Audience labour in social media

Guest lecture by Eran Fisher, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Political Science, and Communication at the Open University of Israel.

This lecture delves on the power of technology, particularly production technology, to enforce, organize, and regulate a particular labour regime. It evokes the Marxist perspective on the politics of technology and its centrality in reproducing class relations. And then moves to the central question of how a new neoliberal labour regime emerged around the new paradigm of digital and network technology.

Special attention will be given to the mobilization of media audience and "life itself" into the process of capital accumulation with the aide of social media, and to a nascent self-identification of audience as labour.

Eran Fisher is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Political Science, and Communication at the Open University of Israel.

His books include. Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age: The Spirit of Networks (2010 Palgrave); Internet and Emotions (edited with Tova Benski, 2014 Routledge); and Reconsidering Value and Labour in the Digital Age (edited with Christian Fuchs, 2015 Palgrave).