Behind the veils of discourse: Analysing the connection between discourse and exploitation on the ‘social’ internet

Introduction

This text aims to illustrate how the internet is understood as social, and how this veils exploitation. Through being understood as social, free labour is transformed into ‘social activities’. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), I will investigate the frames of interpretation constituting the internet as social, the ‘sociodigital discourse’, and its ideological consequences. The sociodigital discourse constitutes both modes of thought for understanding the internet and acting upon it. Concepts such as the ‘social internet’ presuppose this social understanding, and furthermore, this idea of the ‘social’ implies that the digital factories are user-centring around communal activities (van Dijck 2013: 11), such as virtual ‘communities’. The capitalist wants the user to accept this idea (van Dijck 2013: 12), yet I will show in this text that the capitalists themselves view these ‘communities’ as tools.

However, as I will illustrate in this article, this myth of the ‘social’ internet is deeply naturalized. Following the principle of CDA regarding denaturalization of ideologically functioning discourses (Fairclough 1995: 36), I will investigate how the ‘social’ myth veils relations of power. I understand ideology as ideas serving power-interests (Fairclough 1995: 18), ignoring the ‘truth’ in the statements. ‘Truth’ is interpreted in a Foucaldian manner, as it ‘is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it’ (Foucault 1980: 133). Therefore, I will not discuss the ‘truthfulness’ of the discourses at work. While not pretending to hold the key to ‘truth’, I will illustrate how empirical findings show exploitation happening at ‘social’ media through surveillance and alienation. This can neither be described nor interpreted within the sociodigital frames of interpretation. The discourse solves this by obscuring economic realities, therefore functioning ideologically. This means that, while the internet is described in social terms, the user of ‘social’ media produces values for the capitalist. Here, the connection between social and discursive practice remains untouched, even though a rich number of texts have already uncovered this exploitation. Yet as power is turning linguistic, orienting towards power over opinions (Fairclough 1989: 2; Lukes 2004: 28), the importance of critically analysing language and meaning increases. Discourses may cloud realities by constituting meaning and ideas which serve the holders of power: in our case, the digital capitalist. We will see how the sociodigital discourse constitutes a reality in which free labour flourishes and generates profit for the capitalist. The sociodigital discourse thus has two ideological functions. First, it veils that content production at ‘social’ media is labour. Second, it increases the same free labour by turning it ‘social’. This affects the relations of power and exploitation between capitalist and free labourer, as it hides their relationship and therefore the exploitation. As inequalities are growing rapidly and globally (Atkinson et al. 2011: 3), trillion-dollar industries cannot be allowed to be shrouded by discursive veils. I will now clarify these economic realities and thereafter contrast these to the idea of the ‘social’ internet.

The economic internet

The internet is part of the capitalist market, ranging from websites selling goods and services to websites financed through advertisement. It is a three trillion-dollar complex, whereas 170 billion are directly related to the sale of advertisements (Gada 2016). Digital capitalism, oftentimes called ‘platform capitalism’, is a form of capitalism where digital capitalists serve as intermediaries for customers, advertisers, service providers, producers and suppliers (Srnicek 2016: 25). These platforms ‘siphon of rent from every transaction they facilitate’ (Srnicek 2017: 257). We are here interested in advertisement platforms, where the resources in play are ‘raw data’ (Srnicek 2016: 23). These data are extracted by surveilling internet users (Curran 2012: 43), gathering and thereafter selling their personal data to advertisers (Freedman 2012: 83). To increase the sale of advertisements, the capitalist requires the users to contribute to content production, through what is called ‘free labour’. This does not imply the Marxian concept of the labourer ‘allowed’ to sell itself to the capitalist as labour (Marx 1956: 268), but that this labour is unpaid. Every activity creating content or products applying ‘social’ media ought to be considered labour (Fuchs 2014: 352), as it also generates capital. As this labour is unpaid, all profits belong to the capitalist, making this exploitation infinite (Fuchs 2010: 188).

These theories of free labour are not without its critics (e.g. Arvidsson & Colleoni 2012; Caraway 2011). This critique rests on two pillars. First, the free labourer is not hired. Second, no values change hands. Especially the idea of the ‘prosumer’ as a free labourer is controversial. This concept defines how users of ‘social’ media while consuming content also consume advertisements, the latter generating profits for the capitalist (Comor 2010: 440). I do not include this in my definition of free labour. My definition entails free labour as production of content which produces ‘clicks’ and therefore increases the sales of advertisement. This excludes prosumers’ indirect production of profit through consumption from the free labourers’ active production of content. Thus, by including only production of content generating capital as ‘free labour’ the concept ought to be less controversial.

Exploiting user production of content entails turning ‘creativity into profitable industry’ (Mosco 2009: 236). This industry is, as Coté and Pybus (2007: 88) writes, immaterial in the terminology of Lazzarato. Lazzarato (1996: 133) explains how labour in contemporary capitalism becomes less and less material, often producing no physical objects. Immaterial labour rather produces immaterial products such as knowledge, communication, social relations or cooperation (Hardt & Negri 2004: 113). This labour is ‘an abstract activity’ involving ‘the application of subjectivity’ (Lazzarato 1996: 135). Therefore, the capitalist wants the ‘worker’s soul to become part of the factory’ (Lazzarato 1996: 134). The labourer is to work, freely, at all times, and with minimum supervision. Comparing the factory to ‘social’ media, we see that both institutions enrich their owners by expropriating value created by others (Rey 2012: 401), so in this way they are equivalents: ‘Social’ media platforms function as factories. But for the subject to become part of this factory, it must somehow become meaningful. This happens through the user’s sense of belonging to different ‘virtual communities’ (Coté & Pybus 2007: 96). Hence, labour moves outside of the traditional factory, and the distinction between work and leisure is abolished. As Hardt and Negri (2000: 403) write ‘The proletariat produces in its generality everywhere all day long’. With ‘social’ media being available and used ‘all day long’ as well, the ‘digital proletariat’ gets no breaks from producing.

