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A Cultural and Political Economy of Web 2.0

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A Cultural and Political Economy of Web 2.0 A CULTURAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WEB 2.0 by Robert W. Gehl A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of George Mason University in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Cultural Studies Committee: Director Program Director Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences Date: Spring Semester 2010 George Mason University Fairfax, VA A Cultural and Political Economy of Web 2.0 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at George Mason University. By Robert W. Gehl Master of Arts Western Michigan University, 2003 Director: Hugh Gusterson, Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Spring Semester 2010 George Mason University Fairfax, VA Copyright © 2010 Robert W. Gehl Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 All trademarks, service marks, logos and company names mentioned in this work are the property of their respective owners. ii Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to one TJ, Teddy, who kindly slept through most of it and danced through the rest, and another TJ, Jesse, who works so hard for our little family. It is also dedicated to my parents, who filled my childhood house with books, computers, and love. Thank you. iii Acknowledgments Singlehandedly authoring a dissertation on Web 2.0 – a phenomenon which can at its best be about multiauthor collaboration in creative projects – is an ironic act. While I might claim authorship of this dissertation, it really is the result of many people working together. Specifically, my wonderful dissertation committee. The chair, Hugh Gusterson, came to GMU at just the right time to set me off on new paths of inquiry. Along the way, I and other students have benefited from his good nature, patience, and impressive command of social theory. Unfortunately for me, he has set such a high standard for scholarship and teaching that I don't know if I could ever live up to it, though I will try. Alison Landsberg's contribution to my intellectual development and to this dissertation is immeasurable. First, it was her suggestion to her Visual and Performance Culture course that set me off on this line of inquiry: "I wish someone would write about YouTube." Second, through her critiques of drafts and her teaching, she has pushed me to clarify my arguments and logic, and I will take her critiques with me as I start my academic career. But most importantly, she brought her intellectual optimism (inspired by Benjamin and Krakauer) to this project and my studies, reminding me that the world is not all doom and gloom, but a place of possibility and immanence. Tim Gibson, likewise, has offered invaluable critical feedback along with encouragement. I intend to steal as many of his ideas about political economy and media as I can get away with. In addition, he offered a great chapter for a book I co-edited, and I look forward to more collaborations with him. Mark Sample offered his insights into my work over coffee, taking time from a busy schedule and a particularly long commute to provide me with ideas about future directions. I've also benefited from the cultural studies community as well as quite a few people outside CS. Roger Lancaster, the director, pushed me to get work done and do it well. Michelle Carr is the heart of the department, and I had the benefit of her guidance and support. I had excellent courses with Paul Smith, Rosemary Jann, Scott Trafton, Jean Paul Dumont, Paula Petrik, Dan Klein, and Amal Amireh, all of whom exposed me to new landscapes of theory and knowledge. If my teachers exposed me to new landscapes, my fellow students in the cultural studies program showed me ways of inhabiting them. Through collective support, my cohort – Nayantara Sheoran, Fan Yang, Lisa Andion, Rachel Martin, Mika'il Petin, Win Malaiwong, Young Jung - helped me adjust to PhD work and showed me how to grow into a degree. I have made friends among the rest of the students, but I am especially grateful for the help, collaboration, commiseration, and friendship of Jarrod Waetjen, iv Vicki Watts, Randall Cohn, Randa Kayyali, Kristin Scott, Leah Perry, Sean Andrews, David Arditi, Sangmin Kim, Scott Killen, Jessi Lang, Pia Møller, Jason Morris, Katy Razzano, Richard Otten, Nuh Yilmaz, Dava Simpson, and Lia Uy-tioco. I also benefited from working with the staff, faculty, and students of one of the best places on earth to work: the Liberal Arts division of the Alexandria campus of Northern Virginia Community College. I can hardly single out anyone there for praise, but I would like to acknowledge the help of Kevin O'Hagan, a hound-dog librarian who could find anything I needed, and the Dean, Jimmie McClellan, who does so much to shape the collegial culture there. This dissertation was written with support from a dissertation completion fellowship from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Many of the early ideas here arose from responses I received from presentations I gave at the 5th and 6th Media in Transition Conferences at MIT. With all this said – after this long list of people who have been instrumental in my PhD career – it should be noted that the mistakes, shortcomings, and oversights in this dissertation are all my own. I see a dissertation as a chance to make mistakes, and I look forward to an academic career as my chance to learn from them and fix them. v Table of Contents Page List of Figures...................................................................................................................viii Abstract...............................................................................................................................ix 1 Introduction: a cultural and political economy of Web 2.0.............................................11 1.1 The plan of the work...............................................................................................16 2 Web 2.0 Discourses.........................................................................................................25 2.1 Definition One: The Web as Platform.....................................................................26 2.2 Definition Two: "Silicon Valley is Back!"..............................................................30 2.3 Definition Three: A New Revolution......................................................................33 2.4 The critical response................................................................................................40 2.4.1 Critical Academic response.............................................................................43 2.5 Conclusion: Social actors and a composite definition............................................47 2.5.1 The social network of the social Web..............................................................47 3 Web 2.0 Pleasures and Exchanges..................................................................................53 3.1 Pleasure on the Web................................................................................................55 3.1.1 Control of information streams.......................................................................56 3.1.2 Playing with identity........................................................................................58 3.1.3 Connection and re-connection.........................................................................62 3.1.4 Synoptic and Scopophilic Pleasures................................................................66 3.1.5 Collaboration and Volunteerism......................................................................70 3.2 Value in Web 2.0: troubling the pleasures...............................................................72 4 Above and Below the "Web as Platform".......................................................................80 4.1 Computing on the surfaces......................................................................................85 4.2 Abstraction..............................................................................................................89 4.2.1 Computer scientists and abstraction................................................................93 4.2.2 The Marxian concept of abstraction................................................................96 4.2.3 What gets covered up by computer science abstractions?...............................99 4.3 Soft Mastery in Web 2.0........................................................................................103 4.4 When Abstractions Fail.........................................................................................107 4.5 Hard Masters below the Surface...........................................................................114 4.5.1 Web 2.0: the Web as Platform........................................................................117 5 The contradictory protocols of Web 2.0........................................................................121 5.1 The contradictory protocols of the Internet...........................................................124 5.2 Web 2.0's contradictory structure..........................................................................131 5.2.1 The architecture of participation....................................................................133 5.2.2 Identity 2.0 ....................................................................................................137 vi 5.2.3 Social network structure................................................................................140 5.3 The Social
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