CONCLUSION

The political economy of the Internet encompasses a vast range of issues that are rigor­ously debated within the field. Nevertheless, scholars are united in their commitment to the view that political economy is vital because it brings together two fields that were historically separated in the academic division of labor.

As reviewed here, there are many different schools and approaches to political economy, such that its theories and methods are not homogeneous, or absent of vigorous internal critique (e.g., see Babe, 2009; Mosco, 2009; Winseck and Yin, 2011). Moreover, given its focus on the social relations of capitalism as a primary factor in understanding communication and the Internet today, the approach is inherently oriented to staying dynamically in tune with them. Accordingly, political economy avoids the technological determinism expressed through studies that see the Internet itself as a ‘revolution’ and similar work that places communication at the very center of analysis to prioritize how interpersonal networks and meanings are made. Either of these approaches can take capitalism as a given, relegate it to the background, or render power so diffuse as to make it entirely dependent on individual interpretation.

Considering political, economic and social questions in terms of local and global con­centrations and practices of power - and the interconnections between them - means that the approach is complex and challenging for researchers and lay people alike, both in terms of its breadth and historical reach and its consistent skepticism in the face of domi­nant theories or practices.

As the Internet continues to evolve, more issues will emerge to test the strength and the unity of the political economy perspective. For example, one field that is emerging is the expansion of cloud computing and ‘big data’ (Mosco, 2014). Cloud computing is the first step in building what one might reasonably call the ‘Next Internet’. While it is far from fully formed and retains some of the same characteristics as the one born in 1989, the Next Internet is developing rapidly and already challenging its founders’ vision of a pluralistic, decentralized and democratic digital world with one that privileges exclusive, centralized control and ubiquitous surveillance. In addition to cloud computing, the Next Internet is made up of big data analytics, and the Internet of Things. It promises companies and government agencies centralized data storage and services in vast digital factories that process and analyze massive streams of information gathered by networked sensors stored in every possible consumer, industrial, and office device, as well as in living bodies. But it is also encourages concentrations of political-economic power and data-driven decision-making, as well as posing major environmental, privacy and labor challenges (Mosco, 2015).

The global spread of massive facilities to house the infrastructure, platforms and applications that make up the cloud are just beginning to draw the attention of political economists concerned with the ecological (Maxwell and Miller, 2012) and the ethical dimensions of this development (boyd and Crawford, 2012). Such research demonstrates that political economy is a living tradition that will continue to bring an important criti­cal voice to the study and future development of the Internet, and also serve as a vital contributor to realizing its democratic potential as a public resource.

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