: theorists look for systemic transformation through technological and economic forces, practical movements instead devolve into either nihilistic destruction (right) or techno-optimistic reformism (left) that does not address material conditions. Are you feeling all meta'd out yet? I sure am. Basically accelerationists embody "move fast, break shit" believing that this will somehow manifest in the manufacture of concrete political work required for meaningful social change.

Okay, I've jerked you between theory/practice rupture, accelerationist theory practice divide, and we've landed somewhere ideologically adrift. Let's revisit the point of departure in popular movements rather than in a specific theory. Because as we know, there is no grand unifying theory in activist spaces.

We can see a catastrophic theory/practice divide in activist movements littered through history. The Weather Underground, for instance, demonstrated this dynamic. Emerging from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which had 100,000 members by 1969, the Weathermen faction's adoption of "ultraleft" theory advocating immediate armed confrontation with the government and their belief that mass organisations were unnecessary led them to dissolve SDS entirely and retreat into small guerrilla cells (accelerationist!)[8]. Germany's Red Army Faction (RAF) emerged from the 1968 student movement but similarly destroyed its own base when theoretical commitment to urban guerrilla warfare led them to believe they represented the most "exposed European vanguard" of global revolution, thereby isolating them from the broader left as their tactics became more violent (accelerationist!)[9]. Interestingly, the Black Panthers emerging from grassroots community assistance programs held their ideological roots for longer. By delivering systematic mutual aid everything from large scale free breakfast programs for children to health clinics, and community education[10], activists remained connected to community concerns longer than other movements. With time, however, revolutionary strategy versus community organising became a departure point (...).

Notably, longer lived programs of activism tend to have stronger theoretical connection to grassroots needs. This is an inversion. Social movement theory literature discusses sustained movements requiring ongoing dialogue between theoretical understanding and grassroots experience. Here, for instance, resource mobilisation theory discusses that movements survival may be ensured through resource acquisition and management[11] with adaptability to changing contexts critical to longevity[12] – dialogue and equal distribution of wins (not accelerationist!). Community organising approaches which connect with values of democratic decision-making, Indigenous leadership (and relationality), and concrete winnable campaigns consistently demonstrate superior longevity compared to "vanguard" (frequently accelerationist) models[13]. If you want to read more about connectivity between grassroots needs and activist projects boy have I got you covered in the footnotes[14].

If we return, now, with these schematics to our investigation of the No Kings protests, there are a few theoretical landmines we need to tread carefully around. There is a binding ideology at the heart of these protests – a view that U.S. government should not become a dictatorship. We can pontificate about the lack of voter turnout vs the massive scale of the No Kings protests another time. Fundamentally, it has been shown that the vast majority of American people believe that Trump should not have authoritarian powers[^15]. Great. But upon what ideological base? Fundamentally was the No Kings turnout inspired by notions of democratic preservation? Or is the root ideology behind the protests actually a neoliberal or free market capitalist perspective? And where does the working class fit amongst this?

If we can reconcile the No Kings protest movement as a manifestation of contradictory consciousness[15] (within civil society), we can begin to theorise political connectivity, as well as some points of departure (but let's not overload the brain right this second)[16]. Protesters' rejection of autocratic leadership while they maintain allegiance to liberal democratic institutions reveals a misrecognition of power structures in bourgeois hegemony[17]. A selective critique opposing individual "kings" yet paradoxically preserving the "kingdom" of capitalist "democracy". Read: it is the leader who is wrong, not the system which enables the leader. This shows the breadth of hegemonic ideology. The common sense is that "our (U.S.) system is the best system; that exploitation of that superior system is an individual failing, not a systemic one". Critically, we can, here, recognise that capitalist realism has gripped the "average American". The working class has internalised ruling class ideology. The fundamental focus on personality rather than systemic critique actually serves to reinforce rather than challenge structures and power.

