Digital Labor: The New Labour of Digital Capitalism

  • Yue Wu City University of Hong Kong
Ariticle ID: 2347
148 Views, 18 PDF Downloads
Keywords: Digital Capitalism, New Labor

Abstract

The development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has greatly changed the capitalist mode of production and accumulation. New technologies represented by cloud computing, big data and the Internet of Things have reconfigured various factors of production and resources. In the transition to digital capitalism, more and more digital workers have emerged. A large number of workers engaged in information production, dissemination and monitoring use digital technology as production and processing tools. (Sandoval 2015) defines digital labor as: mental workers and manual workers who take ICTs and digital technology as means of production, including producers and users.[1] She points out that capital’s embrace of ICTs and digital technology has accelerated the shift of capitalism’s main accumulation space from a “factory floor” to a “social factory” dominated by metropolitan office buildings.

References

[1] Sandoval, M. (2015).Foxconned Labour as the Dark Side of the Information Age: Working Conditions at Apple’s Contract Manufacturers in China. Triple C, 20(2): 1383-1399.

[2] Scholz ,T.(2012). Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory. New York: Routledge.

[3] Manzerolle, V. (2010).Mobilizing the Audience Commodity: Digital Labour in a Wireless World. Ephemera, 10(4): 455-469.

[4] Rodino-Colocino, M.(2006). Laboring under the Digital Divide. New Media and Society, 8(3): 487-511.

[5] Braverman , H.(1974). Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century[M]. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974.

[6] Lent ,J. (2010). The Global Cartooning Labour Force, Its Problems and Coping Mechanisms: The Travails of the Marginalized Cartoonist. Work Organization, Labour and Globalization, 4(2): 160-172.

[7] Nixon,B. (2014).Toward a Political Economy of ‘Audience Labour’ in the Digital Era. TripleC, 12(2): 713-734.

[8] Taylor, N. , Bergstrom, K. , Jenson, J. , & De Castell, S. . (2015). Alienated playbour: relations of production in eve online. Games & Culture, 266(4), 867-73.

Published
2021-09-16