Online Political Activity as a Prosumer Agency

The development of information and communication technologies, Internet services availability, and constant broading of their options incentivize the network activity and the involvement of users in previously inaccessible “closed” spheres of action in particular, in politics. Nowadays everyone can take on the role of a political activist by keeping a blog or create content, commenting on news and posts. This kind of “amateur activity” is called “Political prosumption”. In studies devoted on citizen journalism and political communication the concepts of “Politainment” and “Media prosumer” are used, for emphasizing of new political communication formats. The authors of the article think that prosumer agency is, first of all, productive labor, working practice. Therefore, it must be analyzed from the perspective of the production system. The purpose of this article is to analyze the forms of political activity using the author's system of prosumer agency indicators, based on Marxist theoretical and methodological principles and the categories. The main prosumer agency indicators (including the political blogosphere) are: 1) Individualized voluntary labor, aimed at creating a product for selfrealization and personal consumption (information content), in the absence of economic coercion. 2) Availability of production means, providing independence from external conditions and actors. 3) Network model of labor organization. 4) Non-alienated personalized product, which has both individual and public benefits (high use value). The analysis showed that producers of online political content use their own or leased production means, have a certain autonomy in the organization of the labor process, strive for self-expression and self-realization, express their political identity by objectifying themselves in the product. These features allow us to consider online political activity as a prosumption. At the same time, the distribution and consumption of the information product on the network leads to its massification and depersonalization, which is contrary to the prosumtion essence. This ambivalence is due to the influence of Late capitalism/Platform capitalism, which creates new (hidden) forms of exploitation, appropriates the free time and experience of the individual, and monetizes his emotions and experiences. The thesis that online political activity is embedded in the market relations system of the consumer society is confirmed by examples related to the development of the Russian blogosphere.

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