‘Here in the US’: Identity narratives, national beliefs and corporate governance values in Big Tech Hearing discourse

Abstract

Starting from the idea that understanding Big Tech ideologies is a prerequisite for assessing how major tech corporations see a (re)organization of society, this paper offers an analysis of the opening statements of the CEOs of four of these corporations during 2020 antitrust hearings before the U.S. House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee. These statements were ‘critical discourse moments’ that foregrounded the beliefs of the CEOs in the collision between their discourse and that of government and politics. Using a critical perspective on discourse analysis as a main research approach, this research found that the opening statements blended (inter)national imaginaries, identity narratives and corporate values. Together, these factors communicated the notion of an ideal society in which tech companies awarded themselves a dual role: (1) national conductors towards what we call ‘techno/opportunity’ for individuals, and (2) politically neutral agents in the service of American world dominance. In this sense, ‘competition’ was reconstructed as a practice that, on a national level, must occur within Big Tech instead of between tech corporations and other actors. On an international level competition existed between ideologically opposed nation states where corporations were envisioned as representatives of these states.