Against Corporate and Billionaire Funded Media Theorists
This phenomenon is particularly concerning given the growing influence of Big Tech companies and their founders on the ownership and control of knowledge. As these firms become ever more deeply enmeshed in our digital lives, they have a vested interest in shaping the discourse around technology, media, and society.[1] By luring academics with generous salaries and research budgets, these corporations and billionaire funders co-opt critical voices and legitimise their own agendas.
One need only look at the roster of high-profile media theorists now ensconced in corporate positions to see the scope of this problem. From well-known figures in the field of internet studies to leading proponents of planetary computation, many have been drawn to well-funded sinecures.[2] While they may justify their moves as opportunities to conduct impactful, well-funded research, the reality is that, although they may protest the opposite, they are now beholden to the whims and priorities of their corporate and billionaire overlords.
The consequences of this shift are far-reaching. By aligning themselves with the interests of Big Tech, Silicon Valley and the Billionaire class, these academics risk becoming apologists for the very power structures that needs to be critiqued.[3] Their work, however insightful or provocative, is inevitably tainted by the suspicion of corporate influence. Moreover, their departure from academia deprives students and colleagues of valuable mentors and collaborators, further weakening the critical discourse around media and technology.
Marx's critique of political economy offers a useful way of understanding the conservative implications of this trend. By aligning themselves with the interests of capital, these theorists effectively reinforce the existing relations of digital capitalism and the ideological superstructure that supports them. Rather than challenging the systemic inequalities and power imbalances that characterise computational capitalism, they help to legitimise and perpetuate them. In doing so, they abandon the critical, emancipatory potential of media theory in favour of a conservative defence of the status quo.
Kant's famous call for Sapere Aude, the courage to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another, takes on renewed urgency in this context. By subordinating their intellectual autonomy to the interests of their corporate and billionaire funders, these theorists abdicate their responsibility as scholars to think critically and independently. They fail to embody the Enlightenment ideal of the scholar as a free, rational agent, instead becoming mere instruments of the very power structures they should be interrogating. In this sense, the move to a corporate research position represents not only a challenge to academic integrity but of the fundamental principles of scholarly inquiry itself.
Curiously, this phenomenon has received relatively little critical attention within the field of media theory itself. Despite its profound implications for the integrity and autonomy of the discipline, the trend of scholars moving to corporate research positions has been largely met with silence or even tacit approval. This lack of critical self-reflection is, perhaps, a symptom of the growing influence of corporate interests on the field, as scholars become increasingly reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them.[4] This is a stark reminder of the urgent need for a renewed commitment to independent, critical scholarship in the face of encroaching corporate power.[5]
Of course, this is not to suggest that all corporate-affiliated research is inherently compromised or that academics should never engage with industry.[6] Indeed, there is value in fostering dialogue and collaboration between scholars and partners outside the ivory tower of academia. However, when such collaborations are funded by billionaires or corporate interests, questions have to be asked about the autonomy and credibility of such "academic" inquiry.[7]
What is needed, then, is a renewed commitment to independent, critical scholarship in the field of media theory. This means resisting the allure of corporate funding and insisting on the importance of academic freedom. It means fostering a culture of scepticism towards the claims and interests of Big Tech, even, or perhaps especially, when they are cloaked in the language of innovation and progress. And it means nurturing a new generation of scholars who are willing to challenge the dominant narratives around technology and society, even at the risk of biting the hand that feeds them.[8]
Only by maintaining a robust, independent community of media theorists can we hope to navigate the complex challenges posed by our increasingly digital world.[9] The alternative, a field beholden to the whims of billionaires and corporate agendas, is a bleak prospect indeed – what C. Wright Mills called administrative research.[10][11][12] It is time for media theory to question this trend and reaffirm its commitment to critical scholarship in the service of the common good.[13]
** Headline image generated using DALL-E in November 2024. The prompt used was: "create an image that looks like a corporate PR image of Corporate and Billionaire Funded Media Theorists."
