Andre Castro/research/1.3/review 1

Review

Synopsis

This review departs from Adam Curtis' the portrait of marketing initial developed in the debut of the 20th century, in the documentary 'The Century of the Self'. I will complement Curtis' portrait with the Dallas Smythe's notion of the work of audiences, and its role in marketing. Following Smythe's argument, I will move the discussion to the 21st century and attempt to explain why web2.0, although very democratic and free is giving audiences larger workloads.

The Century of the Self

Adam Curtis' documentary series 'The Century of the Self' presents us an historical overview of the creation and development of marketing throughout the twentieth century. Curtis associates the genesis of marketing with the figure of Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew. Living in the US Bernays begins his career as public relations counselor, developing techniques for selling products to individuals, despite their lack of need for them. In order to succeed in such a mission Bernays makes use of his uncle's theories on human unconscious desires. One revealing examples of his first implementation of Freudian theories, and also one of his first assignments was to change the taboo concerning women smoking in public. On consulting a psychoanalyst about such a task, Bernays received the answer that cigarettes were a symbol of male power, and what he need to do was to bring cigarettes to challenge such image. With that mind Bernays hired a group of society débutantes to light up cigarettes dramatically at a given moment during a New York parade. He also prepared the press coverage, informing it in advance that a group of suffragettes were going to stage a protest by lighting up what they called the torches freedom. Making it to the newspaper headlines with such an event, the image of cigarettes inevitably change among the general public. Cigarettes became associated with women's rights, and women were supporters of such cause, they should then show it also smoking in public. As expected the cigarettes sells shoot up. Mr. Bernays seemed to know how to apply the lessons learned from his uncle.

The role of audiences

In the documentary Curtis portraits consumers as a passive mass to who advertisers aim to seduce into buy their products. In his essay 'On the Audience Commodity and its Work' Dallas Smythe depicts a reverse image. Smythe sees audiences as active elements in marketing and the whole capitalist system. According to his argument audiences are put to work and their labor consists in creating demand for advertised goods, by learning to spend their income on them.

How does then an individuals become audiences? In Smythe's reasoning audiences are the product of mass-media. Mass-media are responsible for producing audience with predictable demographics, such as the number of individuals, the specific times when they devote their attention to, the medium who receives such attention, etc. Mass-media commodifies audiences' power, which then becomes their main product, that is sold do advertisers. Advertisers, on the other hand, buy the services of audiences and put these to work for them, by inducing them to buy their product, as eloquently showed by Curtis.

One curious point referred by Smythe, is our common assumption of the media content as being, say a song, a news' article, a TV-series. However when viewed through Smythe's argument's perspective content shifts. Content is no longer a product, but a stimulus that will keep audiences returning, and a mood generator which facilitates audiences' digestion of the displayed ads. One very interesting example of how media can excel in creating the mood for an easier and unconscious absorption of ideologies is given by Smyth; In it he mentions the introduction of rock music in the Soviet Union as an effective strategy for introducing Western ideologies into the East block. It created the disposition for the absorption of the western ideas, it became a catalyst.

Audiences' work on web2.0

Let me suggest we keep Smythe's argument in mind and jump cut to the twenty-first century. Let's move our discussion towards current highly popular and powerful web2.0 platforms such as Facebook or Youtube. As far as I can see these 21st century mass-media still base their profit on the creation of audiences, commodified and sold to advertisers. Adverts are as present on Facebook, Google, Youtube, as much as in any private TV-channel or magazine; they populate the screen space and mix smoothly with the contents of these platforms. The notions of audiences as a product, and the work of audiences however, have made a quantum leap and gained a more visible character. Audiences work is no longer resumed to the purchasing of advertised products, on web2.0 audiences' work expanded to include both the production of data and contents.

Data is generated as a result of audiences' (or should I maybe 'each one of us'?) activity within these platforms. In that way individual consumer profiles can be drawn based on detailed information on our choices. Such detailed profiling allows for an effective targeting of each one of us, with the intention of further exploring our purchasing work force.

Audience were also given the possibility to contributing by generating media contents, which they loved and fiercely engaged in. The media democracy utopias of audience participation, not only became true, but turned, in web2.0, into the web entrepreneurs' wet dream (the only being them being awake). In rather perverse way the participatory possibility turned into an extremely profitable formula for the corporation behind such platforms. A company like Google does no longer have to worry about paying skilled directors, script-writers, photography directors, cameramen, sound engineers, set designers, electricians, makeup artists, and a whole lot more of skilled people necessary to run a television channel. All it needs is to provide the infrastructure - Youtube - where we, the consumers, can upload our video creations. And we seem happy to do such work and are satisfied by being given the videos of our friends' cats and babies to watch.

Work and Leisure

On the subject of content my question goes for the reason to why we willingly put up with the tasks of creating a video which we will upload to Youtube, while being assign by a client, boss, or teacher to come up with a video seems like a chore. My immediate reaction is to locate the fundamental different in possibility of not doing it. Such a difference plays a crucial role in establishing the feeling of freedom, autonomy, and satisfaction we get from work during leisure. And of course such positive feelings are wisely explored by web2.0 corporation. They leave us the possibility of not doing it, the choice is on our side, and we happily do the tasks we are asked to with great joy.

Is then audience's participation or leisure work inherently exploitative? I would answer no, not necessarily. My critic goes more towards the fact that in most web2.0 commercial participatory media, audiences are removed from the possession of their work. (Isn't this also Marx's critic to the industrial capitalist production? The products of workers' labor are taken from them, and the profit resulting from their sales goes not to them, but to the owner of the factory infrastructure). If for example I post a video on Youtube it can disappear in 24 hours, simply because someone "flagged it" as not suitable. A blind bot performs the task of making it disappear, within 24 hours, simple as that. Youtube (Google) is the owner of the machinery that move Youtube, as such they are entitled to do no matter what with the fruit of our labor. Once again there is nothing wrong with it, I was the one choosing to host my video on Youtube, to give the product of my leisure work to this platform in exchange for its hosting space and transmission capacity. We must understand that such platforms belong to corporations, whose goal is nothing more but profit. Once in their territory there is little one can do, but to work according to their rules. As I see it, it is of their interested to keep audiences unaware of the rules by which they structure their platforms. If I'd be aware of the possibility of flagging, I would look into finding an online space to host my video where I would be more in control over its infrastructure. Such informed awareness and behavior would result in web2.0 corporations having slightly less power and control over users, and consequently become less profitable, and smaller profits is something I suspect not many corporation would like for themselves.

The depicted scenario might look pretty bleak, however if I make a small effort I can see something else. I can see another scenario, in which web2.0 platforms foster no only creation and communication labor between users, but also cooperation, sharing of knowledge and reflection. Such processes could not only take place in reference to contents, but also to the infrastructure and processes that supports the platform. Such scenario might seem Utopian, but I will argue it is not. If we look in our current web landscape we quickly come across examples of non-profit oriented platforms where such processes are already taking place. Take the example of wikipedia, wikionary, open street map or stack-overflow. All these resources live from users' work, however they also have in place mechanisms that allow for a deeper insight into the processes in place within each the platform, collaborative production, discussion over the contents produced, and participation on structural decisions.

Taking these cases as point of departure is not difficult to imagine more interesting ways to create, communicate and reflect upon online audio-visual content than what is currently given to use by Facebook or Youtube. I believe it to be our - the users' - responsibility to start imagining, prototyping, supporting, and collaboration in projects that don't subordinate audiences' creative impulses into the logic of capital.