Digital prosumption labour on social media in the context of the capitalist regime of time

Abstract

So-called social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Weibo and LinkedIn are an expression of changing regimes of time in capitalist society. This paper discusses how corporate social media are related to the capitalist organization of time and the changes this organization is undergoing. It uses social theory for conceptualizing changes of society and its time regime and how these changes shape social media. These changes have been described with notions such as prosumption, consumption labour, play labour (playbour) and digital labour. The paper contextualizes digital labour on social media with the help of a model of society that distinguishes three subsystems (the economy, politics, culture) and three forms of power (economic, political, culture). In modern society, these systems are based on the logic of the accumulation of power and the acceleration of accumulation. The paper discusses the role of various dimensions of time in capitalism with the help of a model that is grounded in Karl Marx’s works. It points out the importance of the category of time for a labour theory of value and a digital labour theory of value. Social media are expressions of the changing time regimes that modern society has been undergoing, especially in relation to the blurring of leisure and labour time (play labour), production and consumption time (prosumption), new forms of absolute and relative surplus value production, the acceleration of consumption with the help of targeted online advertising and the creation of speculative, future-oriented forms of fictitious capital.

Keywords

capitalism digital labour theory of value Facebook Google Karl Marx social media time Twitter YouTube Weibo

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adorno

(1988) Ontologie und Dialektik, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Agger

(2004) Speeding Up Fast Capitalism: Cultures, Jobs, Families, Schools, Bodies, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

Agger

(2011) iTime: Labor and life in a smartphone era. Time & Society 20(1): 119–136.

Arvidsson

(2005) Brands: A critical perspective. Journal of Consumer Culture 5(2): 235–258.

Arvidsson

Colleoni

(2012) Value in informational capitalism and on the internet. The Information Society 28(3): 135–150.

Bauman

(2000/2012) Liquid Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Boltanski

Chiapello

(2005) The New Spirit of Capitalism, London: Verso.

Bourdieu

(1986a) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, New York: Routledge.

Bourdieu

(1986b) The (three) forms of capital. In: Richardson

(ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research in the Sociology of Education, New York: Greenwood Press, pp. 241–258.

10.

Bruns

(2008) Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage, New York: Peter Lang.

11.

(2010) Digital labour: Workers, authors, citizens. In: Burston

Dyer-Witheford

Hearn

(eds) Special issue: Ephemera 10(3/4): 214–539.

12.

Castells

(1996) The Rise of the Network Society, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

13.

Castree

(2009) The spatio-temporality of capitalism. Time & Society 18(1): 26–61.

14.

Deuze

(2007) Media Work, Cambridge: Polity.

15.

Fuchs

Christian

(2010) Labor in informational capitalism and on the Internet. The Information Society 26(3): 179–196.

16.

Fuchs

(2012a) Dallas Smythe today – the audience commodity, the digital labour debate, Marxist political economy and critical theory. Prolegomena to a digital labour theory of value. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique 10(2): 692–740.

17.

Fuchs

(2012b) With or without Marx? With or without capitalism? A rejoinder to Adam Arvidsson and Eleanor Colleoni. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique 10(2): 633–645.

18.

Fuchs

(2014) Digital Labour and Karl Marx, New York: Routledge.

19.

Galtung

(1990) Cultural violence. Journal of Peace Research 27(3): 291–305.

20.

Giddens

(1984) The Constitution of Society, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

21.

Giddens

(1990) The Consequences of Modernity, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

22.

Habermas

(1987) Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 2: Lifeworld and System, Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

23.

Harvey

(1990) The Condition of Postmodernity, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

24.

Harvey

(2005) The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

25.

Hassan

(2003) Network time and the new knowledge epoch. Time & Society 12(2/3): 225–241.

26.

Hassan

(2012) The Age of Distraction, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

27.

Hope

(2011) Crisis of temporalities: Global capitalism after the 2007–08 financial collapse. Time & Society 20(1): 94–118.

28.

Howe

(2008) Crowdsourcing. Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, New York: Three Rivers Press.

29.

Huws

(2003) The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World, New York: Monthly Review Press.

30.

Jhally

(1987) The Codes of Advertising, New York: Routledge.

31.

Kücklich J (2005) Precarious playbour. Fibreculture Journal 5, http://five.fibreculture journal.org/fcj-025-precarious-playbour-modders-and-the-digital-games-industry (accessed 13 February 2013).

32.

Lash

Urry

(1994) Economies of Signs and Space, London: Sage.

33.

Lefebvre

(2004) Rhythmanalysis, London: Continuum.

34.

Marx

(1847) The Poverty of Philosophy, London: Lawrence.

35.

Marx

(1857/58) Grundrisse, London: Penguin.

36.

Marx

(1859) Contribution to critique of political economy. Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 29, New York: International Publishers, pp. 257–417.

37.

Marx

(1867) Capital Volume 1, London: Penguin.

38.

Marx

(1885) Capital Volume 2, London: Penguin.

39.

Marx

(1894) Capital Volume 3, London: Penguin.

40.

Marx

Engels

(1848) Manifesto of the Communist Party. Selected Works in One Volume, London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 35–62.

41.

Negri

(1971) Crisis of the planner-state: Communism and revolutionary organisation. Revolution Retrieved: Selected Writings on Marx, Keynes, Capitalist Crisis and New Social Subjects 1967–83, London: Red Notes, pp. 91–148.

42.

Negri

(1982) Archaeology and Project: The mass worker and the social worker. Revolution Retrieved: Selected Writings on Marx, Keynes, Capitalist Crisis and New Social Subjects 1967–83, London: Red Notes, pp. 199–228.

43.

Ofcom (2012) International Communications Market Report 2012. Available at: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/cmr/cmr12/icmr/ICMR-2012.pdf (accessed 5 April 2013).

44.

Postone

(1993) Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

45.

Ritzer

Jurgenson

(2010) Production, consumption, presumption: The nature of capitalism in the age of the digital ‘prosumer’. Journal of Consumer Culture 10(1): 13–36.

46.

Rosa

(2005) Beschleunigung. Die Veränderung der Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

47.

Rosa

(2012) Weltbeziehungen im Zeitalter der Beschleunigung. Umrisse einer neuen Gesellschaftskritik, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

48.

Scholz

(2013) Digital Labor. The Internet as Playground and Factory, New York: Routledge.

49.

Sennett

(1998) The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Character of Work in the New Capitalism, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

50.

Smythe

(1977) Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism. Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 1(3): 1–27.

51.

Thompson

(1967) Time, work-discipline, and industrial capitalism. Past and Present 38: 56–97.

52.

Thompson

(1995) The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media, Cambridge: Polity.

53.

Toffler

(1980) The Third Wave, New York: Bantam.

54.

Tronti

(1962) Arbeiter und Kapital, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Neue Kritik.

55.

Urry

(1994) Time, leisure and social identity. Time & Society 3(2): 131–149.

56.

Virilio

(1999) Polar Inertia, London: Sage.