Despite scholarly consensus about the importance of the media for democracy, scant attention has been paid to what democracy means to journalistic discourse and how discourses on democracy are interrelated with legitimacy. The aim of this paper is to explore how (il)legitimate democracy is constructed in newspaper discourse. By using critical discourse analysis (CDA), this paper examines foreign news items about Venezuela, a country that under the presidency of Hugo Chávez has challenged the dominant global political and economic orders. The analysis section focuses on two discourses about the Venezuelan government: the constructions of populism and power concentration, which serve to mark deviance from what is perceived as a legitimate democracy. This paper argues that a liberal perception of democracy constitutes a central framework for the construction of (il)legitimate democracy, which is revealed not least by news discourse’s focus on what is morally unacceptable political conduct according to liberal democratic norms. In this respect, the media discourse serves to denounce potential abuses of governmental power but fail to recognize democracy in the context of a social struggle against the effects of neoliberalism and capitalism. In this case, the news media is hegemonic in the Gramscian sense, because it provides a framework of democracy that remains within the dominant economic and political structures.
This study examines the reporting on legal cannabis in order to explore the operation of neoliberal ideology in journalistic discourse. Cannabis legalisation is here understood as a way for capitalism to create new market opportunities, besides being a turn away from the so-called ‘war on drugs’. The study understands neoliberalism as operating via market-based logics that are interrelated with other social logics, such as those pertaining to journalism (Phelan 2014). Critical discourse analysis is used for studying Swedish newspaper reporting on legal cannabis between 2013 and 2018. The study shows that a struggle between market-based logics and journalistic practices is visible, where journalism has difficulties in challenging core tenets of neoliberal ideology. The article concludes with a discussion of how the current conditions of journalism limit its ability to challenge neoliberal perspectives.
This article was written in order to contribute to a discussion about a critical definition of alternative media. Askingwhat role alternative media could play in challenging neoliberal discourse in an age where capitalism have become immune to criticism, it elaborates on the concept of “the alternative” and the media through three sections. The first section discusses neoliberalism and the connection between neoliberal doctrine and mainstream media. This connection is described as promoting “public amnesia”, financialization and economization of news journalism. The second section discusses alternative media from the perspective of new social movements and symbolic resistance, claiming that the symbolic resistance framework undermines the critical potential of alternative media, it also comments on some recent critical literature on neoliberalism and capitalism. The third section takes examples from artistic explorations of capitalism and television to propose how a distinction between social and formalist aspects of “the alternative” could inform a critical notion of alternative media.
This article was written in order to contribute to a discussion about a critical definition of alternative media. Asking what role alternative media could play in challenging neoliberal discourse in an age where capitalism have become immune to criticism, it elaborates on the concept of "the alternative" and the media through three sections. The first section discusses neoliberalism and the connection between neoliberal doctrine and mainstream media. This connection is described as promoting "public amnesia", financialization and economization of news journalism. The second section discusses alternative media from the perspective of new social movements and symbolic resistance, claiming that the symbolic resistance framework undermines the critical potential of alternative media, it also comments on some recent critical literature on neoliberalism and capitalism. The third section takes examples from artistic explorations of capitalism and television to propose how a distinction between social and formalist aspects of "the alternative" could inform a critical notion of alternative media.
The purpose of this article is to contribute a critical theoretical understanding of cross-professional relations on social media, focusing on politicians, journalists and PR practitioners. It is well known that these professional groups establish personal and close relations in offline contexts, but more attention needs to be paid to the role of social media. Here, it is argued that in the context of digital media use, semi-private chatting, humour, and mutual acknowledgment, including the use of likes, smileys, heart symbols, etc., are evidence of a ‘neoliberalisation’ of cross-professional relations. The underlying idea is that the common practice of self-branding undermines representations of professional belonging and exacerbates the blurring of professional boundaries. The critical conceptualisation of such ‘transboundary’ interaction between politicians, journalists and PR practitioners, which is guided by a culturalmaterialist approach, includes the presentation of examples deriving from the Swedish Twittersphere, and suggestions for empirical research.
The epistemological basis for computer science (CS), on which research and education as well as development of applications are founded, are fundamental for its production of knowledge. In this paper we raise the issue of how gender research developed within science and technology can be used within computer science, to approach and discuss foundations of the discipline, and what the implications of this reflection are for CS education. After an introduction, which serves to motivate the questions raised, we discuss issues concerning the foundations of computer science. We then introduce gender research, as we use it, and present some points where this type of research can contribute to the question "What does it mean to know CS?".
