Study of Social Alienation on Digital Platforms from the Perspective of Marx’s Theory of Communication

Abstract

The rise of digital platforms has profoundly transformed the spatial structure, media forms, and organizational patterns of human interaction. On the one hand, it has broken through the constraints of time and space, expanding the possibilities for social members to express themselves, connect, and collaborate; on the other hand, under the combined influence of the logic of capital, algorithmic power, and data ownership, it has given rise to new forms of alienation in social activities. Marx’s theory of communication, taking real human beings and their social relations as its starting point, reveals the intrinsic connections between communication and production, between forms of communication and social relations, and between the freedom of the subject and alienated domination. It thus provides a crucial theoretical framework for analyzing social alienation on digital platforms. Social alienation on digital platforms is not merely a side effect of technology, but rather the result of platform capital organizing, extracting, and monetizing attention, data, and emotional relationships. This alienation manifests primarily in the digitization of communicative subjects, the quantification of social relationships, the spectacle-ization of social content, the fragmentation of social time, and the stratification of public social spaces. To address social alienation on digital platforms, it is necessary to uphold a people-centered value stance and foster a concerted effort across platform governance, algorithmic regulation, data rights protection, digital literacy cultivation, and the reconstruction of real-world communities. This will drive digital communication away from the logic of capital accumulation and back toward the free and comprehensive development of human beings.