Christian Fuchs: Introduction to Digital Labour Studies

Introduction to Digital Labour Studies

Christian Fuchs [email protected]

1. The Digital Labour Discourse

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Trebor Scholz: “The Internet has become a simple-to-join, anyone-can-play system where the sites and practices of work and play increasingly wield people as a resource for economic amelioration by a handful of oligarchic owners. [...] Over the past six years, web-based work environments have emerged that are devoid of the worker protections of even the most precarious working-class jobs. [...] These are new forms of labor but old forms of exploitation. There are no minimum wages or health insurance“ (p. 1)


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Introduction (Burston, Dyer-Witheford and Hearn 2010, 215): “People still labour in the traditional sense, to be sure – in factories and on farms, in call centres, in the newsroom and on the sound stage. But contemporary life likewise compels us, for instance, as audiences for ever more recombinant forms of entertainment and news programming, to labour on ever-multiplying numbers of texts (as readers, facebook fans, mashup artists). When such labour is subsequently repurposed by traditional producers of information and entertainment products, the producing/consuming ‘prosumer’ (or ‘produser’) is born.


Additionally, as individuals are subject to precarious, unstable forms of employment that demand they put their personalities, communicative capacities and emotions into their jobs, they are encouraged to see their intimate lives as resources to be exploited for profit and, as a consequence, new forms of labour on the self are brought into being“.


Additionally, as individuals are subject to precarious, unstable forms of employment that demand they put their personalities, communicative capacities and emotions into their jobs, they are encouraged to see their intimate lives as resources to be exploited for profit and, as a consequence, new forms of labour on the self are brought into being“.


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Book: Fuchs, Christian and Marisol Sandoval, eds. Forthcoming. Critique, Social Media and the Information Society. New York: Routledge. EU COST Action IS1202 “Dynamics of Virtual Work“ (2012-2016) Chair: Prof. Ursula Huws, University of Hertfordshire Vice Chair: Christian Fuchs virtual work: “labour, whether paid or unpaid, that is carried out using a combination of digital and telecommunications technologies and/or produces content for digital media“ (MoU, 4)


4 working groups Working group 1. New geographies and the new spatial division of virtual labour Working group 2. Creativity, skills, knowledge and new occupational identities Working group 3. Innovation and the emergence of new forms of value creation and new economic activities Working group 4. Policy implications, including economic development, employment and innovation policy

2. Digital Labour – Examples

Amazon Mechanical Turk


1 hour interview: typical transcription time 6 hours => Hourly wage: a) US$ 4, b) US$ 4, c) US$ 3


60 minutes: 60 GBP = 95 US$ = approx. 16 US$ / hour


http://www.franklin-‐square.com/transcription_per_line.htm US$ 90-‐US$150: US$15-‐25 / hour CROWDSOURCING LABOUR => More precarious labour? More unemployment?


Pepsi launched a marketing campaign in early 2007 which allowed consumers to design the look of a Pepsi can. The winners could win a $10,000 prize, and the promise was that their artwork would be featured on 500 million Pepsi cans around the United States.


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ARD: Ausgeliefert! Leiharbeiter bei Amazon. (At mercy! Contract workers at Amazon), February 2013


€8.52/hour instead of €9.68 as inititally promised = -12%



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Amazon.de Facebook group: comments on February 16th/17th, 2013


Ideabounty is a crowdsourcing platform that organizes crowdsourcing projects for corporations as for example RedBull, BMW, or Unilever.




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Facebook has asked users to translate its site into other languages without payment. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24205912 "We thought it'd be cool," said Javier Olivan, international manager at Facebook, based in Palo Alto, Calif. "Our goal would be to hopefully have one day everybody on the planet on Facebook.” Other critics say Facebook just wants free labor.