The epistemological basis for computer science (CS), on which research and education as well as development of applications are founded, are fundamental for its production of knowledge. In this paper we raise the issue of how gender research developed within science and technology can be used within computer science, to approach and discuss foundations of the discipline, and what the implications of this reflection are for CS education. After an introduction, which serves to motivate the questions raised, we discuss issues concerning the foundations of computer science. We then introduce gender research, as we use it, and present some points where this type of research can contribute to the question “What does it mean to know CS?”.
Media production in late capitalism is often measured in terms of economic value. If value is defined as the worth of a thing, a standard or measure, being the result of social praxis and negotiation between producers and consumers in various combinations, it follows that this worth can be of other kinds than the mere economic. This is, for example, the reasoning behind field theory (Bourdieu), where the generation of field-specific capital (value) is deeply dependent on the belief shared by the competing agents within the field. The full extent of the consequences of such a theory of convertibility between fields of cultural production, centred on different forms of value, is, however yet to be explored. This is the task of this article. It especially focuses on how value is constructed differently depending on the relations of the valuing subject to the production process, something that becomes highly relevant in digital media environments, where users are increasingly drawn into the production process.
The convergence model illustrates ongoing changes in the Net Society. However the theoretical model goes back and synthesises the theoretical framework in research on psychosocial work environment and computerization. Interdisciplinary research programs were initiated by the author in the 70th and then analyzed changes in society related to various periods in "the history" of ICT. The description of the convergence model is structured with reference to the concepts Globalization, ICT, Life Environment, Life Role, Effects on Humans. Both Convergence and Interactions are important features in the model. There are four levels of analysis - individual, organisational, community, and societal.
This paper explores certain issues concerning the Turing test; non-termination, asymmetry and the need for a control experiment. A standard diagonalisation argument to show the non-computability of AI is extended to yields a socalled “April fool Turing test”, which bears some relationship to Wizard of Oz experiments and involves placing several experimental participants in a symmetrical paradox – the “April Fool Turing Test”. The fundamental question which is asked is whether escaping from this paradox is a sign of intelligence. An important ethical consideration with such an experiment is that in order to place humans in such a paradox it is necessary to fool them. Results from an actual April Fool Turing Test experiment are reported. It is concluded that the results clearly illustrate some of the difficulties and paradoxes which surround the classical Turing Test.
The aim of this article is to discuss and use Marx’s theory on primitive accumulation, outlined in the first volume of Capital, in relation to media and communication research. In order to develop Marx’s argument the discussion is revitalized through Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession. The article focuses on two different fields within media and communication research where the concept of accumulation by dispossession is applicable. First, the role of news media content, news flows and news media systems are discussed in relation to social mobilization against capitalism, privatizations, and the financial sector. Second, Marx’s theory is used to examine how communication in Web 2.0 and the development of ICTs could advance the processes of capital accumulation by appropriating the work performed by users of Web 2.0 and by increasing the corporate surveillance of Internet users. In conclusion, by analyzing how primitive accumulation is intertwined with contemporary expanded reproduction of capital, the article shows that Marx’s theory can contribute to critical media and communication research in several ways.
This article explores the rapidly developing field of Critical AI Studies and its relation to issues of class and capitalism through a hybrid approach based on distant reading of a newly collected corpus of 300 full-text scientific articles, the creation of which is itself a first attempt at properly delineating the field. We find that words related to issues of class are predominantly but not exclusively confined to a set of studies that make up their own distinct subfield of Critical AI Studies, in contrast to, e.g., issues of race and gender, which are more broadly present in the corpus.
The focus of this paper is on different but connected areas of power – relating to things such as economic globalisation, surveillance, censorship/freedom, ‘terrorism’ and/or specific military activity – visually represented through online media, and intentionally produced to inform a wide spectrum of individuals and interest groups about global and local social injustices. Or, more importantly, produced and distributed with the purpose of providing users with possibilities to engage, bodily and emotionally, in diverse ways: may it be through physical antiwar/anti-wall street protests or hacktivist tactics (e.g. DDoS attacks).
