Sharing, Labour and Governance on Social Media: A Rights Lacuna

This paper discusses the dimensions and dynamics that configure the ways in which 'sharing' takes place in social media environments. It pays attention to the policy and political economic environments in constituting sharing as a certain act and 'moment' within the continuum of production-consumption and addresses sharing as a form of labour. The discussion argues that the conditions shaping the act and ideology of sharing, allow certain 'sharing practices while demonising others'. This is facilitated by both organisational and state policies, as well as a gap of comprehensive user-centred regulation. 1. Media Governance and sharing The ways in which social media affect everyday life and politics is a well studied subject. The role of sharing information and resources to access technologies and informational spaces for political purposes is an important part of such studies as well. Not entirely in the sense of ‘sharing’ but certainly as an expression of distribution of goods and services that are controlled by market rules, is a topic vivid in the politics of resistance and global social movements as well as in the literature on alternative media and uses. What is rather understudied, however, is the place of sharing as a political economic act within the context of the global social media industries. An important question for the purpose of this paper is in which ways is the act of sharing translated into value producing labour without it being intended as such? Furthermore, what role does policy play in supporting the specific political economic configuration of the relation between users and social media, what are the gaps, what are the benefits and for whom? The departing point for the following discussion is located in the study of the ways in which contemporary communications are shaped through transformed systems of law and policy. The paper aims to situate the practice and idea of sharing in online environments within the broader context of policy, not only policy which is ‘produced’ by governments, but also policy applied by social media as private institutions. The central theme of this approach is to discuss sharing in the political economic and regulatory environment as predominantly an act of labour, which supplies the production/consumption cycle with the necessary ‘raw material’. This approach helps reveal connections among policy domains, which are often considered separate and which have yet to attract the attention of scholars in media and communication as a field interlinked and interdependent. It is the argument of this discussion that there is a regulatory lacuna in relation to the conditions determining 36 Katharine Sarikakis social media users’ rights on the internet, and within this context, ‘freedom’ to association and expression in social media is appropriated by private companies with the aim to re/configure the user. In this process, the policies of privacy, copyright and ownership are being transformed to accommodate new dimensions of business models with the potential for enormous transformative powers at the cost of these same liberties. The study of governance of communications has gained ground in the field of media and culture as the international context of regulating the media has undergone considerable structural and discursive change (Chakravartty and Sarikakis, 2006). Media governance can be defined as the sum of institutions involved in a, actors, ideas and practices decisionmaking process that results into a system of regulation. The turn from ‘regulation’ to governance to describe the ways in which policy is made aims to reflect the complexity and multilevel involvement of various sets of actors that come from far beyond the traditional actors of state. Moreover, the governance of communication is a terrain where ideas and discourses play an important, yet often overseen, role. The very practice, internal policies and ideological framings of actions and positions within and by social media corporations, for example, as they operate within a specific regulatory context can also be considered part of the governance of communication. It is specifically the de facto set of practices that challenge established ways of ‘doing things’ and regulatory understandings of important cultural and political meanings, such as sharing, privacy, and public space. In this sense, this paper’s departing point is that the ways in which social media as organisations operate and interact with their users are underpinned predominantly by policies designed for the benefit of the organisation and whose relation to state law and international standards, whether antagonistic or compliant, shape in common a governing approach and a regulatory regime. At this point it is also important to note that lack of policy, hence the continuation of the status quo, also constitutes a form of policy (the decision to not make a decision) and is often expressed as policy vacuum, when new demands for provisions on new developments are yet to be met in law. In the case of social media, one of the issues that have dominated academic and public debate is that of privacy and the ways in which media organisations with the exemplary case of Facebook has pushed the boundaries of notions and practices of individuals’ right to privacy. This has been achieved by impacting upon two policy levels: on the one hand, Facebook, through its own policies, challenges existing norms of privacy law to monitor and profile users; on the other hand, it claims ownership of the ‘products’ provided by the users, such as documents, photographs, texts and information on personal taste. The combination of this new appropriation of data as objects of copyright and the challenging – or for some, abuse – of existing privacy standards constitute two sides of the same coin in the current political economy of social media (Sarikakis and Tsapogas, forthcoming 2012). Therefore, in this context the centrality of ‘sharing’ is the act (and ideological construct) that supports the monetisation and materialisation of what is largely immaterial and nonSharing, Labour and Governance on Social Media: A Rights Lacuna 37 factual exchange of information. Before we discuss this idea some more, it is useful to contextualise the act and ideology of sharing on social media. 2. Governing sharing: abundance and effacement ‘Sharing’ in the media world can be understood not only as a communicative praxis and process, but also as an act of speech and interlocution among peers. That which is ‘shared’ comes from the position of opening up to a dialogue and exchange, inviting contribution and assuming the position of participation in others’ processes of sharing. It takes place in an environment free from control or reprisal. In that sense, sharing is an act that takes place among equals – power relations cancel the spirit of sharing, which is based on free will and generosity. To impose ‘sharing’ without free will – autonomous choice – is to deprive of that which is given away, even if the act does not materially result in the reduction of that which is shared. Voluntary ‘offerings’ and self-disclosures are the basis of ‘social networking’, promoted by the fact that social media are free at the point of reception and access. Third party features and tailored advertising then tap into the pool of profiled us-