As yet unwritten, and not very praxiological of me, I would rather use criticism of Trump to criticise American fascism as a systemic power. Sure Trump is a terrible person, but the system inflicts much greater ripples of intergenerational pain. This system exists to enable people like Trump all the way down. It isn't "Trump" its the entire political/economic system. Any critique (activism), here, which fails to address this is fundamentally doomed to repeat until such times as protest is made illegal – and the U.S. is well on the way to following Australia on this. Yet, this is a point of departure, because by and large the American people believe that their system is egalitarian – even when no one they know is benefiting from it. This is the colonising of minds – an epistemic war – to reinforce the status quo. The debate of American fascism parallels Gramsci's analysis of fascism as capitalism's authoritarian response to organic crisis[18]. There has been widespread recognition that the United States Government exhibits fascistic tendencies through its history of settler colonialism and racial violence[19]. There has been widespread recognition of the U.S. as a neocolonial empire, acting as a regional bully to ensure capitalist survival[20]. There has been more analysis than we could possible cope with in a lifetime, yet none of it appears to organically connect to grassroots struggles. Gramsci identified fascism as a latent possibility within bourgeois democracy. But the recognition of this has been forestalled by the strength and power of rapidly accelerating hegmeonic ideology supported by technological advancement (hello again accelerationism!). We're seeing the ruling class hope for passive revolution[21], where they absorb and neutralise opposition and maintain fundamental power structures [22]. We saw this with the media rapidly phasing the protests out of the news cycle – and we've seen this globally as capitalist hegemony spreads and metastasises.

The tension between spontaneous protest, organised revolutionary action, and reform sits in Gramsci's dialectical understanding of spontaneity and leadership[23]. While some dismiss protests as ineffective performance (particularly liberals), others recognise their potential as sites for political education and organisation. Spontaneous movements contain embryonic elements of conscious leadership that need be developed through democratic collectives to flourish as organic intellectuals. The challenge becomes transforming diffuse discontent into collective will which sits unified (enough) politically to create action guided by revolutionary theory and strategy, and systematic critique needs to sit at the root of this. The challenge as with all activist movements, is challenging the hegemony, the power of the status quo. Challenging the person (i.e., Trump) is an easier, more politically acceptable, move (though increasingly ICE's war of manoeuvre is making this less the case) within mainstream American ruling ideology promulgated amongst civil society. However, as we've discussed at length here on mind reader, the structural colonial, capitalist, anti-worker, anti-ecological, and anti-human ideology and institutional apparatus is much deeper rooted than an unchecked fascist controlling an unprecedented number of soldiers and nuclear warheads. The fact that the questions is not "how does anyone have this level of power" blows my mind every time.

This is a divergent point for me, and for many other socialist thinkers, from organic protesters. The average American (white, able bodied, straight and cisgender, middle class, middle age, male) thinks Trump should be subject to law. The average intersectionally disadvantaged person (this is the quantitative majority) needs the system to be reformed in order to have any quality of life. The problem is acceptable political discourse is constrained so strongly to the needs of the former group that meagre reforms are all that are allowed to be discussed[24]. How do we shift the discourse away from acceptable "centrist" (verging heavily towards fascist) discourse in such a way that even allows all those oppressed to speak for their struggles? Because the traditional intellectual apparatus is based on a capitalist ontological frame which demands control of (epistemological) discourse such that language which challenges oppression is impermissible[25]. And holding, strongly, this way of thinking – if it happened that I were in a position of leadership amidst the No Kings movement – would likely become an area of significant tension with those mostly comfy white dudes.

Let's take an example of a pro-socialist education movement (because this draws from my lived experience of organising large scale activism). In identifying, post-mortem, the ruptures of theory and practice which disintegrated the movement I would name hegemony, intersectionality, and economics as fundamental points of break. Chiefly, hegemony makes it difficult for any activist movement to gain sufficient momentum for change. This includes the full weight of the ideological apparatus of the hegemony, the media, education systems, police, government (fines, etc.), and so on. The intersectional rupture becomes twofold: (1) those with a marginalised identity failing to holistically connect with the movement; (2) those connected with the movement not seeing their needs met by the leadership of the movement, or seeing the leadership move away from a position which validated their needs. This micro-fracturing of allegiances, needs, ideas, thought and so on repeats across all persons participating in the movement regardless of their relative stature. Anyone with a friendship group would likely also be familiar with such politics[26].