We examine a sample of videos, photographs and propaganda posters produced, and digitally distributed (2008-2013), by the fragmented body of activists united globally under the generic name of Anonymous. Analytically, we will draw upon Mouffe’s thoughts on ‘antagonism’ and ‘passion,’ Foucault’s ideas on international citizenship and the (ethical) ‘right to intervene’ (beyond governmentality), together with Sontag’s notion of institutional political inertia and the Deleuzian/Spinozian perspective on affect as a capacity for action. The goal is to analyse the ways in which Anonymous systematically inspire (not only) the radical and social imaginary but also other direct forms of action that have potential societal effects.
In cultural studies and cultural research, the importance of being critical is often stressed, but it is more rare to scrutinise how such critique is and can be performed. This text discusses differ- ent modes of critique, in three main steps. First, a brief review of the history and signifying layers of the concept of critique itself leads up to a late modern communicative concept of critique, linked to the contested relation between critique and tradition, and based on how Paul Ricoeur has interpreted ide- ology critique and the hermeneutics of suspicion. This communicative mode is contrasted to critical approaches that strive to radically dissociate themselves from others. Second, it is argued that the most powerful sources of critique are to be sought in the inner contradictions of the targeted spheres of social reality rather than applied from the outside. Such immanent – as opposed to transcendent – critique, has been formulated and exercised by Karl Marx, Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, among others. The third section sums up the spiral moves of cultural studies as informed by critical hermeneutics: dialectical critique based on communicative and immanent critique must be on the move, never frozen, and may temporarily and locally explore radical and transcendent modes of cri- tique, in ways that have been discussed by Donna Haraway.
This article takes the politicisation of copyright and file sharing as a starting point to discuss the concept of the commons and the construction of property. Empirically, the article draws on a series of interviews with Pirate Party members in Sweden, Australia, Germany, the UK and USA; placed in the theoretical framework of the commons. We argue that piracy, as an act and an ideology, interrogates common understandings of property as something self-evident, natural and uncontestable. Such constructions found liberal market ideology. The article has two broad aims: to outline the different phases of enclosure, from the physical commons, to the institutional and finally the cultural commons; and to discuss the way that piracy highlights the emergent crisis in private property rights, brought to the fore by the global financial crisis and ongoing privatization of public resources. We conclude by questioning what new modes of enclosure are emerging in a digital economy driven by excessive data mining and centralized streaming services.
This paper analyzes Google’s political economy. In section 2, Google’s cycle of capital accumulation is explained and the role of surveillance in Google’s form of capital accumulation is explained. In section 3, the discussion if Google is “evil” is taken up. Based on Dallas Smythe’s concept of the audience commodity, the role of the notion of Internet prosumer commodification is stressed.
This paper is a rejoinder to an article by Adam Arvidsson and Eleanor Colleoni: Arvidsson, Adam and Eleanor Colleoni. 2012. Value in informational capitalism and on the Internet. The Information Society 28 (3): 135-150. Arvidsson and Colleoni's paper is a criticism of and reaction to one of my own articles: Fuchs, Christian. 2010. Labor in informational capitalism and on the Internet. The Information Society 26 (3): 179-196. My comments focus on 6 aspects of discussion: 1) Misunderstandings of Marx 2) Autonomous Marxism 3) Corporate social media and the law of value 4) Capital accumulation on social media 5) Finance capital and social media 6) Politics, alternatives, and social transformation The discourse constituted by the two articles and this rejoinder are situated in the context of the digital labour debate that can be considered to constitute an important part of the contemporary discourse of the political economy of the media and the Internet. It is recommended that you first read both previous articles before reading this rejoinder.
This paper is an introduction to tripleC’s special section “Critical Theory and Political Economy of the Internet” that presents papers from a session at the Nordmedia Conference 2011 (August 11-13, 2011, University of Akureyri, Iceland).
This paper is an introduction to tripleC's special section "Critical Theory and Political Economy of the Internet" that presents papers from a session at the Nordmedia Conference 2011 (August 11-13, 2011, University of Akureyri, Iceland).
