What Is Digital Labour? What Is Digital Work? What’s their Difference? And Why Do These Questions Matter for Understanding Social Media?

Abstract

This paper deals with the questions: What is digital labour? What is digital work? Based on Marx's theory, we distinguish between work and labour as anthropological and historical forms of human activity. The notion of alienated labour is grounded in a general model of the work process that is conceptualized based on a dialectic of subject and object in the economy that we present in the form of a model, the Hegelian-Marxist dialectical triangle of the work process. Various aspects of a Marxist theory of work and labour, such as the notions of abstract and concrete labour, double-free labour, productive labour, the collective worker and general work are presented. Labour is based on a fourfold alienation of the human being. After these concepts are introduced, they are used for discussing the notions of digital labour and digital work. The presentation is on the one hand general and on the other hand uses Facebook as a concrete case for explaining how digital labour functions. Digital work is the organisation of human experiences with the help of the human brain, digital media and speech in such a way that new products are created. Digital labour is the valorisation dimension of digital work. We conclude that we require the transformation of digital labour into digital work, a true social media revolution that makes "social media" truly and fully social. We also argue why in our view work is not the same as labour by discussing the concept of playful work and pointing out limits of concepts such as antiwork, postwork and zerowork.

An Analysis of Marx’s Legacy in the Field of Communication Studies

“…Marxist communication scholars have used the notion of digital labour for both paid and unpaid labour practices in the context of digital environments (Terranova 2000;Mosco and McKercher 2007;Manzerolle 2010;Fuchs 2010;2014b;2014c;2014d;Fuchs and Sevignani 2013;Scholz 2013;Brown 2014;Pfeiffer 2014). According to Christian Fuchs (2014c, 351), digital labour is in fact alienated digital work.…”

Playing, Gaming, Working and Labouring: Framing the Con-cepts and Relations

“…From the beginning when he made a distinction between the pleasure principle (containing play) and the drive for self-preservation or the reality principle, to the middle period when he included the latter within the former, making the pleasure principle all-encompassing (including play as both drive and sublimation), before finally ending up with the final version (Marcuse 1955;Fuchs 2013;Vološinov 2012, 50-54;Reich 2012). …”

“…The living cell was dominated by the physiologically constructing force of Eros and not only the individual's life, but also social and cultural life, especially art, had Eros as its "productive source of psychical forces and energies" (Vološinov 2012, 51, 67). Culture grew when Eros was regulated, suspended and sublimated or de-sexualised (by repression of the sexual drives) into creative labour (Fuchs 2013).…”

From passionate labour to compassionate work: Cultural co-ops, do what you love and social change

“…Christian Fuchs and Sebastian Sevignani (2013) based on a review of the etymological origins of the terms work and labour in different languages suggest to distinguish between work as an anthropological category that describes the production of use values, and labour as its historically specific expression under capitalism -both waged and unwaged -that is exploited and alienated. This proposal to distinguish between work and labour addresses some of the terminological confusion that often surrounds calls for "post-work" or the "refusual of work".…”