To be clear, I commend the democratic and largely transformative way these protests were intentioned. The use of peaceful protest, broad appeal, and anything which shows Trump for the fascist capitalist dictator he is has my tick of approval (not that anyone asked). However, the points of departure towards change – desperately needed positive systemic change – make this a difficult space for praxis. It's paradoxical –

Our systems need to change, faster than ever, because they are changing faster than ever.

Convincing people that their view of change, for instance, "Trump must go" is not "radical" enough, without collapse into accelerationism is nearly unimaginable (and thereby rupturing the protest movement for "valid" ideological reasons, rupture nonetheless). The average American discourse in particular is so allergic to anything resembling socialism, that even equity initiatives are often looked upon scornfully. Yet those casting the scorn are often those who would benefit most from reform. This is the nature of hegemonic media, education, and systems control[27]. Breaking the way of thinking, working, might be achieved incrementally but it can't be achieved through departure. "You're being to radical", "you just want to break shit", etc. which are critiques hurled by right-accelerationists seeking technological engulfment of the proletariat for fascist ends. And still acceleration into violence is the last thing I, personally, and many socialists would want, so... Regardless, the critique remains as long as capitalism defines our shared ontology and revokes agency for one's own episteme.

Gosh, we're so many layers deep that even I've lost track! Let me simplify in bullets before we say farewell to one another for the moment:

  • No Kings effectively targeted a fascist leader;
  • The fascist leader is both symbolic and literal embodiment of capitalist fascism, and hegemony (an accelerationist capital-techno-fascism);
  • Critique of the fascist leader is already extremely difficult and receives little airtime due to His hegemony;
  • Broader critique of the system which enables this leader is not on the table with No Kings – both from a left and right wing perspective (because it is close to disintegrating anyway due to the weight of hegemony);
  • Discussion of the limited airtime (coverage) is largely off the table for American discourse;
  • Critique of capitalism is seen as "communist" and flagged as dangerous due to educational hegemony;
  • Points of rupture between idealised ideologies and idealised lived realities create discord and paradox which can destroy movements;
  • Everything else already seeks to destroy anti-capitalist movements; and
  • Well, stalemate.

There's a real need for genuine empathy and education in moving liberals toward more radical leftist ideologies. We're just not sure they're interested unless they're made personally uncomfortable. Still, I remain hopeful that compassion and empathy will win.

Yikes,

Aidan.

  1. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/index.htm ↩︎
  2. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ ↩︎
  3. https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/occupy-socialist-anarchist/ ↩︎
  4. https://theconversation.com/bernie-sanders-says-the-left-has-lost-the-working-class-has-it-forgotten-how-to-speak-to-them-243160 ↩︎
  5. cf., https://www.law.georgetown.edu/denny-center/blog/labor-unions-capitalism/ ↩︎
  6. for a relatively clear explanation: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/11/accelerationism-how-a-fringe-philosophy-predicted-the-future-we-live-in ↩︎
  7. https://theconversation.com/a-field-guide-to-accelerationism-white-supremacist-groups-using-violence-to-spur-race-war-and-create-social-chaos-255699 ↩︎
  8. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Weathermen ↩︎
  9. https://doi.org/10.1080/10576109308435925 ↩︎
  10. https://bppaln.org/programs ↩︎
  11. cf., https://doi.org/10.1086/226464 ↩︎
  12. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2329496519850846 for one example ↩︎
  13. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci2010023 and also https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0899825619300089 ↩︎
  14. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378013002197 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1096877/full https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10162496/ ↩︎
  15. look no further than https://search.worldcat.org/title/14965368 ↩︎
  16. I could do another whole dispatch looking at collective structures of subalterns (in Gramsci's originary sense) but I'll just drop this here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/089356902101242242 ↩︎
  17. This is another can of theoretical worms, but: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt18dzstb.13 ↩︎
  18. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334183_3 ↩︎
  19. An absolute must read: https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240 and a bit more if you're on a spree https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520273436.003.0005 ↩︎
  20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580900015002005 and https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818630-5.01020-4 ↩︎
  21. https://doi.org/10.7202/016590ar ↩︎
  22. an interesting analysis of this kind of structure https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt19b9jz2 ↩︎
  23. cf., https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199457557.001.0001 ↩︎
  24. https://doi.org/10.17813/maiq.4.2.d7593370607l6756 ↩︎
  25. Don't get too bogged down here, but there's useful sketches in: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm ↩︎
  26. This is a whole poststructural epistemic mess, but the ideas are nonetheless important: https://doi.org/10.1086/669608 ↩︎
  27. Old faithful: https://chomsky.info/19890315/ ↩︎
,   &  Aidan Cornelius-Bell
capitalism, theory/practice, counter-hegemony, hegemony, protest, activism, rupture