The worldwide economic downturn is indicative for a new large crisis of capitalism. The future of capitalism is in this situation not determined, but depends on collective human agency. This introduction to the special issue of tripleC on “Capitalist Crisis, Communication & Culture” presents general arguments about the crisis, a general model of the political economy of capitalist communication, and a systematic typology of literature about capitalist crisis & communication. The introduced model of the political economy of capitalist communication is comprised of seven interconnected moments: 1) the media content industry, 2) the media infrastructure industry, 3) the interaction of the media economy and the non-media economy, 4) the interaction of the finance sector and the media economy, 5) alternative media, 6) media reception, 7) media prosumption. The model is used for classifying actual and potential research about the communicative dimension of the new capitalist crisis.
The purpose of this paper is to rethink alienation in digital culture in the light of Foucault’s "pastoral modalities of power". Pastoral power does not displace other conceptions of power, but provides another level of analysis when considering the forging of reasonable, responsible subjects willing and able to sustain alternative conceptions of power. We will draw particularly on the early writings of Marx and the recent poststructuralist developments concerning hegemony and superstructure in relation to technology. Technology as such is analysed in terms of the repercussions of the "design of the machine" in industrial technological contexts and the "design of digital culture" in digital technological contexts. Pastoral power not only directs our attention to the making of technologies, but also to the making of individuals capable of taking on responsibility for those technologies. This means that it is necessary to acknowledge the fact of the effective power of ideologies and their material realities.
This article examines sustainable development discourses while addressing the unsustainable structures within which these discourses take place. The main research question concerns how sustainability is understood in relation to class and capitalism and what ideologies are expressed as neutral in the anodyne context of public information. Critical discourse analysis is applied as a method to examine how sustainable development is shaped through the construction of problems, responsibilities and solutions in a Swedish municipal magazine. The analysis reveals two parallel constructions: hyper-politicised discourses about free enterprise and a trivialisation of discourses about socio-economic challenges. Texts about social care and social responsibility are represented in the form of banal politics, transforming conflict into consensus, while stories about the business sector rely heavily on market rationales stressing the importance of political intervention to increase the attractive power of entrepreneurialism. Taking Critical Theory as its starting point, the analysis discusses the neoliberal paradox, namely that in the neoliberal political regime, despite the rhetoric of individualism and freedom, the role of the state is to support private enterprises. The article argues that the role of communication needs further analytical attention to increase our understanding of how sustainability is shaped and established in mainstream public discourse. It concludes that the specific communication practice examined here promotes neoliberal capitalism by encouraging the continued unsustainable class structuring of our society. © 2019, Unified Theory of Information Research Group. All rights reserved.
In much scholarly writing and in many leftist and activist accounts the enclosures of the cultural commons have been fiercely critiqued. However, during the last years, new media business models, that challenge the notion of the cultural industries as “copyright industries”, has been taking shape. A new class of entrepreneurs is instead working to expand the commons as part of their businesses. Accordingly, representatives from these new media industries, policy makers, and politicians have joined the academic and political critique of the “enclosures of the cultural common”. The paper argues that this is a shift within the dominant media policy paradigm and an attempt to integrate existing practices on the Internet, based on cooperation and sharing, into the market. By relocating the struggle from “intellectual property” to “platform economics”, the media industry can exploit the productivity of the commons while holding on to the power that comes with ownership and property.
Information technology warps information space, but there are limits to the availability of information. Information distance is introduced to begin investigate the shape of information space, which is very much needed. The concept of availability profile is proposed as a way of defining spatial location in information space, also interpretable as information state. A first check of the possibilities to extend the agentcentric view into an infocentric view is not immediately discouraging, but many problems and issues remain.
Man’s notion of ‘information’ is essential as it guides human thinking, planning, and consequent actions. Situations such as the Haiti earthquake in 2010, the financial crisis in Greece in 2010, and the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 are just a few instances of constant growing empirical dilemmas in our global society where information plays a central role. The meaning of what information is has clear implications for how we deal with it in our practical lives, which in turn may give rise to situations that we would prefer to be without. In this sense, the notion of information has evidently presented the need to question what it really means and how it dominates the functioning of our global society. To address this fundamental issue of information, two questions are explored and presented in this paper: What notions of information are dominating the scholarly literature? And what are the differences between these notions? To answer these questions, we have conducted a comprehensive literature survey of more than two hundred scholarly publications. Detailed analyses of the content of these publications identified four kinds of forms of information notions. The results show that these four forms present diverse and opposing views of the notion of information, labelled as the ‘quartet model of information’. These ad-dress different foci, contexts, and challenges. In addition, we propose an alternative and novel understanding of the notion of information, associated with how information functions in our global society. This understanding offers a new perspective intended to address significant needs of the information society.