An empirical example is the Norwegian Facebook-group ‘Hønehjørnet’. Four administrators ‘work day and night’ free of charge to keep the wheels of this group turning (Groseth & Pedersen 2018). All digital groups could work as equivalents, as long as the website which forms the group’s digital substrate sells advertisements. In the mentioned group, four subjects control this group of approximately 80,000 members, offering a space for women to discuss ‘anything’ in a digital ‘all-women’ environment. Communication within this group increases time spent on Facebook, thus increasing the rents extracted. The contributions to and relationships within this ‘group’ all belong to the capitalist, the owner of the platform and therefore all which exists within it. Advertisement platforms thus function through a division of labour. The free labourer produces content and the digital capitalist extracts increased rents due to this immaterial, unpaid labour. In my terminology, this digital division of labour refers only to this hidden and indirect relation of exploitation between capitalist and free labourer.

This illustrates two things. First, the digital capitalist passively generates capital through siphoning of rents by its position as intermediary. By monopolizing ownership, the digital capitalist ensures continuation of passive rents through ownership of the platform. Second, this extracting of rents is increased through the immaterial production of content which is labelled ‘free labour’. While the official mode of profiting for advertisement platforms may be extracting rent, free labour is paramount for increasing these rents. As the digital capitalist profits from both rents and unpaid labour, it is a hybrid form of capitalism where the capitalist remains unproductive yet benefits from the unpaid production by free labourers. Furthermore, the capitalist also profits through alienation. Alienation entails the loss of the human essence due to the capitalist buying the time of the labourer (Marx 1992: 83), effectively turning the labourer into commodity and removing the ties between labour and product. This happens at ‘social’ media when the free labourer produces values for the capitalist through producing content (Andrejevic 2011: 286; Comor 2010: 453), even though this is unpaid and unorganized. Because ‘social relations’ are the product of production in the digital factory (Dean 2013), one may argue that alienation is intensified as both the labour power and the social relations of the free labourer belong to another: to the capitalist.

So, what makes the free labourer submit to the forces of digital capitalism? Reveley (2013: 87) and Beverungen et al. (2015: 480) have asked why the user of ‘social’ media continues to use the platform, if it is exploited and alienated. Being exploited gives the exploited some power over the exploiter (Wright 1994: 11), as the exploiter needs the exploited. However, this power is removed from the hands of the exploited subjects if they are unaware of this exploitation. As ‘social’ media exploitation feels not like labour, but like play (Fuchs 2014: 112), it can continue. As Ross (2013: 23) puts it, ‘In the world of new media . . . the blurring of the lines between work and leisure and the widespread exploitation of amateur or user input has been normative from the outset’. Thus, discourses at work explain the exploitation. The discourse reproduces social hegemony by ‘educating’ internet users ‘to the needs of productive forces . . . and hence to the interests of the ruling class’ (Gramsci 1999: 526). To see how, we must understand how the labouring subject finds ‘meaning’ in the exploitation. This we find by looking at the idea of the ‘social’ internet.

The ‘social’ internet

As already established, the economic internet is the objective face of the internet. Regardless of its objective status, it does not tell the whole story. The internet is after all not exclusively economic. We could say that the economic realities exist in the shadow of a discursive construction, ‘the social internet’. It is worth noting that the internet remains ‘social’ only as far as we signify it in social terms. Different ‘common sensical’ concepts serve this purpose. I will present three concepts which stands in opposition to the economic internet, all of which are discursive constructions. The first is the ‘social internet’, oppositional to the economic internet. The second is the ‘virtual community’, oppositional to the digital division of labour. The third is the ‘community builder’, oppositional to the free labourer.

Understanding the internet as social means focusing on the so-called social traits of the internet. This emerged especially with the emergence of ‘Web 2.0’, or the ‘social internet’ in the early 2000s (Herring & Androutsopoulos 2015: 2015; Hosch 2018), but the idea is older (e.g. Rheingold 1993). Allen (2012) calls this a ‘discourse of versions’ (p. 260). Different discourses struggled to establish whether the internet was always social or if it turned social with the emergence of ‘Web 2.0’. ‘Web 2.0’ entails viewing the internet as a medium for communication, interaction and user-produced content, so-called ‘community building’. Communities online are called ‘virtual communities’. This phenomenon is relevant both theoretically and practically. Theoretically it signifies the sociability of the internet. Practically it constitutes normative expectations towards contributions in digital groups. Virtual ‘communities’ may be defined as: ‘. . . social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace’ (Rheingold 1993: xx). By turning digital connections into ‘communities’, the internet cannot be anything but ‘social’. Letters on the screen are said to construct both relationships and groups. This mode of discourse and practice turns the digital world of the internet ‘social’, it turns into a place to find both relationships and communities.

