Digital Labour and Karl Marx

Fuchs, Christian

doi:10.4324/9781315880075

Cited by 550 publications

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“…The producer becomes the product; targeted advertising is an important aspect of digital capitalism (see Fuchs 2017bFuchs , 2014c. When enrolling in social networks, users are sharing personal information and this data is used by advertisers to sell more products.…”

Section: The Relevance Of Marx In the Era Of Digital Capitalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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.…”

Section: Marxist Communication Studies In the Age Of Digital Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Fuchs (2014a), for example, argues that Dallas Smythe's works are helpful in three ways. Smythe: a) reminds us of the importance of Marxism, b) stresses the distinction between administrative and critical research that is a crucial line of struggle in the time of neoliberalism and the new capitalist crisis, and c) puts forward a concept of the audience commodity that has informed the digital labour debate (see Fuchs 2014c;2015). Marxist theory is the most important framework for analysing contemporary society and its communicative structures and practices.…”

Section: The Future Of Marxist Communication Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Kayihan

2018

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New communication technologies strengthen existing power relations, helping to maintain class inequalities and alienating people. In the new communication age, human subjectivity itself has become a commodity. This paper analyses the role of Marxist studies in the academic field of communication studies. It focuses on the relevance of Marx's views for understanding communication in the digital era, Marxist communication studies after the expansion of digital media, and new dimensions of communication that have been incorporated into Marxist literature. Topics that matter in this context include the intersection of play and work, media economics in the age of digital communication, digital labour, the online games industry, targeted advertising, newly emerging social inequalities, and surveillance and privacy issues. Also an outlook for potential future Marxist studies of communication is given.Keywords: communication studies, digital capitalism, digital media, Marx, Marxist studies Acknowledgement: The author thanks Christian Fuchs for his valuable suggestions and contributions.

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Section: The Relevance Of Marx In the Era Of Digital Capitalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Marxist Communication Studies In the Age Of Digital Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Future Of Marxist Communication Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Kayihan

2018

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“…But how might we conceive social media labor when it is viewed predominantly as a leisure activity? Writing about Facebook, Christian Fuchs (2014) notes that user-generated data-data about users-is compiled by the site and transformed into an "Internet prosumer commodity," not unlike the audience commodity. Fuchs concedes the fact that it is difficult to perceive the existence of exploitation on social media sites like Facebook.…”

Section: Digital Labor and The Internet Prosumer Commoditymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Detractors of this position may argue that even if users are central to the production of content that generates profit for corporate social media sites, the service they provide the site is in effect paid for by the service that users receive from the social media platform. Fuchs (2014) has indicated the fallacy of these kinds of arguments by demonstrating that the value users produce through their willful inscription of personal data into the matrices of social media databases far outweighs the value of the service provided by corporate social media. The Internet prosumer commodity is, in fact, made of the massive amounts of data ("big data") that social media companies package and sell to advertisers (and hand over to government surveillance agencies, such as the National Security Agencyhence the term "dataveillance").…”

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confidence: 99%

The Entrepreneurial Subject and the Objectivization of the Self in Social Media

Flisfeder¹

2015

South Atlantic Quarterly

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This article challenges the Foucauldian conception of the neoliberal subject by addressing self-promotion as a key feature of users' engagement with social media websites. The essay argues that the rational choice rhetoric of neoliberal entrepreneurialism involves a process of further objectivizing and reifying—rather than producing—the subject by increasingly commodifying the time spent outside of paid labor. The neoliberal idea of investing in one's human capital is compared to the Marxian category of the reproduction of labor-power, which, in the neoliberal context, is subdivided into the time spent on the promotion of the Self. Social media help to facilitate the latter by providing a material space for self-promotion and result in the expansion of working time into what Jonathan Crary calls “24/7 temporalities.” The arguments made here are aided by developing a neo-Lacanian conception—in opposition to the Foucauldian one—of neoliberal subjectivity.

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Critical Theory

Fuchs¹

2016

The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy

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This entry describes the specificity of critical theory as an attempt to study society's power structures and to help the political challenge of challenging power inequalities, domination, and exploitation on an intellectual level. It examines some of the key dimensions and contributions to this approach. It highlights the fact that critical theory stands in the tradition of Karl Marx's thought and that it has taken on different forms. This work presents the classical roots of critical theory in Marx's thoughts, the relevance of the Frankfurt School and critical political economy, as well as the importance of contemporary debates within critical theory.

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Digital Labour and Karl Marx

Cited by 550 publications

References 0 publications

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

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

The Entrepreneurial Subject and the Objectivization of the Self in Social Media

Critical Theory

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