Digital corporate communication and the market for big data

Digital corporate communication is both a producer as well as a main beneficiary of the big data market. The argument that corporate communication ultimately contributes to the hegemony of corporate organizations over stakeholder groups remains therefore as true as ever. However, missing from the corporate communication academy’s inquiry is a perspective in which the detrimental societal changes of such modern-day forms of corporate communication can be explained. This chapter attempts to fill that gap by drawing on economic theory and by describing the implications of digital corporate communication’s use of big data not only to an organization’s stakeholders, but to markets and societies as a whole. Existing economic theory provides three major concepts for addressing the implications as so-called ‘externalities’. Moreover, some of its findings - by Ostrom in particular - are able to recreate stakeholders’ and society’s choices in and about digital corporate communication.