CC: Creative Commons License, 2014. A Seeping Commodification: The Long Revolution in the Proliferation of Communication Commodities

Abstract: The main goal of this paper is to conceptualize a seeping commodification. The author of the paper claims we are in the midst of a considerable qualitative transformation in the processes of commodification that is, in large part, owed to an overwhelming capitalist enclosure of the wider com-municative field. The key reason for what seems to be an important qualitative transformation in the commodification process lies in the fact that communication and information flows today run through most social relations and spheres – which non-critical approaches often explain with the concept of the ‘mediatization of society’. A materialist approach, distinctive of (critical) political economy of com-munication, enables an apt critique of these processes. In an epoch, in which capital has enclosed the wider field of communication, mediatization is in fact nothing else than a continuing commodification of our everyday lives. The author of the paper claims that commodification of communication and infor-mational resources must be seen as a long-term process, which has accompanied the rise of capital-ism. A considerable proliferation of the economic importance of communication, information, and cul-ture has – to be precise – been enhanced in a large part by political interventions occurring in the last decades (which were a response to the economic tendencies and crises of the time). While the imme-diate results are observable especially in the proliferation of the new information and communicatio