Valentin Macias, 29, a Californian who teaches English in Seoul, South Korea, has volunteered in the past to translate for the nonprofit Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia but said he won't do it for Facebook. "(Wikipedia is) an altruistic, charitable, information-sharing, donation-supported cause," Macias told The Associated Press in a Facebook message. "Facebook is not. Therefore, people should not be tricked into donating their time and energy to a multimillion-dollar company so that the company can make millions more – at least not without some type of compensation."



Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ Started as political blog in 2005, developed into the most successful Internet newspaper/news blog #83: world‘s most accessed web sites (Jan 1st, 2013, alexa.com) 2006: venture capital injection, SoftBank capital US$ 5 million, February 2011: AOL bought the Huffington Post for US$ 315 million => advertising-financed


The writer Jonathan Tasini filed a $105-million class action suit against HP – “unjust enrichement”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcisNB6vN1w “In my view, the Huffington Post’s bloggers have essentially been turned into modern-day slaves on Arianna Huffington‘s plantation,”


“She wants to pocket the tens of millions of dollars she reaped from the hard work of those bloggers….This all could have been avoided had Arianna Huffington not acted like the Wal-Marts, the Waltons, Lloyd Blankfein, which is basically to say, ‘Go screw yourselves, this is my money.’” http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/04/12/aol-huffpo-suit-seeks-105m-this-is-about-justice/


Arianna Huffington: "People blog on HuffPost for free for the same reason they go on cable TV shows every night for free: either because they are passionate about their ideas or because they have something to promote and want exposure to large and multiple audiences," Huffington said. "Our bloggers are repeatedly invited on TV to discuss their posts and have received everything from paid speech opportunities and book deals to a TV show.“ http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/04/arianna-huffington-on-jonathan-tasini-writer-lawsuit-there-are-no-mertis-to-the-case.html Argumentation: * bloggers do it for fun and creativity, not for the purpose of money * other indirect forms of payment http://de.scribd.com/doc/87385300/Tasini-HuffPost-Nysd-Uscourts-Gov-Cgi-Bin-Show-Doc-Pl-Caseid-377767-de-Seq-Num-124-Dm-Id-9841006-Doc-Num-33


couchsurfing.org


couchsurfing.org


Started as non-profit company, Was incorporated in 2011 founder Casey Fenton: economic crisis => “This is a very difficult time to become a 501c(3)“ company (=a charity)“. “From the beginning, being a non-profit has been a major part of Couchsurfing‘s identity. It‘s been something that I have always taken pride in“. “The non-profit structure [...] can really limit our ability to innovate“ Being a non-profit “isn‘t Couchsurfing‘s core identity. Our identity is our vision and mission: We get people together“. (http://www.couchsurfing.org/bcorp) $US7.6 million venture capital investment raised in 2011: Omidyar Ventures, VC Benchmark Capital (http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/24/couchsurfing-raises-7-6-m-will-users-cry-sell-out/) .


=B Corporation: for-profit, certification of “social responsibility“ (http://www.bcorporation.net/community/directory/couchsurfing): accountabiltiy, employees, consumers, community, environment => overall B score User protests: Avazz petition http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/For_a_strong_Community_behind_CouchSurfing



User protests: Petition http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/For_a_strong_Community_behind_CouchSurfing “We, the community of CouchSurfing, are the ones who built everything from scratch in voluntary work. [...] Many of us already left as CouchSurfing turned into a B-Corporation, because of the fear that the spirit about the alternative way of CouchSurfing got lost completely and profit and greed took it's place. [...] As this community was giving such a high social reward to all it's users, and as we won't just watch how this all is destroyed by the profit-seeking share holders, we decided to fight for the future of our community and will do our best to put it back to the track of the user based community it has been for a long time!


The couchsurfing community is especially critical of changes of the ToS like the following one https://www.couchsurfing.org/terms.html, version from October 12, 2012 “4.3 Member Content License. If you post Member Content to our Services, you hereby grant us a perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, display, perform, adapt, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, have distributed and promote such Member Content in any form, in all media now known or hereinafter created and for any purpose, including without limitation the right to use your name, likeness, voice or identity“



Conflict minerals


Who is this?