So, who constructs these ‘communities’? The ‘community’ builder (Rheingold 1993: 38; Terranova 2000: 49). This is the active contributor taking responsibility for the group, thus making the virtual ‘communities’ blossom. In our previous example, ‘Hønehjørnet’, such ‘community’ builders construct a virtual ‘community’ to ‘help their fellow sisters’ (Groseth & Pedersen 2018). Another example may be the Norwegian part of the NGO ‘Refugees Welcome’, which also has a digital presence on Facebook. Here, a subject took a leading role as ‘builder’, citing the ‘lack of leadership’ as motivation (Særtrang 2016: 32). At virtual consumer ‘communities’, subjects do their best to give others ‘good consumer experiences’ (Chan & Li 2010: 1036). Virtual ‘communities’ may therefore be interpreted as normative, as places where subjects seek out closeness, support, guidance and so on. While this shows how the ‘social’ internet is created in practice by creative subjects, we have already established that this creativity belongs at least largely to the capitalist. Therefore, the ‘social’ internet exists within the borders of the economic internet to the degree the ‘social’ platforms belong to capitalists. Therefore, as most ‘community’ building will happen within the most popular ‘social’ platforms, which are capitalist-owned platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, VK and so on, these ‘different’ parts of the internet will rarely be separable in practice. Therefore, the subjects will be split between the objective position as ‘free labourers’ and the discursive of ‘community builders’, with the latter been explicit and the former being obscured. As free labouring entails exploitation, it is unlikely to happen without discursively displacing it. Before I can unveil this link between discursive and social practice, I will clarify my methodological steps.

The path towards unveiling: method and theory

I will now clarify my theoretical and methodological approach. I understand discourses as systems producing meaning (Shepherd 2008: 10). Discourses represent, signify and thus constitute a world of meaning (Fairclough 1992: 64). Just like Latour’s (2005: 187) theoretical ‘Panorama’ enables the subject to see ‘everything’, but only from a certain theoretical perspective, discourses offer frames of interpretation which allow the subject to see phenomena from the point of view of the discourse. Like the Panorama, this may include a ‘blindside’ which cannot be seen from the viewpoint offered by the discourse. We will see that the sociodigital discourse functions like this, as it by focusing upon the ‘social’ aspects of the internet also veils aspects which are not social, such as exploitation.

According to Fairclough (1995: 36), CDA should denaturalize ideologically functioning discourses. Naturalized discourse is the most effective mechanism for sustaining ideology (Fairclough 1995: 94), as naturalization restricts what can be said and thus fixates meaning (Fairclough 1989: 95). Through becoming naturalized, ideology may be masked under the authority of ‘common sense’. To denaturalize the ‘social’ myth, I wish to find the starting point of it and illustrate how the continuation from this point has made a discursive veil.

Furthermore, we accept CDAs dichotomy between a nondiscursive reality and discourse (Fairclough 1989: 23). Economy is an example of something nondiscursive, even though all social phenomena have discursive aspects. All nondiscursive phenomena may furthermore be discursively obscured. Therefore, exploitation in general is likely to be hidden under discursive veils.

As I focus upon the production of meaning through text, the wording itself becomes less important. Therefore, I will not do a linguistic analysis a la Fairclough’s (1995: 98) three-dimensional model. I find this fruitful, as the frames of interpretation and not the wording or grammar is of interest to this article. This increases my flexibility as I analyse the discourse as a system of meaning production. I will map the sociodigital discourse and its most important myth, nodal point(s) and subject position(s), and thereafter unveil the exploitation it veils. Myth is here understood as the representation of the phenomenon (Laclau 1990: 60): the myth is the idea which the discourse itself constitutes as real, like how the sociodigital discourse constitutes the internet as social. Nodal points are privileged signs which the other signs draw upon for meaning, which means it crystallizes the discourse (Laclau & Mouffe 1985: 112). In our case it means that especially the virtual ‘community’ crystallizes the idea of the ‘social’ internet in a dialectical process where the internet turns ‘social’ through consisting of ‘communities’, while the virtual ‘communities’ turn real through the sociability of the ‘social’ internet. Subject positions are general positions constituted by discourse (Laclau & Mouffe 1985: 115). Just like ideology in Althusser’s (2008: 45) terminology interpellates ‘concrete individuals as subjects’, discourse interpellates subjects into specific positions. In our case, the subject is put into the position of ‘community builder’. Understanding the link between myth, nodal point and subject position will allow us to see the link between discursive and social practice.

The path towards unveiling: data and selection

I will now clarify my data selection. The key reference to understanding the ‘social’ myth is Howard Rheingold’s main work, ‘Virtual Community’. Rheingold normalized and popularized the concept of virtual ‘communities’ (Rheingold 2018), which as we shall see is the most important nodal point of the ‘social’ myth. Furthermore, the ‘pioneer understanding’ presented by Rheingold has become ‘common sensical’, now dominating within most digital literature (Curran 2012: 34; Fuchs 2016: 35). As Turner (2005: 286) points out: the impact of Rheingold and especially his work ‘Virtual Community’ can hardly be overestimated. Furthermore, this book is referenced more than 15,000 times (Google Scholar, n.d.).

To find Rheingold’s impact in practice, I will analyse a broad number of academic texts researching ‘social’ media. Scientific texts are key to understanding the construction of the ‘social’ myth due to the roots in Rheingold’s academic text and because there is a general link between scientific and lay accounts. By illustrating this link between present discourses and Rheingold, I illustrate both the importance of Rheingold’s text and how ‘common sensical’ this understanding has become. Due to the heavy influence of Rheingold, these non-canonical texts are all replaceable as the narrative of the ‘social’ myth remains the same: as already pointed out by others, such as Curran and Fuchs. However, the texts are not arbitrary. Rather they are ‘general’ as the narratives told within digital research base themselves upon a common discursive legacy: Rheingold’s ‘Virtual Community’. I will illustrate this link in the analysis.

