IT Corporations on the Way to Gaining Political Subjectivity: Threats and Opportunities

The article assesses the degree of media corporations' influence on modern political processes. The empirical basis of the study was formed by monitoring the functioning of popular network platforms (Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc.) during the US presidential campaign in 2020. The totality of the observations the author made suggests that Internet resources have moved into a qualitatively new state for themselves: if earlier they served as channels of communication between political actors, now they have began to directly influence the distribution and redistribution of power. At the same time, their ideological tendentiousness and political engagement have become obvious. IT corporations pursue their power ambitions by promoting the electoral success of candidates and parties that provide them with political patronage. For this, a set of manipulative technologies is used. It includes blocking accounts and restricting access to certain content, labeling objectionable publications as “fake news” or “potentially dangerous” materials, public denial of statements of political bloggers, setting up search algorithms so that they produce pre-programmed results, automatic recommendation of certain materials for viewing, artificial pessimization of ideologically alien content, termination of technical support for applications and services used by political opponents, abuse of access to personal data of clients. The author comes to the conclusion that, during the 2020 US presidential campaign, there was a clear tendency for IT corporations to acquire full-fledged political subjectivity. They can use their information and communication potential to influence the electoral processes. Seeking maximum personalization and emotional saturation of their content, social media platforms indirectly contribute to the ideological polarization and radicalization of the masses. However, the main problem is that the functioning of popular video hosting sites, search engines, aggregators, and social networks does not fit into the framework of traditional political institutions. At the moment, they, de facto, are quasi-state formations, the territory of which is the Internet space. These “virtual states” have their own ethical and legal norms, which are often inconsistent with national and international legislation. Accordingly, the need for finding effective mechanisms that can bring the information policy of media corporations in line with the standards, which will be developed by the legitimate authorities, is becoming urgent.

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