The cart or the donkey? Social media ownership and the battle for attention

Dear friends,

As usual, I've spent a bit of time thinking about our current, largely accelerationist, political milieu and its relationship with the (news/social) media. Of most interest to me, at least at this particular moment, is how quickly the cycle changes, and how obvious the political bias of the media truly is. This is exacerbated, particularly here in Australia, by the fundamental lack of diversity of media ownership. It's a Murdoch town here, and he's got goons and crowbars ready for any serious start-up contender. Perhaps I should quickly clarify, in case any of the litigious media cronies are loitering, they have "earned" those billions of dollars of surplus funding, and their dominance begets them a naturally (out)sized influence in the chambers of parliament. Digressing, we are in a bit of a tangle. Social and traditional media ownership concentration is rife, the news cycle is attention grabbing shorter and shorter attention spans, and fascism is rising.

We've talked about social media, and the ways algorithms focus people's attention, and we've thought on media hegemony and the concentration of media ownership as a soapbox. But there's a schematic, here, emerging for us to consider worth further analysis. Media, in the varied forms which exist, have an extreme influence on civil society ideology and practice, and this requires examination. In particular we should ever examine our media in light of current events, as wars, ideological battles, and genocide become normalised, it is ever more important. Gramsci offers us a framework for understanding power and the relationship between capitalist/worker coloniser/colonised, and more, and emphasises the power of the media:

"The press is the most dynamic part of the ideological structure, but not the only one. Everything that directly or indirectly influences or could influence public opinion belongs to it: libraries, schools, associations and clubs of various kinds, even architecture, the layout of streets and their names"
- Gramsci, 1971

There is a significance in the way media, or in Gramsci's time the press, has influence over public opinion. For Gramsci the thinkers and workers in those institutions, those responsible for writing the news for instance, are 'traditional intellectuals'. These educated folks work in knowledge production but are utterly subservient to the capitalists and narratives which benefit them. Yet Gramsci compels us to determine ways to redirect their efforts from pro-capitalist production towards emancipatory ends. But let's not get overly sidetracked – we'll come back to Gramsci at the end. For now, let's examine some 'common sense' perspectives and offer some good sense retorts to help us solidify our thinking in relation to theories of knowledge. For our consideration today:

  • News cycles are operated in short terms;
  • Some (counter-hegemonic) stories are are deliberately phased out of those cycles;
  • Social media vies for and directs attention of multitudes towards popular narratives;
  • Most hegemonic narratives drive individualist pro-capitalist thought; and
  • All media sits atop a consumerist, colonial and pro-capital base and is imbued by this way of thinking.

In an effort to be somewhat systematic, let's start with news cycles. In the United States, television news is notoriously set in 24 hour cycles, or perhaps 12 hour cycles, with attention spans increasingly shortening. Simultaneously attention as a metric becomes foundationally desirable[1]. There are events which may increase or decrease the total number of news stories covered, but largely there is a constant feed of new material for news media to ensure novelty. This novelty – the demand for new news – is political. The stories shared are tinted with a way of knowing which drives a consumerist, colonial and pro-capitalist agenda. For instance, for MSNBC, a constant soft critique of Republican "decision-making" without proper reflection on Democrats failings, for Fox News a constant libellous critique of anyone ... anyone but Trump. But at both ends of a political scale these news corporations follow a common pattern: amplify a particular issue (related to a spin of hegemonic ideology), monetise attention (the level of this attention is now gaged by social media interactions), persist political narratives, move on to the next story. Throughout the cycle of introduction, monetisation, politicisation, and constant movement there are subtler themes. These largely relate to the monetisation of a particular channel – i.e., Fox News wants to retain angry viewers, and to direct their fervour into consumerism for Murdoch-friendly enterprises (read: sell shit).

