‘Capitalism 2.0’: Web 2.0 Manifestoes and the New Spirit of Capitalism

Abstract

This article locates social media management literature in relation to broader shifts in management ideology. While studies of recent management ideology have highlighted its emphasis on the participation and autonomy of labor, they have largely failed to address how similar discourses have developed with respect to the informal ‘digital labor’ of social media users. I argue that the ‘new spirit of capitalism’ has spread from the formal workplace to the internet, and from the employee to the user. More specifically, I carry out a thematic analysis of ‘Web 2.0 manifestoes’ that finds them to be animated by three central ‘frames’: (a) user participation; (b) the pooling together of the contributions arising from that participation via the network; and (c) the resulting transformation of business and society. I conclude by pointing to the persistence of these sorts of ‘normative’ managerial discourses around social media, even with the recent prevalence of more ‘rational’ data-centered discourses.