Networked Society and its New Power Actors: Critical Analysis of Hardware, Software, and Communicative Level of Digital Space

The paper analyses the networked society with the use of critical Internet studies approach. The authors consider the expansion of digital space as a transformational factor of post-modern individual work. In particular, there are negative trends: the decline in productivity, the decline in leisure quality and the problem of digital exploitation. The latest trend is considered using such concepts as 'digital prosumerism', 'digital labor product' and 'digital capital'. The authors note that capital in the digital space consists of two components: market and communicative ones. Both of these components play an important role in the spread of digital branding and in the formation of digital power actors at three levels of the digital space: communicative (digital profi-sumers), software (platforms as traffic oligopolies) and hardware (digital architects). The paper deals with the problems that may arise due to the strengthening of these actors. The authors propose approaches and possible tools (including Big Data analyses and math modelling) for empirical verification of the concepts applied.