Steve Jobs


Who is this?


Tian Yu


Foxconn

Play Labour

e.g. the Google workplace


eWaste labour


Occupy – a new working class? Occupy‘s digital media use – working class ICTs?

Alternatives?


What theories and concepts do we need in order to understand and critically analze paid work at Google, Facebook, etc, phenomena such as slave labour in conflict mines, labour in hardware assemblage, software engineering, paid work at Google, Facebook, etc, unpaid user labour on social media, the labour of bloggers and online journalists, e-waste labour, the global division of labour in the ICT industry, alternative online media work, the digital media use in contemporary working class movements etc?

3. Digital Labour – Contexts

Nicholas Garnham: “the bibliography on the producers of culture is scandalously empty” (Garnham 1990, 12) “The problem of media producers has been neglected in recent media and cultural studies – indeed in social theory generally – because of the general linguistic turn and the supposed death of the author that has accompanied it. If the author does not exist or has no intentional power, why study her or him?” (Garnham 2000a, 84). Vincent Mosco (2011, 230): “labour remains the blind spot of communication and cultural studies” Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller (2012, 16): “Most writings in media studies constrict the ambit of media labor such that the industry mavens” (Maxwell and Miller 2012, 16).

3. Digital Labour – Contexts

How has the role of labour in the study of media, communications, the information society, digital media, the Internet and social media developed historically? What is the role of digital labour in the contemporary academic landscape? Why are labour and class blind spots of the study of digital media? What can be done in order to illuminate and overcome the labour blind spot? What is needed for doing so?

4. Digital Labour – Debates


Smythe, Dallas W. 1977. Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism. Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 1 (3): 1-27. Smythe, Dallas W. .2006. On the Audience Commodity and its Work. In Media and Cultural Studies Key Works, 230-256. Malden, MA: Blackwell. (Orig. pub. 1981.) Fuchs, Christian. 2012. Dallas Smythe Today - The Audience Commodity, the Digital Labour Debate, Marxist Political Economy and Critical Theory. Prolegomena to a Digital Labour Theory of Value. tripleC 10 (2): 692-740. What is the relevance of Dallas Smythe, the “Blindspot Debate“, the notion of audience commodification and audience labour for the digital labour debate? Is (digital) labour a blind spot of media/cultural studies? Is Marxism a blind spot of media/cultural studies? Are media/culture still blind spots of Critical Theories? If so, why? If not, what progress has been achieved?

Political Economy of Unpaid Labour Rosa Luxemburg: milieus of primitive accumulation Feminist Political Economy concepts of housework economy, reproductive labour, gender division of labour, etc. Maria Mies, Claudia von Werlhof, Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Leopoldina Fortunati, Zillah Eisenstein, Martha Gimenez, Rosemary Hennessey, etc. Autonomous Marxism: social worker, social factory, Mario Tronti, Antonio Negri, etc.


Garnham, Nicholas. 1995a. Political Economy and Cultural Studies: Reconciliation or divorce? Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12 (1): 62-71. Grossberg, Lawrence. 1995. Cultural Studies vs. Political Economy: Is anybody else bored with this debate? Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12 (1): 72-81. Garnham, Nicholas. 1995b. Reply to Grossberg and Carey. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12 (1): 95-100.


Celebratory Cultural Studies vs. Critical Political Economy/Cultural Studies => Celebratory Social Media Studies vs. Critical and Marxist Social Media Studies


“Crowdsourcing is just one manifestation of a larger trend toward greater democratization in commerce“ (14).


Henry Jenkins “the Web has become a site of consumer participation” (Jenkins 2008, 137).


Clay Shirky cognitive surplus = “a novel resource that has appeared as the world‘s cumulative free time is addressed in aggregate“ (Shirky 2011, 27) “the wiring of humanity lets us treat free time as a shared global resource, and lets us design new kinds of participation and sharing that take advantage of that resource“ (ibid.)


