Belonging to the Network Society: Social Media and the Production of a New Global Middle Class

Abstract

In this article, I draw from ethnographic research conducted in Paris to analyze how new class competencies based on cultural capital in the form of the ''authentically global'' are acquired, wielded, and reproduced in a global network of web-based groups that organize offline, local events for ''international people.'' Just as mass media such as radio, television, newsprint, and the novel have been implicated in the creation of national middle classes, new social media may be connected to the discursive production of a global middle class. Although the development of the national middle classes was key to the nation-building projects of modernity, the production of this global class is fundamental economically and culturally to expanding processes of neoliberal globalization.

Negotiating independent mobility: Single female expats in Bangalore

“…As a media studies scholar working in what has been called the ‘spatial’ or ‘mobility turn’ (Falkheimer and Jansson, 2006), I have been interested in how communication technologies intersect with lived experiences of mobility, and previous work has focused on how mobile professionals employ technologies to connect offline with others in foreign cities (Polson, 2011, 2015). Through that work, I noted there seemed to be differences in the affordances these place-making technologies granted to women traveling alone, and suggested women’s mobility was enabled by these innovations in important ways.…”

Cosmopolitanism and the Media

“…Whereas these informants also reproduce various regimes of enclosure through their media use, what emerge are relatively exclusive, re-as well as de-territorializing techno-systems. This can be seen, for example, in the creation of distinctive status groups online, the enactment of various encapsulating filtering and monitoring functions and the usage of online tools for setting up offline meetings and events at foreign places (personal interviews 2008; see also Polson, 2011). Cosmopolitanism, therefore, is notoriously difficult to disentangle from accumulation of capital, which in turn implies that it becomes a disposition that is often, paradoxically, held within certain encapsulated enclaves and reproduced through various forms of complicit surveillance (speaking of both personalized media use and the overarching structures of abstract systems).…”

What is the “Digital Divide” and why is it Important?

“…The number of studies on this phenomenon from the point of view of the digital divide is so far rather small, but nevertheless the fi ndings that are available paint what is by now a familiar picture (Hargitt ai & Walejko 2008). Among the most enthusiastic participants in this new culture are members of what has been called the "new global middle class," who use its potential to enhance their position in the managerial market place (Polson 2011). In terms of the promise of the technology for revitalising political democracy, which is one of the most enticing promises held out by the internet, what evidence there is points to the continuing, indeed increased, domination of political discourse by elite groups: "as creative content applications and uses have grown, the poor and working class have not been able to use these production applications at the same rate as other uses or users, creating a growing production divide based on these elite creative functions" (Schradie 2011, 165).…”