Digital labour shortage: a new divide in library and information studies education?

This paper offers a preliminary reflection on the degree to which the concept of 'digital labour' appears in current library and information studies (LIS) education language, including in course titles, course descriptions, and course content. A basis for this paper was established from September 2010 to April 2011 through examination of a global range of online publicly accessible LIS program information. First stage analysis indicates that LIS education language appears to treat digital labour reductively; it fails to account for the labour conditions that frame the work. A tightening of the search examined evidence of critical teaching and learning of digital labour that allow for determinations of how the digital work environment relates to library labour rights and movements. This resulted in a scan of English language and translated information for a total of 121 individual LIS programs. Several trends emerged, which suggest that digital labour is generally, and most often out of necessity, inherently connected to other issues studied in LIS programs. A potential, yet unborn, paradigm in LIS education negates the basic notion of digital labour movement. Recommendations include research into the potential value of teaching and learning about the theory and practice of digital labour, a more sufficient and sophisticated approach to digital labour within LIS education in foundations courses, and a proposed set of possible advanced topics for teaching and learning in LIS education. Limitations of this topical exploration include what might be explained by the unknown factor of what is actually unseen from publicly accessible documents. To test the meaning of our first-stage work, future inquiry might involve interviews with teachers and looking into classroom communication of learners to see how the idea of digital labour is being addressed by them even if it is only in the most subtle manner

Open Education and the Hidden Tariff

This paper explores the promise of that Open Educational Resources (OER) would democratise access to education and ennui of many within the movement as the revolution is always just around the corner. It develops from earlier work which asked whether OER is a challenge to, or a product of, neoliberalism within education, which questioned the reification of the self in OER and the focus on particular types of content which seemed to create open education in the image of the academy. The paper uses the idea of digital labour to explore digital inclusion, who does digital labour, who has the skills to perform digital labour and who and how do people benefit from digital labour. It suggests seeing education as an exchange of labour and reward makes visible the hidden aspects of work, in particular it highlights the skills required to do education as digital labour and the unequal access and distribution of those skills contributes to unequal access to education, even when it is freely available and openly licensed online. Uncovering the hidden tariff within OER allows us to see where and how might address these inequities. In particular how we can learn from older traditions of open education which see it as a common good. Developing models of Open Educational Practice (OEP) to overcome the visible and hidden barriers and realise the benefits of open education

Digital labour: A comment on César Bolaño’s tripleC reflection

This paper is a reflection on César Bolaño’s tripleC article “Digitalisation and Labour: A Rejoinder to Christian Fuchs”. It discusses aspects of digital labour that relate to the dialectic of production and consumption, the category of prosumption, productive labour, housework, the international division of digital labour, and Facebook use as a form of ideological transport labour

Capitalism, Patriarchy, Slavery, and Racism in the Age of Digital Capitalism and Digital Labour

This article asks: How can understanding the relationship of exploitation and oppression inform the study of digital labour and digital capitalism? It combines the analysis of capitalism, patriarchy, slavery, and racism in order to analyse digital labour. The approach taken also engages with a generalization of David Roediger’s wages of whiteness approach, Marxist feminism, Angela Davis’s Marxist black feminism, Rosa Luxemburg, Kylie Jarrett’s concept of the digital housewife, Jack Qiu’s notion of iSlavery, Eileen Meehan’s concept of the gendered audience commodity, and Carter Wilson and Audrey Smedley’s historical analyses of racism and class. The article presents a typology of differences and commonalities between wage-labour, slave-labour, reproductive labour, and Facebook labour. It shows that the digital data commodity is both gendered and racialized. It analyses how class, patriarchy, slavery, and racism overgrasp into each other in the realm of digital capitalism. It also introduces the notions of the organic composition of labour and the rate of reproductive labour and shows, based on example data, how to calculate these ratios that provide insights into the reality of unpaid labour in capitalism

Theory, reality, and possibilities for a digital/communicative socialist network society

