New Eyes: An Industry In Flux

Society experienced a fundamental change with the emergence of the PC, the Internet and the smartphone. The Internet is so embedded in our culture that some fear society would fall into chaos if it were to disappear. Fortunately, we are not trying to make such gloomy predictions here. We want to discuss how this change has led to the need for a new way of looking at culture, or, to be more specific, media. We’ll be discussing this through the case study of Google in order to connect the quotidian to the theoretical and back to the practical. As we analyse Google, we will also be making a contribution to the debate on the approaches and research agenda in media studies.

The starting point for this analysis is characterising the influence of Google. Google as a company has an operating income of 8.3 billion US dollars and around 35,000 employees. Google as a search engine processes 24 petabytes of information every day. To put that into perspective: you would need to turn 1.2 million trees into paper to print this amount. Google has even become a verb. But Google is much more than a search engine. First and foremost it’s an advertising company. However, in 2014 the company spent $5 billion on the acquisition of other companies. According to an analysis by CBC News, it is likely that Google will be investing in the Internet of things, and ‘establishing a network of connected devices in the home and elsewhere that use Google technology.’

Now, why is it so important to emphasize the reach of Google? Firstly, we want to stress how much a service like Google has become embedded in our culture and how this embedment will probably increase as Google roots itself in every household. Secondly, we want to show that when we are looking at a segment of the media, it is important to be able to look at it in all its facets. As Timothy Havens et al. point out in ‘Critical Media Industry Studies’, the majority of critical media studies research has focused on audience and text, and left the industry out of the equation (2009: 234). Furthermore, the research on media as an industry has mostly been done from a political economic approach (2009: 234). To give some counterweight to this macro-level perspective, they argue for some of the micro-level view of cultural studies (2009: 234). The foundation for the approach that they propose is Stuart Hall’s ‘incorporation of Gramsci’s theorization of the ideological struggle for cultural hegemony and Foucault’s emphasis on the fluidity of determination’ (2009: 242).

How does this macro-micro-level relationship relate to our case study Google? Some of Google’s services can be used to create content (a post in Google+, a video on YouTube, or an AdWords advertising). Users are not only capable of producing media, but also of receiving and exchanging media from other users. From a cultural studies perspective the audience has a lot of power within this relationship because they seem in control of the content and the way they choose to perceive it. That’s quite an empowerment, but what if we look at it from a political economy perspective? As the considerations made by Timothy Havens et al. related to Gramsci’s analysis of power indicate, users are in fact under larger constraints of a media industry. First, Google servers are not exempt from failure: in 2012 Gmail suffered an international failure that affected its users. Second, in social media users are inserted into a framework that is constantly subject to imperative changes. Ideological, political and economic considerations have their effect on the content of users (for example censorship of nudity, violence, and copyright infringement). This shows that a complex back-and-forth power process is at work here.

More theorists argue for an approach that combines cultural studies and political economy. The article ‘Bridging the Mythical Divide’ by Natalie Fenton resounds in Havens et al.’s plea. She argues for a union between these two approaches as well (2007: 8). Fenton tries to show what advantages both perspectives have to offer and how they should be combined: ‘The struggle over meaning takes place between the process of production and the act of reception – both of which are determined by their place in a wider social, political, economic and cultural context and both of which are subject to constraints.’ (2007: 25).

Jonathan Sterne takes Havens et al. and Fenton’s argument to heart in his essay ‘There Is No Music Industry’. He shows how research has focused on a narrow view of the music industry (2014: 50). Sterne argues for the acknowledgement of ‘music industries’ and advocates a broader view on the involved parties (2014: 52). Sterne urges us to take a step back and implicitly asks us the same as Havens et al. and Fenton: to take on a view that incorporates political economy and cultural studies approaches.

Coming back to Google, we’d like to bring one more sympathiser of this train of thought into the mix. In ‘Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques - Moving Beyond Text’ Krämer and Bredekamp try to break through the discourse of culture-as-text (2013: 23). They do not go so far as to state what culture should be seen as from now on, but their notion of culture is very helpful when looking at a phenomenon like Google.

As we know, behind the screen and the interface we see, a search in Google involves a mathematical algorithm made by engineers. In the same way as the Turing machine example used by Krämer and Bredekamp, Google manages a cognitive dimension. Krämer and Bredekamp’s argument that science and mathematics “facilitate the congruence of culture and the symbolic” is thus very helpful when we’re trying to understand a case such as Google as a cultural phenomenon.

In order to be able to understand the world we live in today, we need new perspectives and new ways of defining what it is we’re researching. This requires us to take a step back and critically ask ourselves if we’re looking at these phenomena in the right way or if we’re missing something. We should be able to zoom in on the details and be aware of processes of representation, subjectivity, discourse and meaning, while at the same time keeping in mind the political, social and cultural context.

Such a perspective might help us answer questions about the direction Google and, consequently and interchangeably, society are heading. Something both Havens et al. and Krämer and Bredekamp stress, is that the industry Google is a part of is in flux (Havens (2009: 250), Krämer and Bredekamp (2013: 23)). The boundaries between different segments prove to be ambiguous as industries are constantly evolving. This calls for a similar approach in research in which we should enter with new eyes and an open mind.

Google and social media corporations break theoretical bias within media studies.

B.L., E.K., L.C., N.R., R.H.







Literature

Fenton, Natalie (2007), ‘Bridging the Mythical Divide: Political Economy and Cultural Studies Approaches to the Analysis of the Media', in: Eoin Devereux (ed.), Media Studies: Key Issues and Debates. London: SAGE, pp. 7-31.

Havens, Timothy, Lotz, Amanda D. & Tinic, Serra (2009), ‘Critical Media Industry Studies: A Research Approach’, in: Communication, Culture & Critique 2, pp. 234-253.

Krämer, Sybille & Bredekamp, Horst (2013), ‘Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques – Moving Beyond Text’, in: Theory, Culture & Society 30 (6), pp. 20-29.

Sterne, Jonathan (2014), ‘There Is No Music Industry’, in: Media Industries Journal 1 (1), pp. 50-55.


Websites

Page, Vanessa (May 20, 2015), ‘The Top 6 Companies Owned by Google’, Investopedia. http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/052015/top-6-companies-owned-google.asp (September 3, 2015).

S.n. (s.d.), Computer School. http://www.computerschool.org/computers/google/ (3 September, 2015).

Stunt, Victoria (February 19, 2014), ‘Why Google is buying a seemingly crazy collection of companies’, CBC News. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/why-google-is-buying-a-seemingly-crazy-collection-of-companies-1.2537110 (September 3, 2015).

S.n. (s.d.) 'Gmail suffers international failure', The Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9735562/Gmail-suffers-international-failure.html. (September 3, 2015).