Notes
[1] "In the mid-1950s, when evidence began to link cancer to tobacco smoke, the industry started out by founding the U.S. Tobacco Institute, nominally to carry out and fund research on smoking and health. While the institute was recognizably an industry creature, it became the staging point from which to mount an entire institutional campaign that is now widely recognized as setting the pattern for many subsequent citadels of commercial science. As David Michaels puts it, they learned that debating the science turned out to be easier, cheaper, and more politically effective than directly debating the policies themselves. We might rephrase it that they came round to accept that scientific debate was engagement in politics by other means. The key tenets were to promote otherwise isolated scientific spokespersons (recruited from gold-plated universities, if possible) who would take the industry side in the debate, manufacture uncertainty about the existing scientific literature, launder information through seemingly neutral third-party fronts, and wherever possible recast the debate by moving it away from aspects of the science that it would seem otherwise impossible to challenge... The inspiration was to take one aspect of what many philosophers (from Peirce to Popper to Putnam) had argued was central to scientific epistemology and to expand it into a principle of research funding and management, guided, of course, by explicit self-interest in steering the threatening controversies of the day." (Mirowski 2011: 298-99).
[2] In the concept of "planetary-scale computation" we encounter a peculiar form of computational reification that, whilst, perhaps, offering a powerful description, ultimately serves to naturalise and universalise the specific historical formations of platform capitalism. This abstraction of computational infrastructure into a planetary-scale system, whilst seemingly radical in its scope, paradoxically diminishes our ability to critique the concrete power relations that structure contemporary digital capitalism. Each layer of this abstraction appears as the necessary manifestation of an underlying computational logic. This theoretical move, whilst productive for understanding certain aspects of computational infrastructure, tends to obscure the contingent and contested nature of these arrangements. By presenting contemporary computational arrangements as the necessary outcome of a planetary-scale logic, rather than the product of specific political economic decisions and power relations, this approach can inadvertently contribute to what Mark Fisher (2009) termed "capitalist realism," that is, the sense that the current configuration of digital capitalism represents the only possible arrangement of computational resources.
[3] "there is a real difference between activists fighting against the oppression of their own communities who, as part of that struggle, must confront the computing arms of the carceral state, and academics at prestigious universities who, bankrolled by the likes of Google or Microsoft, speak of social justice activism. The latter have the world's loudest megaphone. They pen pieces for the largest media outlets; their reports are featured in venues like the Wall Street Journal, they participate in exclusive gatherings of CEOs and political elites" (Katz 2020: 130).
[4] "Compared with Google or Microsoft, Amazon has not been as aggressive in creating a research wing that includes social scientists or forming academic partnerships that can lend it a progressive image. At the same time, Amazon has rightly received negative press coverage for the abusive conditions its workers face, among other issues. All these factors have made Amazon a safer target for critique by AI experts" (Katz 2020: 151).
[5] "The point of the neoliberal marketplace of ideas was not (as most still seem to believe) to simply let a thousand flowers bloom on a level-playing field, to permit any and all criticism free play, and eventually induce the truth to come out of its own accord. It is instead geared to submit all ideas to the refining fire of dollar votes, within a consciously structured interlocking set of economic markets. This was deemed the only way to counteract those 'second-hand dealers in ideas'" (Mirowski 2011: 35).
[6] "The work of Data & Society and AI Now, two major centers in the critical Al space, exemplifies carceral-positive logic. As with the rest of the Al expert industry, the stance of these experts is profoundly shaped by their patrons. The centers, both backed by Microsoft and affiliated with New York University, are aligned not only with private power but also with state power. Al Now was formed through a collaboration among researchers (some working at Data & Society and Microsoft), the White House, and the National Economic Council'" (Katz 2020: 135).
[7] "All too frequently positions of academic authority have been awarded to opportunistic careerists who remain completely untroubled by the burdens of complicated thought and the fight for ethical and political responsibility... Increasingly within the university, thinking critically and embracing forceful new angles of vision are all too frequently viewed as heresy. One consequence is that those who dare challenge institutional conformity through a commitment to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry often find that insightful ideas emerge only to die quickly" (Giroux 2014: 79).
[8] It is important to note that fund-raising for university development is different from the subject of this article. The term university development refers to the fundraising and revenue-generating activities carried out by universities to support their overall academic mission and operations. The development aspect denotes the ongoing process of expanding the university's financial resource base through developing relationships with alumni, corporations, foundations, and other potential donors; soliciting financial gifts, donations, and grants; and investing donated funds to generate returns that can be reinvested. The core purpose of university development funds are to develop, grow, and strengthen the institution's academic programs, facilities, and overall institutional capacity. This is distinct from the concerns raised in this passage, which focus on corporate and billionaire-funded research positions that may compromise the independence and critical perspective of scholars. University development that upholds academic freedom and the public good is therefore an important part of university funding and should not be confused with the trend towards directed or earmarked funding, where the funder controls the way in which the funds are spent, or private enrichment, where a large salary is offered to work directly for the funder.