Man’s notion of ‘information’ is essential as it guides human thinking, planning, and consequent actions. Situationssuch as the Haiti earthquake in 2010, the financial crisis in Greece in 2010, and the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico in2010 are just a few instances of constant growing empirical dilemmas in our global society where information plays a centralrole. The meaning of what information is has clear implications for how we deal with it in our practical lives, which in turnmay give rise to situations that we would prefer to be without. In this sense, the notion of information has evidently presentedthe need to question what it really means and how it dominates the functioning of our global society. To address thisfundamental issue of information, two questions are explored and presented in this paper: What notions of information aredominating the scholarly literature? And what are the differences between these notions? To answer these questions, wehave conducted a comprehensive literature survey of more than two hundred scholarly publications. Detailed analyses ofthe content of these publications identified four kinds of forms of information notions. The results show that these four formspresent diverse and opposing views of the notion of information, labelled as the ‘quartet model of information’. These addressdifferent foci, contexts, and challenges. In addition, we propose an alternative and novel understanding of the notionof information, associated with how information functions in our global society. This understanding offers a new perspectiveintended to address significant needs of the information society.
Product development efficiency and effectiveness is depending on a process being well executed. The actions of individuals included in the processes are influenced by the ethical and moral orientations that have been selected by each individual, whether this selection is conscious or not. This paper describes different ethical choices and the expected effects they may have on the development process exemplified by the product integration process for software products. The different frameworks analyzed are utilitarianism, rights ethics, duty ethics, virtue ethics and ethical egoism. The expected effects on the goals for product integration may be debated. This is a result in it self as it triggers discussions about ethical considerations and increase the awareness of the influence of moral decisions. Our conclusion is that the adherence to specific moral frameworks simplifies the alignment of actions to the practices described in product development models and standards and through this supports a more successful execution of product development projects. This conclusion is also confirmed through a comparison between the different directions and several codes of ethics for engineers issued by organizations such as IEEE as these combine features from several of the discussed ethical directions.
This article aims to shed more light on the potentials and limitations of social media as a tool for activists. It does this by focusing on the use of one particular social media platform — Twitter — during one specific period of a certain uprising: the first 24 hours of protests in Libya during the Arab Spring in 2011. Even though this study is thus limited, it represents an important step in the direction of analyzing what actually happens when social media is put to use in relation to concrete events. The identified social network patterns, as well as the content of the posts, resonate with what Enzensberger (1970) calls “emancipatory use of media”: The architecture is decentralized, network connections are distributed, and mobilization and self-organization is going on. It must be realized however, that seeds of such emancipatory use does not necessarily preclude “repressive use of media”.
The aim of this article is to define the concepts of playing, working, gaming, and labouring, through a literature study, and to construct a typology. This typology will be used to create a field model that is structured by the horizontal parameters of qualitative-quantitative (characteristics) and the vertical parameters of activity-result (in focus). It is shown how this model can be used to visualise different theoretical positions in empirical material, which connects to the concepts and their relations. Working and labouring are distinguished into a trans-historical and a historical, capitalist, category, and likewise playing and gaming, where the former is the trans-historical category and the latter the historical one. The main focus of the article, since working and labouring is well covered within the critical Marxist tradition, is on playing and its relation to working, with the aim of understanding and criticising the concept of playbour.
Digital platforms are a primary means of communication in society. Public libraries play an empowering role in these processes, strengthening citizens’ digital competences. This raises questions about what democratic processes the digital technology is made to enable. The study investigates how a Swedish Digital Library (DL) is envisioned and organised within a national digitalisation strategy. Qualitative methods are used, and a theoretical democracy framework is developed and used together with the concepts of education and Bildung in the analysis. Four empirical themes are identified. The analysis centres on tensions related to horizontality and hierarchy, and Bildung and sociality. The DL vision is dominated by a hierarchical and instrumental educational vision that connects to representative democracy. A subordinated social and pedagogical vision of inner motivational drives and partial forms of sharing, connected to deliberative and semi-participatory democracy forms, exists, mostly in the form of some cherry-picked Web 2.0 discourses.