Relatedly, during this clamouring for new news, stories which shed negative light on the cable news company's view of capitalism are silenced and phased out. Equally, and muddying these waters, stories which do not appear to capture the audience's attention are also phased out. Let's move to an example. Take for instance the rapid turn away from coverage of the largest protest movement in American history. This was covered quietly for about three days. For an event of such scale, this coverage is extremely short in terms of news cycles. If we were asked to decide between the two reasons for this story to be phased out, which would you select as a more likely reason? Limited newsworthiness or limited commercialisation opportunities. The politicisation of attention continually demands new stories, but never those which might challenge the dominant ideology – colonial capitalism. And with the large-scale monetisation of attention and emotion for consumerism under capitalism, disruption that verges anywhere near a critique of the hegemony is preordained as danger. Even in important could-be news stories we can see the political protection of colonial capitalism, take for instance Trump featuring heavily in the Epstein files. This challenges Trump, but also draws attention to the systemic failure to bring justice to young people exploited directly by capitalists. A story like this, a threat to capitalist hegemony, if even covered would be made to seem irrelevant and boring. The media use a handful of techniques here to balance "doing the job" and not challenging the status quo: overdoing charts, numbers and statistics, speaking in a disengaged tone, burying the article, not sending a push notification, or keeping just the anchor on screen for a segment read. Here, we'll see the news delivered while allowing the media to direct attention the way the hegemonic political agenda demands.

As traditional media languishes, relatively unable to capture attention during the TikTokification of news, new exaggerated attention-seeking practices emerge. Social media is repositioned as the most important space for that attention, while simultaneously fracturing it and directing it elsewhere. Even the news cycle itself has accelerated to "real-time" blogs and image+text formats to vie for a share of acknowledgement in a crowded market of diminished attention[2]. We also see increased sensationalisation and accelerationism which does more than grab at attention, it fundamentally shapes the pitch and tone of stories and may warp the truth of events just to stand out amidst users ad-ridden social media feeds of hundreds of news sources, comedy artefacts, and maybe the occasional family photo. Social media algorithms (often manipulated by billionaire fiefdom kings) then amplify the most successfully sensationalised story, which in turn feeds new garbage and extreme perspectives back into the 24 hour news cycle. Similarly to Elon re-training Grock on the right-wing misinformation echo chamber that is Twitter, the ouroboros of extremist shit masticates yesterdays garbage back into today's headlines. As though this weren't indictment enough, media moguls and pro-imperial think-tanks continue to cycle "in" meaningless pro-genocide, pro-war, and pro-military industrial complex propaganda as though it were news. This blend becomes digital noise, impossible to permeate. Moreover, discerning fact from fiction, ideology from representation of reality, becomes a mammoth task, particularly for those whose digital literacy was (is!) never developed. Do I sound like Žižek? Ideology[3]!

If we consider social media to be the 'new' media kid on the block, it's worth examining its thematic ideological structures too. Following our assertion above that (cable) news media seeks to craft pro-capital consumerism around increasingly irrelevant news stories, then social media's primary drive is most likely for attention. This attention (seeking), naturally, is political too. And the political choices made by platforms are highly ideological, and gatekeep audiences[4], to craft a deliberate global narrative. Between these two medias ('traditional' and 'social') there is often collusion, traditional news driving engagement in sensationalised discussions on social media, exposing users to more interaction-based advertisement. Thereby driving up "engagement" statistics for social media companies, who then sell ad spaces back to the traditional news providers. Hang on... where are the benefits for the traditional media organisations?[5]