Before I discuss my specific steps, I must make a short point. Whether the texts in question should be expected to question the ‘social’ myth or not is of little importance as I do not aim to criticize any articulations for channelling the sociodigital discourse in practice. Rather, I aim to illustrate the ‘social’ myth in practice, showing its naturalized position within both critical and affirmative, lay and scientific discourses, and thereafter clarifying the link between this and the practice of exploitation. Let us now look closer at my selection of data. I looked through both Google Scholar, Sociological Abstracts and IBSS, reading to establish how the texts gave meaning to the ‘social’ internet.

I started by researching keywords such as ‘social media/internet/digital discourse’, looking for other texts discussing internet discourse in general and in particular texts critical of platform capitalism and/or the ‘social’ myth. I found a rich number of texts criticizing the affirmative discourses and their ties to platform capitalism. However, the ‘social’ myth appears to be largely unquestioned, even though critics do point out how the concept of the ‘social’ may serve capitalists.

After establishing that the discursive construction of the ‘social’ internet remained largely untouched, I proceeded to analyse both lay and academic discourses through academic texts. First, I researched academic discourse through the same media with keywords such as ‘Social media/digital/internet research’, ‘Social media/internet relationships’, ‘Social media/internet/digital interaction’. I read indiscriminatingly between different academic traditions covering the internet to investigate Rheingold’s impact. The included texts focus upon the Web 2.0. and discuss relevant topics related to the ‘social’ myth: interesting topics range from the quality of online relationships to the discussion of face-to-face interaction versus computer-meditated communication, all relevant topics related to the ‘social’ myth. Thus, as digital texts are heavily influenced by Rheingold’s legacy of the ‘social’, the selection of data requires only that the ‘social’ aspects of the internet are the point of departure for the text in order to be interesting objects for the analysis. In this analysis of scientific texts, I will also include a few critical texts read during my review of platform capitalism critique. This will be done to illustrate the broad impact of Rheingold, even though critics in general are sceptical towards the affirmative ‘pioneer understanding’ which Rheingold represents. Second, I researched the discourse of free labourers by researching the ‘practice’ of ‘communities’ through keywords such as ‘virtual/online communities interviews/ethnography/case study’. I looked strictly for qualitative research with a focus upon the articulations of internet users. This serves to illustrate the free labourers’ own interpretations of their positions within the digital division of labour and therefore the relationships between free labour and the ‘social’ myth. These two steps will illustrate Rheingold’s impact, the link between the discourses of free labourers and digital scientists, the ‘common sense’ of the internet being ‘social’ and the ideological consequences of this.

Finally, I researched ‘why’ one would build a virtual ‘community’ with different sentences asking the same question. This is of interest as it illustrates the capitalist usage of ‘communities’. There appears to be little to no reasoning for constructing these communities originating within normative discourses. Rather, the reasoning follows capitalist logic and the hunt for profits. We will look closer into this in the analysis, as this explicitly shows the capitalist usage of ‘communities’ in practice. This will allow us to contrast the ‘social’ myth channelled by the members of these ‘communities’ to the capitalist usage of these ‘communities’ as tools.

Deconstructing the veil

Before deconstructing the veil of the ‘social’ myth, I need to contextualize my contribution to the discursive findings already existing within the digital framework. While the ‘social’ myth appears to be largely unquestioned in the literature, the affirmative discourses of the internet are contested. Aycock (1995) found that the internet was dominated by a ‘normative’ discourse. Kole (1998: 34) wrote that internet discourse revolved around the social possibilities rather than realities of the internet. Barbrook and Cameron (1996: 45) called this the ‘California Ideology’, a Utopian ideology proclaiming the internet as ‘salvation’, having ‘no real rivals’, offering us a ‘place to get rich together’. Newer texts raise the same concern. Curran (2012: 35) points out that the affirmative records of ‘pioneers’, citing Rheingold as an example, remains largely unchallenged within traditional digital research. Fenton (2012: 142) also notes that the hegemonic discourse is positive. Fisher (2010: 229) criticized the affirmative ‘digital discourse’ for legitimizing platform capitalism, something it does by making it appear democratic and ‘de-alienating’. Thurlow (2013: 243) points out the importance of discussing the discourses of digital capitalists making promises ‘regarding the interactive, communal, participatory, social, or relational affordances of their companies or technologies’. This relates to van Dijck’s (2013: 11) point that the idea of the ‘social’ makes these platforms appear to centre around communal activities. In my text, I find that the importance in questioning these assertions of a ‘social’ internet can hardly be overestimated as digital exploitation largely depends upon the ‘social’ myth and thus the promises Thurlow and van Dijck single out. However, while these affirmative discourses are questioned and the importance of criticizing the ‘social’ myth therefore becomes clear, the myth itself remains largely untouched by discursive analyses. Allen (2012: 260) is an example that analyses the discourse of Web 2.0. and the turn to the ‘social’, but rather than discussing the ‘obvious truth’ of the internet being ‘social’, the focus is upon the battle defining when it became ‘social’.

Thus, while the affirmative discourses surrounding the internet are questioned, the ‘social’ myth itself remains largely untouched. In the coming sections, I will follow several steps to deconstruct the discursive veil which it constitutes. First, I present the discourse itself by illustrating the primarily elements of it. Second, I present three discourses revolving around the ‘social’. I start with the discourse of Rheingold, thereafter presenting both the scientific discourse and the discourse of the labouring subject. These three discourses all belong within the sociodigital framework due to their fixations around the ‘social’ myth, their discursive centre. Third, I illustrate how the ‘social’ myth functions in the service of capital by analysing marketing discourse on virtual ‘communities’. Contrasting the sociodigital understanding with marketing discourse illustrates the contradiction between the practice of exploitation and the discursive displacement of this exploitation as ‘social’. Finally, I will discuss the discourse from standing ‘behind’ its veil, thus unveiling its ideological functioning in the process. I will now start by presenting the primarily elements of the discursive construction of the ‘social’ internet.

