Follow the Money

Step 1: i am choosing a single, personal, mediated interaction. Watching a video on YouTube on your smartphone using your home Wi-Fi What all (and I do mean all) had to happen for this interaction to take place? Who got paid along the way? And how was this interaction shaped by its political economy?

Step 2: start listing all the technologies, companies, and labor relationships involved in facilitating this interaction. Think about the content, its production, its distribution, its marketing, its ownership, its financing, its subsidiaries, its partnerships, its exploitation, its supply chain, its raw materials, its pollution, its conflicts, its data, its global connections, its government regulation, its industry regulation, its technological and social networks, its interpersonal relationships, and the many different types of laborers, bosses, users, victims, and policymakers that were involved in this process.

Step 3: Use these concepts Products, Platforms, and Pipes, Integration and Synergy, Presence Bleed and Global Supply Chains. I will send you 2 documents that explain these concepts. You DON’T have to use these concepts you can use any other concept from the documents I send you.

Step 4: Take your list and research each element further. Wikipedia is a fine starting point. Who owns what? What else do they own? Whats their supply chain? Who do they work with? Who are their workers? Who holds the power?

Step 5: draw a map or diagram or timeline (or something else?) that traces the political economy of that single interaction with a focus on who has the most power to shape the interaction and who is getting paid. Accompany your map or diagram or timeline with a paragraph in which you connect your example to key course concepts. Follow the money. Go as far as you can. Submit to Canvas.