This article contributes to the debate on the possibilities and limits of expanding the sphere of peer production within and beyond capitalism. As a case in point, it discusses the explicit and tacit monetary dependencies of Wikipedia, which are not only due to the need to sustain the technological structures that render the collaboration possible, but also about the sustenance of the peer producers themselves. In Wikipedia, the “bright line” principle for avoiding a conflict of interest has been that no one should be paid for directly editing an article. By examining the case of Wiki-PR, a consultant firm allegedly involved in helping more than 12,000 clients to edit Wikipedia articles until 2014, the goal of the analysis is to shed light on the paradoxical situation where the institution for supporting the peer production (Wikimedia Foundation) found itself taking a more strict perspective against commercial alliances than the unpaid community editors.
This article is an empirically grounded conceptual investigation of the failures of mediatized activism in 2011 in Azerbaijan and Turkey. By analyzing two specific cases, namely the complete dispersion of corporate social media based opposition in Azerbaijan, and arrests of Anonymous led hacktivistsin Turkey, the article aims to contribute to the discussion on the future of mediatized activism in the face of the growing pervasive surveillance, conducted by state intelligence agencies in collaboration with private infotainment and telecommunications companies. By elaborating on the shortcomings and the promises of social media based activism and hacktivism, the article discusses the possibility of building alternative online spaces, which can bring these two types of mediatized activism together, and help to connect activists with the rest of the society—especially the otherwise consenting middle classes of semi-authoritarian countries.
This article presents communicative ways to model the transmission and evolution of the processes and artefacts of a culture as the result of ongoing interactions between its members - both at the tacit and the explicit level. The purpose is not to model the entire cultural process, but to provide semantically rich “conceptual placeholders” for modelling any cultural activity that is considered important enough within a certain context. The general purpose of communicative modelling is to create models that improve the quality of communication between people. In order to capture the subjective aspects of Gregory Bateson’s definition of information as “a difference that makes a difference,” the article introduces a Holographic Cognition Model that uses optical holography as an analogy for human cognition, with the object beam of holography corresponding to the first difference (the situation that the cognitive agent encounters), and the reference beam of holography corresponding to the subjective experiences and biases that the agent brings to the situation, and which makes the second difference (the interference/interpretation pattern) unique for each agent. By combining the HCM with a semantically rich and recursive form of process modelling, based on the SECI-theory of knowledge creation, we arrive at way to model the cultural transmission and evolution process that is consistent with the Unified Theory of Information (the Triple-C model) with its emphasis on intra-, inter- and supra-actions.
In this theoretical essay we criticize theories of modernity and explore the possibility that the modern epoch is coming to a close while a new configuration is emerging: the global age. Building upon sociologist Martin Albrow's work The Global Age, we claim that Albrow's scholarship did a remarkable job at outlining the shift away from modernity, but that greater clarity is needed in laying out the main characteristics of the global age. With this essay we aim to fill that gap. Acknowledging that capitalism is the most important feature of our societies, we outline the contours of the global age through three interrelated concepts: interdependence, opacity and inertia, which in turn we exemplify with the global environmental crisis, the global economy and the Internet.
Climate change has universal, global implications and uneven, particular local effects. Examining how this complex phenomenon is understood in public discourse calls for the merging of theorizing on geography, justice, nature and the mediation of environmental protest. This article combines these strands to discuss relationships between peoples, places, politics, nature and the media in terms of climate justice. Empirical examples are drawn from interviews conducted with indigenous activists and observations of press events organized by indigenous groups during a U.N. climate summit. We argue that the “misframing” of indigenous peoples at international climate summits underlines the necessity to integrate the perspectives of marginalized, transnational groups and their growing demands for climate justice into future media research on climate change, and the need for a reframing of the mediation of climate change.
Prisons are a recurring topic and backdrop in the popular culture of the Global North. They often serve as spectacular environments that seem far removed from most people’s everyday lives. This article develops the notion of the prison media complex and discusses material entanglements between prisons and private media industries via the production of media technologies, consumption of communication, and technology development in the prison sector. The article seeks to answer the question of how we can conceptualise the prison media complex (PMC) from a materialist perspective. Taking the Swedish context as a starting point, we analyse the economic and material connections that characterise the PMC in this national context. Drawing on archival data, participant observations at prison technology tradeshows and a prison sector conference, as well as freedom of information requests, we bring nuance to the picture of media and communication technologies, as technologies of freedom are also based on unfreedom and captivity.