Primarily elements of the ‘social’ myth

I will, in this section, present the primarily elements of the sociodigital discourse before I analyse it in practice. While the internet may be described in either social, technological or economic terms, and while several discourses always struggle to define the realities of every social field, the sociodigital discourse dominates our understanding of the internet.

This interpretation of the internet as social is visible through the social signifiers which the myth of the ‘social’ internet relies upon, such as ‘virtual communities’, ‘social media’, ‘friend lists’ and so on. These concepts presuppose a social understanding of the internet. At the same time, they increase the understanding which they rely upon. An example: the existence of a ‘friend list’ rather than a ‘contact list’ signifies Facebook as social because the subject does not get mere contacts, but real ‘friends’ online. Likewise, one has ‘groups’ bound to the idea of closeness, groups which again relate to the idea of communities. These digital-material structures and the concepts in use support the discursive practice, it constitutes the myth of the ‘social’ internet. The ‘social’ myth is concentrated around several concepts and especially the nodal point ‘virtual community’. Other concepts, such as ‘social media’, are also of importance, as it signifies the website as a ‘medium’ for social interaction. Yet, books or writings on the wall also mediate communication. The idea of ‘community’ is stronger due to communities being normative phenomena signifying closeness. A virtual ‘community’ is much more than a ‘medium’ for sociability. Therefore, it is the major signifier for the ‘social’ internet. Furthermore, the ‘lack of communal spirit’ offline is one of several reasons for joining virtual ‘communities’ (e.g. Rheingold 1993: 156; Særtrang 2016: 29). This ‘lack’ of communal spirit could not be sought in ‘social’ media unless the discourse constituted it as a social alternative, something the nodal point of virtual ‘community’ does, theoretically and practically.

Also, through being normative in nature, virtual ‘communities’ constitute the subject position of ‘community builder’ and ‘community member’, effectively turning subjects into free labourers. Here, subjects may ‘take responsibility’, as Særtrang (2016: 35) illustrates. The existence of the concept ‘virtual community’ motivates the subject to seek out ‘closeness’ online. Through the virtual ‘community’ and its ‘community’ builders, we observe the reproduction of the ‘social’ internet through constructing and reconstructing virtual ‘communities’ in this social process which simultaneously reproduces the digital division of labour. I will now show how Rheingold’s ‘Virtual Community’ is a starting point for the ‘social’ myth to naturalize.

The birth of the sociodigital discourse

To increase our understanding of the sociodigital discourse, Rheingold’s canonical work ‘Virtual Community’ is an ideal starting point, as it is the scientific foundation for the popularization of online ‘communities’ and thus a key text in the production of the ‘social’ myth. In this work, Rheingold (1993: xxxi) serves as both scientist and storyteller, analysing his own experience as a ‘community’ builder, arguing for it being a sphere at least as social as the world beyond the computer. The existence of virtual ‘communities’ is a core argument for this understanding of the internet as ‘social’. While this concept has older roots, it was first popularized by Rheingold (2018). ‘Virtual community’ presents a social understanding of the internet, one which still dominates our understanding of the internet. Rheingold writes about the social and liberating potential of these ‘communities’ (Rheingold 1993: xviii). In the process of constructing these ‘communities’, the individual ‘community builder’ can be considered the engine (Rheingold 1993: 38, 167). While warning against the threat of economic colonization, he argues that this is not yet the case (Rheingold 1993: xix, 79). Furthermore, community formations are concluded to be inevitable if CMC technology becomes available (Rheingold 1993: xx).

The establishment of Rheingold’s discourse rests explicitly upon two other discourses. Interdiscursively Rheingold channels the discourse of the imagined community of Anderson (1983) and the ‘lost’ community of Tönnies (2002; Rheingold 1993: 54). The imagined community gives the virtual ‘community’ its means of existence as communities need no more than the idea of community to exist. The lost community offers motivation for existing as it means the communities of old are lost, a discourse Rheingold (1993: 10) also channels as he contrasts the virtual ‘communities’ to the ‘alienated’ state of affairs in contemporary society. Related to this, Rheingold (1993: 156) cites a fellow digital researcher, Pavel Curtis, claiming that the members of virtual ‘communities’ are not shunning society, but rather seeking it more actively ‘than anybody else’. This way the internet ‘proves’ its value as ‘social’ through existing of virtual ‘communities’, which signifies the internet as potentially socially superior to the world beyond the computer, assertions which as we shall see soon are widespread today. Hence, Rheingold presents an idea where the internet is the solution to social problems of contemporary modernity.

