The Alienation And Anti-Alienation Of Digital Labor

With the rapid development of the digital economy,the connotation and extension of labor are also changing and the centralized industrial production mode under the traditional employment relationship has been replaced by digital production mode.The characteristics of digitalization,such as decentralization,interest-led,gratuitousness and emotional labor have changed the form of labor,giving birth to a new concept of digital labor.Marx discussed the alienation of workers’ labor under the capitalist system in the 19 th century,and there is still alienation in digital labor.With the gradual development of the idol industry in China,the phenomenon of fans voting for idols on media platforms has emerged one after another,which has become a new phenomenon in Chinese fan culture.Controlling comments and voting for idols are considered to be typical digital labor of fans in the era of digital media,which is alienated in capital exploitation,self-exploitation,and power stratification.This paper will take the alienation of fan digital labor as the research object with the method of grounded theory,collecting a large number of commenting texts of fans on the Internet and supplementing them with the second-hand articles.Then this paper will summarize the theoretical framework after the coding-work.After referring to Habermas’ s theory of "colonization of the lifeworld",this paper argues that fan digital labor shows the confrontation between the lifeworld domain and the system domain.It is the invasion of the system into the lifeworld that leads to the current alienation of fan digital labor.This alienation is reflected in six dimensions: the invasion of the product competition system into the emotional labor of fans,the invasion of the data production system into the independent labor of fans,the invasion of the entertainment industry system into idolatry,the invasion of the monetary capital system into diversified labor,the invasion of the power management system into the fan community,and the invasion of the public opinion production system into social culture reproduction.Based on the analysis of the essential reasons of the alienation of fan digital labor,this paper attempts to propose anti-alienation methods from four perspectives: labor subject,labor-capital relationship,way of labor and labor organization.These four approaches help fan digital labor return to the different dimensions of lifeworld.The anti-alienation of fan digital labor is a systematic project,which requires the joint cooperation of multiple subjects,not only the reflection and self-liberation of fans,but also the institutional efforts.