Traditional media cannibalises itself to drive engagement on platforms which, by their nature, put traditional media out of work (extreme example of this in Australia where our news media was largely blocked on Meta while News Corp attempted to force them to pay for linking to their articles). Here we are seeing a thinning of traditional media as they suffer with advertisers moving to the new media platforms. And, with social media giants increasingly consuming their competition (Facebook buying Instagram, anyone?) we are seeing a gentrification of all media – robbing a plurality internet forums to feed a singular behemoth (Meta). This meta (get it, ha) amalgam of social medias, strip mining the internet and traditional media and asserting itself as king has created one giant entity. In a cruel twist of fate this singular overlord of a platform heavily promotes an ideology of individualism. And its not just individualism for you[6]. This individualism coalesces around the attention drive, but it would be foolish to suggest direct causation. There has, however, been a rapid intensification of content which spurs self interest – perhaps psychologically there's a connection? Narcissus shines again.

Contrary to assumptions about social media democratising information access, the handful of dominant platforms have been shown to operate through curation systems that actively shape what content receives collective attention[7]. An attention economy has emerged, one tightly controlled by Meta (the conglomerate owner of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and others), and their vested interest is driving consumer engagement in advertising (particularly targeted advertising) and in an oddly non-paradoxical way, content gains attention based on already-received attention[8]. When studied, however, even aggregation platforms, which arguably help shape which stories gather attention, such as Reddit, made use of human ranking algorithms that direct which posts climb feeds (subtle, here, read the footnote)[9]. In essence, platform owners determine which voices gain visibility and which remain marginalised by their initial promotion (or lack thereof) in feeds. While engagement-forward and clickbait content has some affect, the initial filtration and ranking system which is deliberately opaque on corporate social media platforms has a remarkable influence on popular attention – and rarely is it not advertiser-friendly[10].

You may also have noticed, here, that there is an underlying thread of 1:1 relationships. The user has a relationship with the platform. The viewer has a relationship with the platform (subscription service). The advertiser with the platform. The traditional media? The platform. But it's not just the platform redefining relationships with media such as the infamous Web 2.0 (RWW), its a fundamental rewrite of human social interaction. In research in the above[10:1] a term emerged: "individuals-in-the-group". Rather than being "social" media, these platforms are attention-seeking individualising platforms above all as they seek monetisation and profitability. Not a "social" platform, but an advertising platform. We could, therefore, extend our argument, social media sites function as spaces to internalise competitive values rooted in "performance metrics", "(anti)social consumer behaviour", and perpetual "self-optimisation". One literally needs look no further than the ads. But it's not just our argument. Research has shown this is not only the case, but deliberately the mission of the platform[11]. The platform acts as a hegemonic organ shaping neoliberal identities, encouraging people to adopt individualistic mindsets[12] and seek personal remedies[13] for what are usually fundamentally macro social challenges. Through constant engagement with these sites, users gradually embrace a worldview which prioritises individual achievement and self-improvement over collective action and systemic solutions.

Concerningly, social media also contributes to "depoliticisation" by transforming political issues into individual lifestyle choices rather than collective action problems. Climate change becomes just a personal consumer choice problem, economic hardship due to wealth inequality becomes personal loan fodder, identity becomes politics. Even as far back as 2011 research into social media's effect on collective vs personal ideology and values in online political spaces was being investigated[14]. Though the media broadly has been interrogated for its role in promoting individualism and other neoliberal colonial capitalist attitudes for decades. The movement from collective to individual organisation of society feeds that very consumerism, colonialism, capitalism, and elitism. From media ownership concentration to all eyes on advertising revenues, systems continue to confine acceptable discourse to consumerist capitalism. Human suffering, in this space, is theatre – grist for the mill, and sensationalisation, 'civil' debate, and influencers simply keep the advertising machine rolling. However, there are models which ease our understanding of this system, and even offer opportunities to challenge the hegmeonic thinking.

