#AoIR2024 Industry

Presentation 1
 
Money and other Technologies of Value in Internet Industries
Lana Swartz⁽¹⁾, Clea Bourne⁽²⁾, Ashley Mears⁽³⁾, Rachel O'Dwyer⁽⁵⁾, Yichen Rao⁽⁴⁾
1: University of Virginia, United States of America; 2: Goldsmiths, University of London, UK; 3: University of Amsterdam, Netherlands; 4: Utrecht University, Netherlands; 5: National College of Art and Design, Ireland
 
While there are many regimes of value and exchange that shape Internet sociality, it could be argued that it is money that transforms community into commerce, and sociality into industry. This roundtable attends to the cultures, infrastructures, and business models of money that undergird internet industries, notably including money’s Internet-born variant: monetization.
This roundtable brings together leading internet researchers who work on Internet money in diverse contexts and disciplinary perspectives but share topical and thematic interests. Dealing with trust, inequality and the operation of power in financial markets, Bourne explores postcolonial pressures on Caribbean financial infrastructures and communities. Mears studies both the financial and non-financial production and circulation of value within global capitalism, and has written about models, the elite party circuit, and viral video producers. O’Dwyer explores the circulation and monetization of informal exchange media on platforms such as the Amazon owned streaming site Twitch and Bytedance’s TikTok. Rao works on fintech and imaginaries of money in China, and his "Financial Cyborg" book project explores how digital Ponzi schemes on P2P lending platforms. Swartz has studied payments, cryptocurrency, and the digital economy, and is currently working on scams and the hustle economy, particularly in the USA.
We propose a round table format because we seek to draw out new points of comparison and contrast across our research. Each researcher will draw from multiple streams of enquiry over many years, including new work.
Toward this end, we offer some starting questions: How do money and other regimes of value function as the infrastructure of money in global internet industries? How do practices and communities of monetization shape these infrastructures and vice versa? How does monetization offer particular visions for Internet industries and how do global empirical realities complicate these same promises?