ABSTRACT
How is labour changing in the age of computers, the Internet, and "social media" such as Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter? In Digital Labour and Karl Marx, Christian Fuchs attempts to answer that question, crafting a systematic critical theorisation of labour as performed in the capitalist ICT industry. Relying on a range of global case studies--from unpaid social media prosumers or Chinese hardware assemblers at Foxconn to miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo--Fuchs sheds light on the labour costs of digital media, examining the way ICT corporations exploit human labour and the impact of this exploitation on the lives, bodies, and minds of workers.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |19 pages
Introduction
part |131 pages
Theoretical Foundations of Studying Digital Labour
chapter |36 pages
An Introduction to Karl Marx's Theory
chapter |15 pages
Contemporary Cultural Studies and Karl Marx
chapter |61 pages
Dallas Smythe and Audience Labour Today
chapter |17 pages
Capitalism or information society?
part |130 pages
Analysing Digital Labour
chapter |18 pages
Exploitation at Foxconn
chapter |20 pages
The Silicon Valley of Dreams and Nightmares of Exploitation
chapter |40 pages
Theorizing Digital Labour on Social Media 1
part |80 pages
Conclusions