Digital Neoliberalism and Surveillance Capitalism: Technology Induced Monopoly

Digital Neoliberalism and Surveillance Capitalism: Technology Induced Monopoly

Capitalism in its neoiberal incarnation has come to dominate not only political economy but also the social organization and technology sector through cognitive hegemony, particularly in the digital services sector, proving intensely adverse to “public good,” These days, it has become impossible to avoid digital services monopolies on internet. An analysis attributes their access to personal information to “increased entry barriers, down ranking of services offered by would-be competitors and buy-and-bury strategies”. These platforms are viewed as major threats to right to privacy and right to expression through their control over our personal lives and private movements promoted by their surveillance based business models. Accessing data about our personal lives in large scale and commercializing such information to gain profit has been viewed as unethical and unfair practice. Despite several legislative measures initiated to regulate invasive and surveillance based business operations of these Big-Techs the intent and ethics of digital services reached the lowest ebb during the pandemic, that constrained the world to go online to work, to learn, to shop and to recuperate. If pandemic is taken as opportunity to reform our institutions to make the world resilient and sustainable rather getting back to pre-covid normal, the digital Big- tech is one sector that needs to be taken on priority.

The session proposed invites papers, empirical and conceptual, that seek to focus on the growing corporate consolidation in the digital services sector and its implications on the stakeholders globally.