However, the virtual ‘community’ does more than to signify the ‘social’ nature of the internet. It also links ‘community’ builders to the ‘social’ myth, as this nodal point is what constitutes the potential for this subject position. Here, we see that the virtual ‘community’ has an ideological function. As argued by Barbrook and Cameron (1996: 50), online ‘anti-corporate purity’ lives on with the concept of virtual ‘communities’, whereas Rheingold is considered the ‘guru’ of this interpretation. While Rheingold, as mentioned, defends the idea of the ‘virtual community’ and views it as an alternative to market forces, through free labour these ‘communities’ become parts of the digital factory regardless of their potential ‘social’ value or practical purposes. In practice, these ‘communities’ veil the economic motivation of the corporations and therefore also the exploitation of the internet users. Thus, Rheingold’s text is an attempt to ‘prove’ the social value of the internet, crystallizing the myth of the social around the nodal point of virtual ‘communities’. The internet is understood as a warm place to seek out social closeness. The discourse also implies that this closeness may be lacking in the ‘real world’, but that it can still be rediscovered online. I will now discuss the continuation of the Rheingold’s discourse.

The ‘social’ myth and digital research

In this section, I illustrate both how scientific discourse is influenced by Rheingold’s discourse and how naturalized the ‘social’ myth has become. This naturalization, which is visible through the lack of discursive analysis of the ‘social’ as well as the concepts in use, also affects academic papers researching ‘social’ media. Therefore, it becomes ‘common sense’ that the internet is ‘social’. Before discussing this discursive continuation, I will make a short point regarding the link between scientific and lay discourses. This link is as old as Rheingold’s work as Rheingold functions as both anthropologist and native. While Yoon (2001: 252) found that internet users ‘conform to the discourse of [digital] scientism’, digital scientists are accused of ‘knowing only numbers’ (Mosco 2014: 197). Fuchs (2017: 39) brings numbers of his own to this ‘trial’: only 31% of digital research cites theory, whereas the rest is simply positivistic. While I do believe that the writing subject, in Foucault’s (1984: 102) words, ‘cancels out his particular individuality’, the function of the writing subject as an intellectual in the Gramscian sense may still be that of exercising ‘the subaltern functions of social hegemony’ (Gramsci 1999: 145), thus organizing consent through ideology. This implies that internet users and digital positivists collaborate to reproduce and reinforce the ‘social’ myth, something we will look more closely into.

Due to naturalization, assertions of a sociodigital nature no longer require reservations, such as Rheingold’s (1993: vii) struggle against ‘false communities’, described as ‘mere text on screen’. Statements such as ‘Online communities may be as useful and meaningful as psychical, local communities’ (Enjolras et al. 2013: 34, my translation) or ‘I have grown up with, and within, the social internet’ (Aalen 2015: 15, my translation) have two things in common. First, they all channel Rheingold’s discourse. Second, the ‘common sense’ of the internet being social is largely unquestioned. As naturalization keeps ‘truth’ unquestioned by giving ideology the status of ‘common sense’ (Fairclough 1995: 42), naturalization allows the ‘social’ myth to remain largely unquestioned. Therefore, scientific texts oftentimes focus upon the ‘degree of truth’ rather than to question the myth itself. There exist several examples. Kujath (2011: 75) examines whether digital connections ‘complement’ or ‘substitute’ social relationships. Aalen (2015: 53) claims that while the internet is social, face-to-face interaction still has a special place in social relationships. Capecchi (2018: 1669) examines the quality of virtual relations in comparison to physical ones. (Nowland et al. 2017: 70) discuss how internet use may enhance social life and how it may lead to increased loneliness. While these discussions doubt the credibility of the internet being ‘as social’ as the myth claims, the debates remain within the discursive framework of the sociodigital as it remains ‘common sense’ that the internet is social.

This fixation of debates within the framework of the ‘social’ myth illustrates its naturalized position. Furthermore, due to the complexity and ‘common sense’ of the sociodigital discourse, it can be articulated regardless of whether the text itself has a critical or affirmative vision of the internet. While critical texts explicitly question Rheingold’s impact, critical discourse is still compatible with the sociodigital understanding. Let us view a few examples. Freedman (2012: 74) claims that ‘the internet . . . [is] perhaps fundamentally, social in its wiring . . .’. Fenton (2012) writes that on the internet ‘people . . . connect with others . . . [and] experience mutuality, closeness and empathy that may be lacking elsewhere in advanced capitalist societies’ (p. 133). The internet is described as ‘fundamentally’ social, a place to seek out the lost ‘communities’, just as Rheingold (1993) wrote in his affirmative book two decades earlier. Likewise, Barbrook (2005 [1998]) writes about how ‘social altruism’ through the ‘digital gift economy’ in network communities serve as a counter-hegemonic measure by keeping commercial self-interest in check. This altruism may well counter-balance capitalist interests in practice, as the internet is complex and may be used for both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic purposes (Fuchs et al. 2012: 15). However, these texts still channel the sociodigital discourse, while they are critical towards platform capitalism. This has the potential to turn them contradictory, as the texts may participate in the reproduction of the ‘social’ myth while attacking the economic foundations enabled by it. The ‘social’ myth is likely to function exclusively or at least mainly in the service of capital for as long as capitalist ownership of popular ‘social’ platforms and lacklustre privacy laws enable free labour exploitation. This illustrates the flexible and naturalized position of the ‘social’ myth: it truly becomes ‘common sense’ as it has potential to transcend critical/affirmative viewpoints. I will now illustrate how the labouring subject mirrors this understanding of the internet.

The discourse of the labouring subject

We will now see how the free labourer views exploitation as social and thus reproduces its own exploitation. As there exists no discursive distinction between serving as free labourer for platforms such as Facebook or producing content at alternative media where commercializing may not yet have happened, the construction of virtual ‘communities’ can be studied indiscriminately. Regardless of this, I will exclusively channel the discourse of subjects which serves capital interests directly through free labour, even though the discourse at work remains the same.

