全球数字劳工研究与中国语境:批判性的述评

Global Digital Labour Studies and the Chinese Context: A Critical Review

随着传播研究的理论、对象、方法和价值取向的日趋多元化,一些曾被遮蔽的重要议题开始进入传播学者的视野,其中有的已经取得了丰硕的成果,如传播劳动研究。在传播新科技突飞猛进将劳动数字化、数字技术使用者“劳工化”的趋势下,数字劳工作为最新的分析范畴,逐渐成为传播劳动研究领域的前沿。笔者梳理了全球数字劳工研究的政治经济学进路和最新成果,即制造和服务业中的数字劳工、媒介产业中的数字劳工、产消合一者和玩工,以及数字经济中的劳工组织,并从中国语境出发,呈现本土学者对该议题的思考与贡献。最后,批判性地检视了上述研究存在的局限和盲点,这同时也是数字劳工研究新的学术生长点和理论创新可能的源泉。

As the theories, research objects, methods and values of communication studies have become increasingly diversified, there are a few under-researched issues that have gradually emerged, to the attention of communication scholars. Among these issues, that of communication labour studies, for instance, has become a fertile area for academic research. With rapid technological advancement, a trend readily distinguishable has been as much a digitalization of labour as technology users being turned into “labour”, and as a consequence, the digital labour has become the digital labour has become a latest analytic category, gradually serving the frontier of communication labour studies. In this context, the authors examine the four essential components of the political economy of digital labour studies: digital labour in the manufacturing and services industries, digital labour in the media industries, prosumers and playbours, and worker organizations in the digital economy, and they seek to facilitate the dialogue between international and Chinese scholars, who have likewise contributed to digital labour studies from the Chinese perspective. Finally, the authors critically examine possible weaknesses and blind spots of these scholarship, which would also be the source of academic growth and theoretical innovations in digital labour research.