Famously Herman and Chomsky developed the 'Propaganda Model', which argues that mass media in democratic societies primarily serves already powerful interests. It achieves this through five filters: (1) concentrated corporate ownership of media (massive capital investment), (2) dependence on advertising revenue that favours content appealing to affluent audiences, (3) reliance on official sources from government and business for news, (4) organised criticism that disciplines media deviating from elite interests, and (5) historically, anti-communism as an ideology that limits acceptable debate. These filters work together to create a propaganda system where news appears objective but systematically favours establishment views and marginalises dissent[15]. This model is particularly relevant to the construction of the US media, but is also growingly relevant as the US owned social media platform (Meta) subsumes any local/global alternatives. As it was with the media when this model was divined, social media also operates to secure and promote the agenda of an unelected wealthy elite, a wealthy elite profiting from human suffering and the destruction of our planet. As we consume ourselves to death, and intellectually backflip to make this our problem, we're eased by the comfort of advertising which suggests its all within our individual narcissistic power to change the world. Just lie back and stare at Instagram, and ignore those increasingly despotic capitalists over there, they're harmless.

So, where are we? We've seen that the acceleration of news cycles creates temporal conditions favouring simple reactionary narratives over complex systemic analysis [16]. This temporal pressure combines with systematic exclusion of counter-hegemonic perspectives to create an information environment dominated by establishment viewpoints. Social media amplifies this by directing collective attention toward content optimised for engagement rather than democratic value, while simultaneously promoting individualistic responses that depoliticise collective problems. The entire system rests on consumerist foundations which require media to serve capital's interests rather than democratic functions [17]. Digital platforms function as mechanisms of ideological reproduction that atomise collective solidarity while concentrating power in technological and financial elites[18]. Amazing. What a time to be alive. Let's return to Gramsci for some clarification about what we might do about all this.

Gramsci's "hegemony" shows us that this media apparatus functions as both propaganda and fundamental architecture of common sense. The accelerated news cycle, algorithmic curation, and individualistic framing we've examined constitute what Gramsci critiqued in examining the colonial capitalist hegemonic project. This project is one that secures ruling class dominance through coercion and rewriting human relations through capitalist logic emphasising that these are natural, inevitable, and personally beneficial (surprise: they aren't). The traditional intellectuals working within these media institutions, from journalists to platform engineers, are (often unquestioning) architects of consent to this reality, their technical expertise enlisted in service of maintaining the existing order. But Gramsci also offered us illustration of the contradictions within this system. Technologies which atomise us also offer possibilities for organic intellectual development and counter-hegemonic organisation[19]. The challenge, then, is to develop alternative forms of cultural and intellectual leadership that contest the dominant narratives at their root – not at the symptom. We need new "institutions", new forms of governance and collective knowledge production which nest in understanding our shared reality; a war of position which recognises media as a crucial battleground in the struggle for egalitarian social transformation. Or something, I don't know, it's Wednesday. Go out and touch grass.

In solidarity,

Aidan

  1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09311-w https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103243 ↩︎
  2. https://dhq-static.digitalhumanities.org/pdf/000582.pdf https://doi.org/10.1145/1557019.1557077 ↩︎
  3. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137361516_3 ↩︎
  4. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781544391199.n177 ↩︎
  5. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.20851/j.ctt1t304qd.13 ↩︎
  6. Its everything from "coaches" to influencers, it's all about you. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jun/24/what-i-learned-following-400-online-instagram-gurus ↩︎
  7. https://doi.org/10.22214/ijraset.2024.59619 ↩︎
  8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e19283 https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwae035 ↩︎
  9. This study "highlight that the order in which content is ranked can influence the levels and types of user engagement within algorithmically curated feeds" - https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2502.20491 ↩︎
  10. i.e., https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115622481 ↩︎ ↩︎
  11. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia4020041 ↩︎
  12. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7673976/ ↩︎
  13. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia4020041 ↩︎
  14. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2011.579141 (yes, 2010 was 15 years ago – the horror) ↩︎
  15. https://chomsky.info/consent01/ ↩︎
  16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103243 ↩︎
  17. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8040497 ↩︎
  18. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038520918562 ↩︎
  19. c.f., lemmy; mastodon; etc. ↩︎
,   &  Aidan Cornelius-Bell
meta, organic intellectuals, digital literacy, neoliberalism, curation, hegemony, social media