Rheingold (1993: 54) talks about ‘free labour’, or in his terminology, ‘community building’, as a way to reconstruct the so-called ‘lost communities’. That our world is ‘colder’ is mentioned by several ‘free labourers’ in different settings. It is quoted as part of the motivation for digital political activism for ‘Refugees Welcome’ (Særtrang 2016: 29). These subjects aim to fulfil political goals, but political activism within the digital factory is not spared exploitation. Rather, activists are exploited like members of any other ‘community’ existing within capitalist platforms. Likewise, one can cite a member of ‘Hønehjørnet’ explaining the ‘lack of superficial judgement’ online as a reason for joining the ‘community’, where ‘sisters help each other’ (Groseth & Pedersen 2018). Van Hout and Bingham (2013) write about a virtual ‘community’ of drug users on a webpage where users and drug dealers intermingle. One of the members is quoted describing the ‘philosophy’ of the ‘community’ as ‘. . . we’re here to help you . . . It’s not like real life where street dealers might coerce you into keeping your addiction’ (van Hout and Bingham 2013: 527). The ‘warm’ internet faces the ‘cold’ real world. The internet is ‘social’ in its totality from the view of the labouring subjects, oftentimes more social than the world outside their digital factories. Thus, we see the discourse of Rheingold channelled by both the labouring subjects and digital researchers, illustrating both the naturalized position of the myth and the link between scientific and lay discourses.

Virtual consumer ‘communities’ function in the same way. Chan and Li (2010: 1036) write about reciprocal practices in virtual consumer ‘communities’, citing a subject: ‘As long as JieMei [“my sisters” in Chinese] request it, I will try my best to recall my previous consumption experiences . . .’. While this may serve the subjects as consumers, it mostly serves the interests of capital as the brands are given positive, and free, advertisement. Another subject writes ‘I read the thread posted by [X]. I am so inspired by her experience that I want to buy this product immediately!’. Therefore, this immaterial labour is considered ‘normative’, as can be seen both by the comment of ‘my sisters’ and in a later citation on the same page, being ‘I really want to give you a hug; you have shared so much important information’. While these activities are considered normative, they constitute immaterial labour through both the production of content generating advertisement sales for the owner of the platform and through the production of content often being actual advertising for products in ‘consumer communities’.

What do these subjects, from drug users, refugee-activists to consumers, have in common? First, their immaterial labour belongs to the owner of the platform. This is true regardless of who else benefits from it, as the capitalist owning the platform also owns the labour which it benefits directly from. Second, they all channel the sociodigital discourse by understanding the internet as social, oftentimes ‘more social’ than the real world. The discourse of the labouring subject illustrates how labour is interpreted as socially meaningful, therefore illustrating how the ‘social’ myth functions ideologically. Furthermore, while we cannot make causal claims regarding the link between scientists and free labourers, the discursive legacy of Rheingold is channelled through both. Potential differences between the discourses of internet users and that of scientists will likely be on the level of technicality rather than changes in the production of meaning. As the ‘social’ myth is the discursive centre in both discourses, both discourses assist in the interpellation of concrete individuals into the subject position of ‘community builders’. This reproduces exploitation by educating the free labourer into a worldview which ‘corresponds to the needs of productive forces’ (Gramsci 1999: 526), meaning of course the needs of platform capitalism. To illustrate further how the ‘social’ myth obscures, I will now present marketing discourse of virtual ‘communities’.

Marketing discourse

Critical findings challenge the ‘social’ myth by illustrating the economic realities which fuel the existence of popular ‘social’ platforms. This discourse problematizes the idea of the ‘social’ internet, even though the sociodigital discourse by transcending affirmative/critical discourses may still be channelled in critique. However, there exists another discourse which problematizes the sociodigital discourse. Looking at marketing discourse, we explicitly observe the ideology at work. As the digital capitalist Godin (2008) writes, creating a virtual ‘community’, a ‘tribe’ in his terminology, is the new, and most profitable, path to walk in contemporary capitalism. Let us look at examples from capitalist media which illustrates why capitalists ought to construct virtual ‘communities’.

Rocha (2015) writes that online communities can ‘benefit your business in many ways’, such as increasing ‘brand loyalty’, constituting customers as ‘brand advocates’ and ‘increasing sales’. Gotter (2018) also advocates the constitution of ‘loyal advocates’ through these ‘communities’, calling it a ‘long-term and time-intensive effort’ which ‘pays off’ many times over if the capitalist makes the investment. Baiocchi (2018) writes that there is a difference between audience and community. To avoid losing the ‘humanity’ in one’s marketing, one should establish a ‘community’ to make the subjects active and to keep a ‘human’ face. This makes the customer more ‘connected’ to the brand, forming an ‘emotional bond’ to the company. Byrne (2018) writes that for business, a community is a place where the customers build relationships with each other and the brand. Thus, the ‘soul of the labourer’ may be integrated into both the brand and the factory. These texts show the practical usage of ‘communities’ and thus the ‘social’ myth, as the sociodigital interpellates customers as ‘loyal advocates’ of the brand. This is also backed up by scientific literature on so-called ‘consumer communities’, ‘Popular firm-sponsored online communities’ contribute to the firm value (Plangger 2012: 151). Likewise, participation in ‘consumer communities’ may increase brand loyalty (Shang et al. 2006: 413). Such findings illustrate the power of virtual ‘communities’ in the service of capital. While this is especially true for ‘brand communities’, it is also true for political ‘communities’ such as ‘Refugees Welcome’, as they are all exploitable in the same manner.

