Jhally & Livant (1986) Working as Watching

Watching as Working – Jhally & Livant – 1986

125 – media companies get paid “rent’ to deliver audiences to advertisers.  The money left over from paying for the programming constitutes the comapanies’ profits

126 – “watching time” is sold by the media to advertisers

126 – watching extra – seeing hidden surfaces in what we watch (like decoding advertisements) (connotative meanings)

126 – media to get the audiences not just to watch but to “watch extra” and maximize the production of this commodity at minimal costs

127 – necessary watching time – produced to offset costs of content

127 – surplus watching time – extracted to produce revenues (profits) – above the cost of programming

127 – watching time is measurable and the mode of expression of value

127 – authors explore the struggle over the valorization of the activity of watching TV

129 – believe that Smythe’s approach must be more firmly situated within media structures – where exchange value is privileged before understanding use-value of commercial messages (meanings and their relation to consumption)

130 – commodity audience time is produced by both the networks and audience

132 – networks buy watching power through the purchase of shows/programming

132 – networks then sell this watching power to advertisers for more than they paid

133 – “If the networks cannot make people watch advertising longer in absolute terms, they can make the time of watching advertising more intense – they can make the audience watch harder” (emphasis in original)

133 – targeting niche audiences limits “‘wasted’ watching by ‘irrelevant’ viewers”… concentrated audiences = little wasted watching

134 – concentrated audiences watch harder with more efficiency – value of the time goes up, thus, necessary time decreases and surplus watching time increases as a result – greater revenue (networks can charge more for a niche audience b/c there is little wasted audience for the advertiser)

135 – This is all Marxian economics – human labor, not capital or technology, is the basis for productivity in society.  Watching is a form of labor, because audience watching is integral to the entire process.

135 – Marxism – “productivity of capitalism is based upon the purchase of one key commodity – labor power” (businesses have to pay people to work)

135 – labor power produces more value than it takes to reproduce itself – the laborer gets a salary so they can live and be fit for work the next day; company profits:

Value of labor-power is fixed at a socially determined level of means of subsistence (subsistence means minimum level to maintain life; food, water, shelter, etc)

Marx – socially necessary labor: amount of time it takes to produce value equivalent to this minimum cost (produces value equivalent to salary) before the company starts profiting (it is necessary because the laborer needs to be able to reproduce labor power for the next day)

Any remaining labor time in the day is surplus labor time because surplus value is generated (profits) for the company

During non-work time, workers reproduce their labor power by spending wages on food, shelter, clothing, etc.

135 – In terms of TV Viewing:

Audiences sell watching-power to media owners/companies

The use-value of watching power is watching (capacity to watch)

Value of watching power is the cost of its reproduction, aka the cost of programming content (TV Shows)

This puts the viewers in position to watch extra (time of advertising); Only advertising comprises the work day

Thus, programming is the value of watching-power, programming is the salary of the audience.  It is also non-work time – time of reproduction of watching-power

Thus, the work day in TV is split: socially necessary watching time vs. surplus watching time

138 – time shifting fears of the advertising agencies

139 – there is no formal contract for the exchange of watching-power; no enforcement – thus, people can leave the room, time-shift, avoid commercials altogether

140 – narrowcasting & targeting niche audiences intensifies both , relative and absolute surplus value (because there is a smaller amount of wasted watching)

142 – main argument – activity of watching is subject to the same process of valorization as labor-time in the general economy.

Andrejevic (2002) The Work of Being Watched: Interactive Media and the Exploitation of Self-Disclosure

231 - Andrejevic sets out to further (update) the work of Smythe (1977) and Jhally & Livant (1986).

231 - Viewers "are being recruited to participate in the labor of being watched to unprecedented degree by subjecting the details of their daily lives to increasingly pervasive and comprehensive forms of high-tech monitoring."

232 - This surveillance is not for its repressive force, but rather for its potential productive deployment; companies need to know what is being consumed, how it's being consumed, when, where, and by who.

