Digital Labour and Its Discontents
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Digital Labour and Its Discontents
Introduction
Digital labor can be described as the valorization dimensions of digital work. It is the organization of human experience through the assistance of social media platforms, the brain, and speeches resulting in the development of novel products, services, or commodities (Fuchs & Sevignani, 2013). Digital labor is further demonstrated as a specified form of cultural labor that performs the function of productive consumption and digital media production. This excerpt presents insights into the digital labor perspective and the theoretical approach used to explain digital labor and the discontents that the aspect has brought to the world.
Digital labor and its discontents
The concept of digital labor is one of many that have become popularized and form a crucial foundation for debates in the realm of political economy, technology, and the internet. Two significant confluences have brought about rising concerns in digital labor, i.e., policymakers being mainly concerned by un- and under-employment as it is a social and economic concern. The other confluence is that the aspect of connectivity is increasingly characterizing the rapidly changing world. The world has shifted from the less connected to the internet over the past decade, where an increasing population has become more connected over the years. Over three billion people globally have become connected, which has facilitated an enhanced creation of employment activities. Digit media platforms have become regions for outsourcing labor outside their local labor markets for millions of people worldwide.
According to Scholz (2016), the concept of labor has been built on through digital media as people and organizations join the ‘sharing economy’ attribute of improving employment opportunities. The sharing economy has facilitated the aspect of being free from the burdens of making money through renting of physical spaces and ownership of these rented stores. Many media platforms and the internet have created pathways through which labor can be shared among various people worldwide, developing cooperativism (Scholxz, 2013). The internet facilitates the understanding of cooperatives, and upgrades the existing organizations to the digital age, increasing employment chances for various individuals through this platform. Thus, a cooperativism platform is gradually wiping out aspects such as capitalism. Outsourcing of labor is done through the internet, which was initially characterized for lower-wage earning regions in the world’s national economies. However, digital connectivity has made it possible for these regions to capture varying amounts of outsourced work and improve individuals’ economic status and the areas.
Fuchs and Sandoval (214) characterize digital labor and digital work to be a form of cultural labor that has contributed to digital technologies and content existing. The increasing improvements in technology have facilitated the improvement in modes of production. This is because enhancement in technology has forced the development of new ways to divide labor internationally, leading to diversified means of designing, production, marketing, delivering, and supporting an organization’s product. Moreover, for digital labor to perform efficiently, several aspects need to be put into consideration. These conditions include miners, information workers and content, assemblers, processors, and other workers linked to digital mode of productions. Every production process requires human subjects utilizing technological instruments and objects of labor and human subjects for the emergence of the final product.
Discontents of digital labor and the social theory
One of the major disadvantages of digital labor is eradicating social relations, physical stores and buildings used as offices. The ideology of building a shared economy has led to the detriment of physical labor employment in many organizations globally. Workers operate on a virtual platform leading to a reduced interaction while working. Despite increasing the innovations required at workplaces to improve performance and productivity, workers’ social connectivity is reduced in the due process leading to a decreased personal relationship. Cultural idealism is affected when organizations shift to the digital labor model of outsourcing and working of laborers. Scholars such as Williams argue that culture is a unique system of every society in the world (Fuchs & Sandoval, 2014). Thus, every society and organizational culture and the economic system need to be separated as they are two distinct perspectives and do not need to be interrelated. Digital labor has promoted the decrease in cultural work, which encompasses the various corporate levels of work, which are hardly distinguished when digital labor ideologies are considered. It is based on cultural work that information work content is developed, integrated into physical work activities.
The social theory is explained as studying the scientific means of how people, elements, and systems thinking regarding social life. It revolves around how societies incorporate change and grow/develop methods to explain social behaviors, structures, ethnicities, gender, and classes. Therefore, digital labor prohibits the attainment of some of the concepts posited in social theory. This is because the social norms, moral conduct, and meaning of production and communication are affected. These are the fundamental aspects that form an organization and ensure work processes and strategies are achieved as planned. Societies and cultures are formed by passing information, attitudes, and ideas from one person or generation to another, which means that institutions and organizations are the places where these actions occur. Digital labor affects societies as there is a disconnection between these elements that make up a workplace.
Conclusion
Digital labor is an admirable concept to apply in the fast-evolving economic and business world. It postulates various advantages to the organizations and reduces the burden of physically sourcing for workers internationally. However, despite demonstrating several advantages, its discontent is the influence it has on workplaces’ cultural and societal aspects. Researches have to be conducted on how organizations’ cultures and work can be maintained while digital labor is implemented.
References
Fuchs, C., & Sandoval, M. (2014). Digital workers of the world unite! A framework for critically theorizing and analyzing digital labour. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 12(2), 486-563.
Scholz, T. (2016). Platform cooperativism. Challenging the corporate sharing economy. New York, NY: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Fuchs, C., & Sevignani, S. (2013). What is digital labour? What is digital work? What’s their difference? And why do these questions matter for understanding social media?. TripleC: Communication, capitalism & critique. Open access journal for a global sustainable information society, 11(2), 237-293.