Digital Neoliberalism

Ideological Action Through Digital Technologies

Abstract

The present article aims to capture and reflect on the neoliberal actions orchestrated thru digital networks. The path outlined throughout the text is a conceptual association between neoliberalism and the digital field. We start from the assumption that liberalism, as a secular current, is constituted thru constant updates, as its agents are embedded in orders of conflicts and specific demands of their context. The 1990s saw the advent of the internet, and twenty years later, smartphones were popularized, something that opened new political and communicational paradigms. In this sense, throughout the article, we establish the associations between neoliberalism and the digital field, discussing the ways in which an ideology appropriates and operates within network dynamics. The methodology applied in the article consists of a qualitative approach, combining historical-conceptual analysis, discourse critique, and case studies to uncover the interconnections between neoliberalism and digital technologies, based on specialized bibliographic sources and emblematic empirical evidence, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, demonstrating how ICTs are operationalized in electoral disputes. The temporal scope falls within a historical-conceptual approach that spans the evolution of liberalism, with a greater focus on the 1990s (with the emergence of the internet) until the 2020s, when smartphones began to become part of everyday life. Based on the analysis conducted, we can conclude that digital technologies play an instrumental role in the neoliberal expansion, accelerating market transitions, flexibilizing labor relations, and fostering monopolistic control of data.