232-233 - Goal is to offer an alternative view to the debate of privacy over online interactive media

233 - People are willingly surrendering their personal info for convenience and customization - promises of interactive media

233 - Taylorism as digital technologies & watching viewers

234 - Foucault - Discipline & Punish - power of surveillance is a productive power - increase production, develop economy - as in Taylorism - p. 208, 1977.

234 - Marketing employs surveillance as to predict consumption through the records of consumer behaviors & other demo info.

234 - Foucault moves surveillance beyond the workplace & into the home as a necessary condition of capitalism

235 - "The information economy - including that designed to stimulate consumption via the accumulation, manipulation, and deployment of information derived from consumer surveillance - is economically productive, and the labor associated with it can be identified by its status as a value-generating activity."

235 - It's about supply & demand... with growing supplies, marketers must increase & stimulate demand for products, and to do this effectively, require detailed personal information to understand how consumers consume.  Therefore, consumption and production are tied together.

235 - Interactive technologies offload this work of data collection onto the consumer who disclose their personal data in the act of consumption.

235 - Jhally & Livant's 1986 analysis: audiences perform work by viewing advertising in exchange for payment in the form of programming content.  Viewing is productive because watching ads helps speed up the selling & circulation of commodities.  This cuts down on on circulation and storage costs for producers.

236 - Taylorism & Television: Niche marketing (direct marketing) is meant to limit wasted watching.  To do this, detailed personal and behavioral data is required - which comes in the form of TV ratings.  Nielsen does the watching, so advertisers know the work of audiences is being done as efficently as possible. Therefore, ratings are commodities because they help rationalize the viewing process in what Mosco & Meehan call "cybernetic commodities." (feedback commodities produced through consumption or interaction)

236 - Digital/Informational technologies becomes useful because now direct/individual marketing is now a possibility when before it was either too expensive or technologically impossible.

238 - discusses variable pricing of e-commerce where prices for the same project differ based on collected demographic data.

238 - The Digital Enclosure - surveillance based rationalization - activities traditionally carried outside of monitoring are now folded into digital technologies for monitoring & data collection

Often times this is voluntary, but even Andrejevic hints that it may soon not be.

The draw? Lester (2001) calls it the "tyranny of convenience"

Also, there may be an exclusivity involved where certain media products can only be found online

Surveillance is creeping into the realm of free-time

238 - Privacy Quote: "1999 Wall Street Journal-NBC poll cited by Lester (2001) for its finding that 'privacy is the issue that concerns Americans most about the twenty-first century, ahead of overpopulation, racial tensions, and global warming' (p. 27).

239 - Andrejevic suggests that privacy laws may not be helpful in that they hinder the economy - which relies on marketing and selling commodities effectively.  He observes that an alternative ideology is surveillance as a form of consumer control.  Celebrants & corporations discuss how the consumer now has all the control, which is endorsing the digital enclosure! While Andrejevic doesn't deny there is some truth to this control, he says we cannot ignore the exploitative properties.  He says this control and individualism is merely a "ruse" to have users self-disclose their info while media still remains a form of mass consumption.  (The individualism being sold is really to benefit the marketing side, not the consuming side!)

240-41  - Viewers get a lot of bells and whistles that appear to challenge the norms of the industry, but it's actually the industry investing in this for the sole purpose of data collection.

242-43 - Tivo, like digital technologies' main components are: Customization (for both production and consumption), Interactivity (ability to monitor consumers consuming), Offloading of work onto the consumer  (who generate their own data), and development of a relationship (for the longitudinal collection of personal data and trends.)

243 - It's not the death of privacy, but the shift in control over personal information from consumers to the private sector.

244 - the more sophisticated surveillance means that exist, the more stimulated the market & economy become.

244-45 - for Foucault, where ever there is power, there is a "potential for resistance."

245 - a more passive data collection approach is the cookie where, instead of actively submitting data through online forms and surveys, websites collect data for the convenience of users re-visiting websites and provide it to marketers.

Andrejevic argues that once the idea of privacy as dead is debunked, we can then address the unequal access to data which leads to exploitation.