This capitalist-oriented discourse of ‘communities’ illustrates why the capitalist wants the user to accept the ‘social’ myth: to interpellate them into discursive positions which entail the practice of free labour. This is compatible with critical findings, aiding in the illustration at how platform capitalism commodifies social relations. The ‘social’ parts of the internet are used as means in contemporary capitalism, as is openly expressed through capitalist media. This implies that the capitalist will often take the role as the architect behind virtual ‘communities’, actively turning its capitalistic agenda into the construction of ‘communities’. Whether the capitalist plans the ‘community’ singlehandedly or if the ‘community builder’, with its soul now part of the digital factory, takes care of the practical, matters not. Virtual ‘communities’ still serve one main purpose for as long as they exist within capitalist-owned platforms: that of capital.

Behind the veil

By looking at marketing discourse in combination with critical texts, we see how the ‘social’ myth functions ideologically. By abolishing the distinction between leisure and labour, social and economic, exploitation flourishes. Turning the digital factory into a ‘social’ sphere constitutes normative expectations towards contributions to these ‘communities’. These expectations are directly and indirectly encouraged by the capitalists, serving to make free labour ‘normative’ and the soul of the free labourers part of their digital factories.

This happens through the three discursive transformations mentioned earlier. The discourse transforms the economic internet into the ‘social’ internet. In the same moment, the digital division of labour becomes a ‘community’. This turns free labourers into ‘community’ builders. Free labouring becomes normative through these discursive transformations which turn labour into ‘community’ building and labourers into friends. This is visible in both scientific and lay accounts, as both discourses constitute the internet as ‘social’. This way, communal spirit is established, strengthening the economic machinery by naturalizing free labour as moral rather than economic, something the capitalist actively encourages.

Many will claim that free labour entails building communities. This is of no consequence to the findings, which illustrate how the ‘social’ myth obscures exploitation and is likely to continue doing so for as long as the dominant ‘social’ platforms are owned by commercial actors. This does not mean that the internet cannot actually be as ‘social’ as is claimed through the sociodigital discourse. In this case, the internet would be a contradiction enabling a sphere for closeness lacking elsewhere in contemporary capitalism and a sphere for total exploitation and alienation. However, this would not change the economic realities, which has been part of the internet for a long time. Even during the ‘volunteer boom’ before the millennia, ‘community builders’ produced millions of dollars for different platform capitalists through free labour (Terranova 2000: 48). This has however been obscured by the ‘social’ myth regardless of potential ‘truth’ in it. After all, only the relations between ‘community’ members are transparent within virtual ‘communities’. The relationship of exploitation between free labourers and capitalists is necessarily obscured as the connection between ‘community builder’ and capitalist is both indirect and discursively displaced as the ‘community’ is not seen as an economic sphere. Therefore, observing exploitation becomes difficult for the exploited subject which has internalized the normative myth of the internet as ‘social’.

This way the ‘social’ myth interpellates internet users into the concrete subject position of ‘community builders’, and thus the economic role as free labourers. This lays the foundations for free labour exploitation as it makes the subject participate freely in the digital division of labour. As my text illustrates, this myth is heavily naturalized, but the economic motivation to establish these ‘communities’ is visible both in critical texts and marketing discourse. Standing behind the veil, we see how the ‘social’ myth veils the objective, economic realities by veiling exploitation as ‘community building’. This veils the relations of exploitation, and therefore, criticism of the digital division of labour may need to question the myth which enables free labour exploitation in the first place.

Conclusion

Armed with CDA and an arsenal of critical texts, this text unveils the link between online exploitation and discursive practice. While the myth of the ‘social’ remains largely unquestioned due to its ‘common sensical’ position, this text illustrates how this myth enables the practice of exploitation. This is made possible by turning the digital factory into a virtual ‘community’ and free labour into ‘community’ building. The naturalized position of the myth is clear through both the concepts presupposing the ‘social’ understanding of the internet and the concrete discursive practices. The ideological effects are visible as the ‘community’ builders articulate the ‘social’ understanding of their online practice. However, this practice is as established by critical texts also free labour, regardless of whether it consists of ‘community’ building as well or not. And with marketing discourse clearly expressing the instrumental reasons to construct these ‘communities’, we can conclude that the ‘social’ myth functions as a potent, ideological weapon in the service of capital.

This function as a weapon is visible as the myth both increases and veils exploitation in a single blow: by making the internet ‘social’. Therefore, even critique of platform capitalism may potentially function contractionary if it channels the sociodigital discourse, as this means criticizing the practice, while supporting the discourse which veils the economic realities of platform capitalism in the first place. This is especially true if the criticism is directed towards free labour exploitation, as this practice seems to at least largely be enabled by the ‘social’ myth. Therefore, the struggle to define the increasing levels of economic inequalities worldwide, which these ‘social’ platforms participate in producing, through, among other methods, free labour exploitation, must at least partly entail combatting the ‘common sense’ of the internet being ‘social’. This implies that critique of platform capitalism ought to investigate both social and discursive practices, and importantly, the link between the two.

While the question of ‘truth’ is outside of the scope of this text, discourse in capitalist media as well as empirical findings in critical literature illustrate that whether the internet is ‘social’ or not, the sociodigital discourse blindfolds the subject. Like a Panorama, it offers the subject a viewpoint, but it shrouds exploitation in the process. Seemingly, this turns platform capitalism into a mode of capitalism where leisure and labour finally melt together in total, ushering capitalism in a new era of ‘volunteer’, immaterial slavery. Breaking these chains may demand continued attempts to denaturalize the ‘social’ myth and freeing the subjects from the ideologically constituted idea of the ‘social’ internet.