Production, Consumption, and Labor in the Social Media Mode of Communication and Production

In this chapter we will explore recent developments in the critical analysis of culture, media, and communication in order to construct a conceptual framework for understanding how social media technologies simultaneously constitute a mode of communication that creates symbolic value and sustains socially shared meaning, as well as a mode of production that creates material value or capital out of the symbolic value of meaning (Fisher, 2012). In so doing, we will highlight how social media embody contradictions between the imperatives of operating as modes of communication, on the one hand, and production, on the other, that illuminate the structures and relations of power that cohere around the activities of production, consumption, and labor.