Digital Capitalism and Critical Media Education

Abstract

Digital capitalism has produced a new concentration of capital, knowledge, and power unprecedented in history. Quantification is fundamental to digital and capitalistic structural principles. In view of a comprehensive quantification and measurement of life and society, questions of meaning and significance must be asked beyond quantifying process structures. The first part of the article identifies capitalistic and digital structural principles, showing affinities between both principles. The second part points out central challenges and problem areas of digital capitalism. The third part discusses the manoeuvres of the IT industry in Germany to gain more influence on the education sector. Against the background of these developments, the last part outlines the need for alternative pathways and presents dimensions of a critical media education.[1] [1] The article is based on two German language publications (Niesyto, 2017a, 2021).

Keywords

• Digital Capitalism
• IT industry
• school education
• media education
• media criticism
• critical media education