Mark Andrejevic: Exploitation 2.0 Jodi Dean: communicative capitalism, online post-politics, communist horizon Eran Fisher: new spirit of networks Christian Fuchs: Internet prosumer labour/ commodification Ursula Huws: consumption labour, cybertariat


What are the basic positions and differences in the debate between celebratory social/digital media studies and critical social/digital media studies? What should be the next step in the debate? How do we engage with critics of digital labour and the points they make? What is the relationship between creativity and exploitation in digital labour?


Fuchs, Christian. 2010. Labor in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet. The Information Society 26 (3): 179-196. Arvidsson, Adam and Eleanor Colleoni. 2012. Value in informational capitalism and on the Internet. The Information Society 28 (3): 135-150. Fuchs, Christian. 2012b. With or without Marx? With or without Capitalism? A Rejoinder to Adam Arvidsson and Eleanor Colleoni. tripleC – Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 10 (2): 633-645.



“But since ‘free labor’ is free, it has no price, and cannot, consequently, be a source of value“ (Arvidsson 2011, 266f). “labor theory of value in fact does not apply“ to social media (Arvidsson and Colleoni 2012, 136) Fuchs: digital labour theory of value What is the role of time for understanding digital labour? What is the role of affects, social relations, reputation, attention, visibility and how does it relate to the law of value on social/digital media?


What is/should be the role of Karl Marx and his theory in the study of media, culture, digital labour and cultural labour today?

BURYING MARX? RENEWING MARX?


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5. Digital Labour – Theories, Concepts

Which theories and concepts do we need for understanding digital labour critically? What is digital labour/work? What is the relationship of various forms of digital labour? How is digital labour/capitalism connected to gender and racism? How does the international division of digital labour look like and how can it be theorised? What aspects of toil and fun, labour and play are at work in different forms of digital labour?

5. Digital Labour – Theories, Concepts

Which ideologies influence debates about digital labour? What is the relationship between alienation and exploitation in digital labour? What is the connection of digital labour to various forms of unpaid work, gender division of labour, housewifization, feminization of work? We require an engagement with theoretical categories: Which categories do we need for understanding the actors, structures, dynamics and politics of digital labour?

5. Digital Labour – Theories, Concepts Absolute/relative surplus value production Advertising and consumer culture Affective labour Alternative journalism Alternative media Appearance of value Audience commodification Audience labour Becoming-rent of profit Capital Citizen media Class Class struggle Cognitariat Cognitive capitalism Commodification of everything Commons Commons-based Internet

Communicative capitalism Communicative work Communism, commonism Communist Internet Concrete/abstract labour Constant/variable capital Consumption work Cooperation, collaborative work Creativity Cybertariat Desire Digital labour Double-free labour Eros, Thanatos Fetishism Form of value

Free labour Gender division of labour General intellect Global division of labour Hacker class Housework Ideology Immaterial labour Internet prosumer commodification Internet prosumer labour Knowledge work Labour aristocracy Labour power Labour theory of value Migrant work Mode of production Money Multitude

Necessary/surplus repression of desire New spirit of capitalism Overtime Patriarchy Peer production Play Play labour (playbour) Power Precariat Price Price of labour power Primitive accumulation Productive forces and relations of production Productive/unproductive labour Profit rate Prosumption Public service

Racist mode of production Rate of exploitation/surplus value Rent Reproductive work Slave labour Social factory Social movement media Social relations Social struggles Social worker Species-being Stress Substance of value Surplus enjoyment/desire Surplus value Taylorism Use-value, exchange value, value

Value forms Value of labour power Vectoral class Violence Virtual work Working class ICTs Working class network society

5. Digital Labour – Political Praxis

How can a critical theory of digital labour best be connected to political movements, protests, activists, campaigns, etc?

Education

Christian Fuchs: Introduction to Digital Labour Studies