Digital capitalism is guided by the organising principles of digital automation, information processing, and communication. It rests on the consolidation of relations of exploitation of digital labour based on flexibility and generating precarity. It makes profit from user data under conditions of surveillance. What would an alternative paradigm look like? This paper aims to sketch a possible socialist society resting on digital technology but organised on a different logic, namely that of autonomous production, leisure, and social engagement. It draws on relevant theories of the Left, evaluates them against the reality of digital capitalism, and suggests structural and user practice alternatives that can pave the way towards a digital/communicative socialism. This paper engages with the works of Czech philosopher Radovan Richta (1924-1983) and Austrian-French philosopher André Gorz (1923-2007). It shows that their ideas on the scientific and technological revolution and post-industrial socialism are highly relevant for the analysis and discussion of digital/communicative socialism

Digital workers of the World unite! A framework for critically theorising and analysing digital labour

The overall task of this paper is to elaborate a typology of the forms of labour that are needed for the production, circulation and use of digital media. First, we introduce a cultural-materialist perspective on theorising digital labour. Second, we discuss the relevance of Marx’s concept of the mode of production for the analysis of digital labour. Third, we introduce a typology of the dimensions of working conditions. Fourth, based on the preceding sections we present a digital labour analysis toolbox. Finally, we draw some conclusions. We engage with the question what labour is, how it differs from work, which basic dimensions it has and how these dimensions can be used for defining digital labour. We introduce the theoretical notion of the mode of production as analytical tool for conceptualizing digital labour. Modes of production are dialectical units of relations of production and productive forces. Relations of production are the basic social relations that shape the economy. Productive forces are a combination of labour power, objects and instruments of work in a work process, in which new products are created. We have a deeper look at dimensions of the work process and the conditions under which it takes place. We present a typology that identifies dimensions of working conditions. It is a general typology that can be used for the analysis of any production process

Architects of time: Labouring on digital futures

Drawing on critical analyses of the internet inspired by Gilles Deleuze and the Marxist autonomia movement, this paper suggests a way of understanding the impact of the internet and digital culture on identity and social forms through a consideration of the relationship between controls exercised through the internet, new subjectivities constituted through its use and new labour practices enabled by it. Following Castells, we can see that the distinction between user, consumer and producer is becoming blurred and free labour is being provided by users to corporations. The relationship between digital technologies and sense of community, through their relationship to the future, is considered for its dangers and potentials. It is proposed that the internet may be a useful tool for highlighting and enabling social connections if certain dangers can be traversed. Notably, current remedies for the lack of trust on the internet are questioned with an alternative, drawing on Zygmunt Bauman and Georg Simmel, proposed which is built on community through a vision of a ‘shared network’

A primer on digital productivity: an introduction to some of the basic concepts of how digitisation affects productivity growth

As part of its work on analysing digital productivity, the Bureau of Communications Research (BCR) has released the first part of a leading project to understand how digitisation affects Australia’s productivity and the nation’s economy. A key tool for policy officers and decision-makers, the Digital Productivity Primer looks at how ICT and digitisation affects productivity, why productivity matters, how digital transformation impacts productivity and tools for measuring the productivity gains from digitisation. Next steps are to release a Labour Productivity Impacts Report in July and firm case studies in December 2015

Digi-housekeeping: a new form of digital labour?

Event synopsis: The theme for the WORK2015 Conference, New Meanings of Work sought its justification not only from the changes in work itself but from the global shifts both in the divisions and in the contents of the work. The ongoing turbulences of the post-recession economies at the global, regional and national levels shake also the work and its meanings. The on-going economic and societal changes are connected to forms and boundaries of work and to modes of working and ways of living that are yet to thoroughly mapped and explored. The recent transformations touch the very definition of what is work and call for rigorous explorations and new analyses

Student Labour and Training in Digital Humanities

This article critiques the rhetoric of openness, accessibility and collaboration that features largely in digital humanities literature by examining the status of student labour, training, and funding within the discipline. The authors argue that the use of such rhetoric masks the hierarches that structure academic spaces, and that a shift to the digital does not eliminate these structural inequalities. Drawing on two surveys that assess student participation in DH projects (one for students, and one for faculty researchers), the article outlines the challenges currently faced by students working in the field, and suggests a set of best practices that might bridge the disparity between rhetoric and reality