In a textual analysis of government Web sites of 29 sub-Saharan countries, we evaluate how African nations use the Internet to construct a self-image for the world. Our analysis finds that the sites echo the ongoing struggle over the definition and purpose of the nation-state in relation to a global economy. Rather than representing a variety of domestic concerns, African countries present a "reflected" identity mirroring Western interests. Their governmental Web sites position the nation as a "brand" and construct citizens as exotic Others who can be marketed to foreign investors and tourists. The tensions between primordial loyalties and modernizing ambitions dissipate in favor of branded identities celebrating ethnicities and natural beauty to attract global investments. Moreover, the technological logic and aesthetics of the Internet reinforce the dependence of these texts on Western knowledge production. Our analysis challenges common assumptions of both host-colonial and Internet research.

Recognizing that privacy rights are complicit in the very forms of economic monitoring and data gathering they ostensibly oppose, this essay offers a critique of corporate surveillance as a technique for exploiting the work of being watched. Consumers who submit to comprehensive surveillance in response to offers of convenience and participation perform valuable work for corporations and marketers. The model of consumer labor developed in the essay is applied to the online economy and the example of interactive TV. The analysis suggests that a critical approach to forms of surveillance facilitated by interactive media must focus on asymmetries of power and control over information technologies and resources.