Consuming Memory Towards a Conceptualization of Social Media Platforms As Organizational Technologies of Consumption Friis Nielsen, Martin
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Consuming Memory Towards a Conceptualization of Social Media Platforms as Organizational Technologies of Consumption Friis Nielsen, Martin Document Version Final published version Publication date: 2021 License Unspecified Citation for published version (APA): Friis Nielsen, M. (2021). Consuming Memory: Towards a Conceptualization of Social Media Platforms as Organizational Technologies of Consumption. Copenhagen Business School [Phd]. PhD Series No. 04.2021 Link to publication in CBS Research Portal General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. 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Oct. 2021 COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL TECHNOLOGIES OF CONSUMPTION AS ORGANIZATIONAL MEDIA PLATFORMS OF SOCIAL A CONCEPTUALIZATION CONSUMING MEMORY: TOWARDS SOLBJERG PLADS 3 DK-2000 FREDERIKSBERG DANMARK WWW.CBS.DK ISSN 0906-6934 Print ISBN: 978-87-93956-84-1 Online ISBN: 978-87-93956-85-8 Martin Friis Nielsen CONSUMING MEMORY TOWARDS A CONCEPTUALIZATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS AS ORGANIZATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES OF CONSUMPTION CBS PhD School PhD Series 04.2021 PhD Series 04.2021 Consuming Memory Towards a conceptualization of social media platforms as organizational technologies of consumption Martin Friis Nielsen Supervisors: Professor Robin Holt, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School Professor Timon Beyes, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School Head of Department Benedikte Brincker, Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen CBS PhD School Copenhagen Business School Martin Friis Nielsen Consuming Memory: Towards a conceptualization of social media platforms as organizational technologies of consumption 1st edition 2021 PhD Series 04.2021 © Martin Friis Nielsen ISSN 0906-6934 Print ISBN: 978-87-93956-84-1 Online ISBN: 978-87-93956-85-8 The CBS PhD School is an active and international research environment at Copenhagen Business School for PhD students working on theoretical and empirical research projects, including interdisciplinary ones, related to economics and the organisation and management of private businesses, as well as public and voluntary institutions, at business, industry and country level. All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informationstorage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Robin Holt for letting me keep a green armchair that I had taken from his office as he had left it behind while moving office from the fourth to the third floor at the Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, CBS. Had I known that the chair came with such subtle guidance, intellectual generosity, and, not least, humorous lightness, I would have asked for it much earlier. I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor Timon Beyes for the surgical precision and clarity with which he over the past three years has, so to speak, organized this project from a distance, and, even in these difficult times, to always hold the Danish/German border open. A special thanks to the Head of Department of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen Benedikte Brincker with whom this project began and without whose supervision and academic guidance these 200 pages or so would have been a lightyear or two away. A special thanks to everyone in the Politics group at the Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, for letting me be part of an inspiring and lively intellectual research environment. A very special thanks to Katinka Amalie Schyberg for her patience and care that exceeds well beyond what one could ever have hope for, and, not least, for her critical readings and the precision of her observations from which always follows a sense of clarity. Abstract In the last decade, social media platforms have expanded and proliferated, bringing with them a range of new digital activities and functions, including to ‘like’, ‘share’, ‘filter’, and ‘scroll’ through images, videos, and text. These activities have become such routine practice as to permeate many aspects of individual, social, and organizational life. This dissertation frames this all-encompassing positioning of social media platforms and the ensuing technological reproduction and circulation of experiences and memory in terms of consumption. The dissertation builds on the proposition that the particular technological organization of such platforms requires a theoretical and conceptual attention to the nature of the objects produced and consumed on and through these platforms and ultimately a reconceptualization of the concept of consumption. As such, this dissertation presents a reconceptualization of consumption through a reading of Jean Baudrillard’s theory of consumption, Bernard Stiegler’s philosophy of technology, memory, and time and an analysis of various features of the Instagram platform. The dissertation argues for a conception of social media platforms as organizational technologies through which individual and social experiences themselves become primary and generalized objects of consumption. As such, the dissertation proposes to consider social media platforms to be organizational technologies of consumption, and contribute to the conceptualization of consumption as recast by such new technologies of organizing. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1 Media, consumption, and organization ......................................................... 5 THE METHOD OF CONCEPTUAL INTERVENTIONS ............................................... 10 Framing consumption: An affinity of proliferation ..................................... 11 Conceptual intervention: From a system of objects to systems of memory- objects ......................................................................................................... 14 PLATFORMS: FROM PRODUCTION TO CONSUMPTION ........................................ 16 OUTLINE OF DISSERTATION .............................................................................. 20 PART I. CONSUMPTION: FROM A SYSTEM OF SIGNS TO SYSTEMS OF MEMORY .................................................................................................. 23 CHAPTER 1. CONSUMPTION, OBJECTS, AND VALUE ....................... 24 1.1 THE CONSUMER SOCIETY .......................................................................... 24 Consumption as… ....................................................................................... 27 1.2 FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF OBJECTS ..................................................... 29 The object as mirror of social organization ................................................ 30 The ‘System’ of Objects ............................................................................... 34 1.3 CONSUMPTION AND VALUE ........................................................................ 38 Consumption: beyond use value and natural needs .................................... 38 Media consumption ..................................................................................... 40 Four logics of value .................................................................................... 42 Consumption as a mode of being ................................................................ 46 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................... 47 Barthes on the beach ................................................................................... 49 CHAPTER 2. TECHNICS, MEMORY, AND CONSUMPTION ............... 52 2.1 TECHNICS AND TECHNOLOGICAL MEMORY ................................................. 55 Technics as an originary process of organizing ......................................... 55 Exteriorization as a contemporary organizational force ............................ 59 2.2 SYSTEM, MEMORY, AND ANTICIPATION ...................................................... 62 The prosthetic nature of anticipation .......................................................... 62 The cinematic structure of time-consciousness: primary, secondary, and tertiary retentions ........................................................................................ 66 2.3 CONSUMPTION AND DISINDIVIDUATION ..................................................... 70 Modernity as an organization of consumption ........................................... 71 Proletarianization: consumption as an extension of production ................ 73 Three versions of the disindividuated consumer ......................................... 75 Consumption as the destruction of the symbolic ......................................... 79 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................... 83 CHAPTER 3. PLATFORMS, CONSUMPTION, AND MEMORY ........... 85 3.1 PLATFORM AS AN ORGANIZATIONAL FORM ................................................ 85 Platforms as organizational