On Digital Labor In The Internet Age

The spread of technology revolutionary has continued to inspire the public about technology, culture and democracy in multiple imagination, however, this paper argues that, this imagination obscured the hidden Internet industry economic and commercial properties, and the fundamental purpose of achieving commercial exploitation of digital labor in the name of politics and culture. Based on these judgements, this article, from the perspective of political economy of communication, with the interactive relation between the network audience and labor as the starting point for research, puts the introduction and spread of Internet technology in the China’s historical and social context, points out that the performance legitimacy and technical nationalism have spawned the communication technology craze in China, taking the technology elite and the imagination of modernity in the mass of Chinese, and finally have promoted the rapid spread of Internet technology and the publice acceptance and use of network technology.In this process, the network technology was constructed as tools and toys:first of all, in order to adapt to the change of social structure in China and satisfy the human instinct pursuit of communication, the public had to use information and communication technologies such as the Internet, mobile phone as a mean of survival, therefore, users have to surrender to the the communication structure and design dooinated by digital capital, and thus become the digital labor; Secondly, the network technology has released the desire of expression and participation of the internet users, which has been long repressed by the political system and media ecology, and thus construct the imaginary relation between the network technology and the public shpere, therefore, the internet users are willing to become content producers and disseminators of the Internet industry. Through discourse analysis, the researcher finds out that under the cover of "share", "participation", "democracy" and other commercial ideology, digital capital operation has not challenged the commercial logic of currency era, but with a more innovative way strengthened the commercial exploitation nature of capitalism.The papre uses network ethnographic research methods, analyses in detail how internet industry changes the netizens into digital labor so as to promote industrial development and "contribute" their digtial labor:first, the capital production of information capitalism has overcomed the Ford doctrine and excessed stereotype of Keynes’s mode of production, and has absorbed the collective intelligence and spare capacity of the public in the diversified society, thus has created the flexible employment system as the basis of the "Crowdsourcing" mode of production; Secondly, the information capitalism has made digtial labor as game, entertainment, and has consistantly satisfied the youth of their pursuit of the sense of participation, sense of community, the game violent instincts. Thus the digital industry has brought up a batch of "playbours" to the network game industry, and this group is increasingly younger than ever; Moreover, the process of labourization of netizens is also in the commercilization of emotional practice in the Internet industry, which tranasfers fans’curiosity, entertainment, relaxed, happy, excited, excited, loyalty and consumer desire and emotion on the network platform into the digital capital with commercial value. These digital labor have formed "immaterial labor" in the internet age, which drives the accumulation and increment of digital capita. However, netizens have been imperceptibly transformed into digital labor in this process, suffering physical and mental exploitation.Moreover, with capital power control, the operation of technoloty code and the reliance on new media of people, every "net" users have been included in the scope of tracking and monitoring, and interpellated as the "prisoner" of business communication technology. Communication technology has permeated into every detail of people’s daily life in the digital form recessively, comprehensively, and has commercialized the text information produced by netizens, cookies generated during use of computer, private information during use of mobile phones, and the exposed daily life information when they use the Internet of things. In the digital age, network monitoring is not only to "trap" (without loss of customers) and control netizens, but also to transform them into the "labor", so as to force them to continuously work for the accumulation and increment of digital capital. This process indicates that the capital production has started to jump out of the factory, and has included the whole society into the production system, and through the commercial ideology constantly has called users to join the capital production.However, as more and more digital labors hve awared of their behavior are labor-oriented and over-commercialized, anti-control and anti-exploitation practices began again and again to be staged. They use information technology, walking in the law edge system, refuse to become internet industrial goods, and try to compete for control over personal information in a virtual space in order to secure and safeguard the basic rights as a citizen.The new working class of the Internet age is ubiquitous, and they are networking, mobile, complex and diverse aggregates, with different values, occupations, lifestyles and desires, thus their resistances on capital and technical monopoly are also very diverse. This diversity not only reflects the potentiality of the new working class resistance forces, but also highlights the dispersion of this resistance. From vulnerability of alternative media to mixed reviews on technoloty "misappropriation", and then to passive resistance of "biopolitics", the resistance action of digital labor does not really shake the digital capital expansion and penetration.Research on "digital labor" warns us the necessity and urgency to clarify the responsibilities and rights between the industrial development and netizens from the level of the Internet industry regulations, and thus to constructe the principles baseline and consensus between the two. At the same time, Internet users in the use of information technology should focus on improving media literacy and the ability to foster self-reflection, and thus to avoid falling into the trap of the digital commercial capital, so that the media technology could be used as the tools of free communication and self-liberation.