[9] "The problem with a conflict of interest in science is that it turns out to be a Pandora’s Box: Once opened, it is nearly impossible to close. 'Disclosure' offers no panacea, since it is unclear what precisely must be disclosed and to whom and under what circumstances. Should direct payments from the industry sponsor to the researcher be disclosed under all circumstances? Should it be expanded to include stock ownership or, even trickier, stock options? What if the investigator has an executive relationship, or sits on the board, of the sponsoring company or some interlocked firm? Does it cover indirect payments, such as consultant fees, honoraria, trips to resorts, 'gifts'? What if the sponsor supports students or others designated by the researcher? These and other questions have been raised on a regular basis in the past two decades. To stem the tide, most universities have clad themselves with some form of conflict of interest policy, but there is no standardization from one institution to the next and no serious enforcement" (Mirowski 2011: 236).
[10] "The formalism of these costly techniques makes them especially serviceable in providing the very kind of information needed by those capable and willing to pay for it. The new applied focus has typically been upon specific problems, designed to clarify the alternatives for practical – which is to say, pecuniary and administrative action. It is not at all true that only as 'general principles' are discovered can social science offer 'sound practical guidance; often the administrator needs to know certain detailed facts and relations, and that is all he needs or wants to know. Since the practitioners of abstracted empiricism are often little concerned to set their own substantive problems, they are all the more ready to abdicate the choice of their specific problems to others" (Mills 2000: 102)
[11] "This vanguard believes that science is really just another manifestation of the generic division of labor, to such an extent that a small elite of captains of cognition can sit atop the entire knowledge economy pyramid and direct the serried ranks of worker bees in the mundane quotidian tasks of doing the research; and if a few middle managers further down the pyramid manage to make a few bucks along the way, then who should object?" (Mirowski 2011: 196).
[12] "On guard against any claim to the common good, the social contract, or social protections for the underprivileged, gated intellectuals spring to life in universities, news programs, print media, charitable foundations, churches, think tanks, and other cultural apparatuses, aggressively surveying the terrain to ensure that no one is able to do the crucial pedagogical work of democracy by offering resources and possibilities for resisting the dissolution of sociality, reciprocity, and social citizenship itself... If gated communities are the false registers of safety, gated intellectuals have become the new registers of conformity... The armies of antipublic intellectuals who appear daily on television, radio talk shows, and other platforms work hard to create a fortress of indifference and manufactured stupidity. They ask that intellectualism remain a private affair. Public life is therefore reduced to a host of substanceless politicians, embedded experts, and gated thinkers who pose a dire threat to those vital public spheres that provide the minimal conditions for citizens who can think critically and act responsibly" (Giroux 2014: 89-90).
[13] Critical ideas and the technologies, institutions, and public spheres that enable them matter because they offer us the opportunity to think and act otherwise, challenge common sense, cross over into new lines of inquiry, and take positions without standing still – in short, to become border-crossers who refuse the silos that isolate the privileged within an edifice of protections built on greed, inequitable amounts of income and wealth, and the one-sided power of neoliberal governance. Gated intellectuals refute the values of criticality. They don’t engage in debates; they simply offer already rehearsed positions in which unsubstantiated opinion and sustained argument collapse into each other. Yet, instead of simply responding to the armies of gated intellectuals and the corporate money that funds them, it is time for critical thinkers with a public interest to make pedagogy central to any viable notion of politics. It is time to initiate a cultural campaign in which the positive virtues of radical criticality can be reclaimed, courage to truth defended, and learning connected to social change. The current attack on public and higher education by the armies of gated intellectuals is symptomatic of the fear that reactionaries have of critical thought, quality education, and the possibility of a generation emerging that can both think critically and act with political and ethical conviction.Our task is to demand a return to the political as a matter of critical urgency" (Giroux 2014: 101-102).
Bibliography
Fisher, M. (2009) Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Zero Books.
Giroux, H.A. (2014) Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education, Haymarket Books.
Katz, Y. (2020) Artificial Whiteness: Politics and Ideology in Artificial Intelligence. Columbia University Press.
Mills, C.W. (2000) Sociological Imagination. Oxford University Press
Mirowski, P. (2011) Science-Mart: Privatizing American Science, Harvard University Press.
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