Supplemental Post 1 - Rojeen

During Andrejevic’s reading, I thought about the concept of audience interactivity and how “activity and interactivity need to be clearly distinguished from activism,” (43). Andrejevic didn’t just discuss the exploitative aspect of the audiences’ unpaid labor but reflected how their interactivity contributed to the social and material relations sustained in/through corporate power. It made me reflect on how little corporate networks care about implementing progressive politics and representations into their shows. For example, one of my professor’s had told me how they had been invited to be a consultant on a Netflix show, specifically because she works on representations of Middle Eastern characters and Muslims in the media. However, they had asked for her to come in after the show had already been produced. She had told me that the nature of the meeting was not to ensure the show resisted stereotypical representations of Middle Eastern/Muslim characters, but to ensure the network that their viewership wouldn’t be impacted because of the character’s representation. Not surprisingly, after the show was released, Muslims voiced on Twitter/YouTube/reddit how they felt the show spread misinformation about Islam and contributed to Orientalist tropes. Where activism and progressive politics are readily available, corporations like Netflix only engage in the name of profit.