The Clubhouse Caper

In this episode Owen Kelly and Sophie Hope wrap up last month’s discussion about Gamestop and move on to look at a newer internet phenomenon: Clubhouse.

They look at how this audio-only app works, ask how it has gained so much attention so quickly, and ponder about whether it means anything or not from the perspectives of cultural democracy and the open web.

This leads to a broader discussion about the business models behind online businesses and the nature of data-scraping. In the middle of all of this Sophie Hope throws in a reference to Pierre Bourdieu, who approaches power within the context of a comprehensive ‘theory of society’ which includes the concept of ‘habitus’: the way in which ‘society becomes deposited in persons in the form of lasting dispositions, or trained capacities and structured propensities to think, feel and act in determinant ways, which then guide them’.