传播政治经济学视域下西方假新闻背后的“数字劳工”

The digital labor behind western fake news industry from the perspective of communication political economy

数字经济时代下,互联网用户的数字生产和消费行为隐含了更强的资本生产逻辑。资本家通过媒介对大众进行全方位控制,使用户囿于社交媒体的算法逻辑之中,成为被剥削的免费"数字劳工"(digital labor),对这种新型剥削方式的解读源于斯麦兹的传播政治经济学研究。根据受众商品理论,受众作为商品被售卖,这一客观事实为资本积累奠定了基础,并为制造及散布"假新闻"(fake news)的经济诱因和政治诱因提供了重要依据。本文旨在从"数字劳工"及传播政治经济学理论角度,解读西方数字资本通过数字劳动剥削来实现资本积累的过程,阐释假新闻产业呈现的强制性、空间化与异化的特征,就假新闻生产中的"数字劳工"及普通互联网用户何以转变为商品等问题进行阐释。

In the era of digital economy,the digital production and consumption behavior of Internet users implies a stronger logic of capital production. Capitalists control the public through the media in an all-round way,so that users are confined to the algorithmic logic of social media and become exploited free digital laborers. This new interpretation to this exploitation mode comes from Dallas Symthe’study of communication political economy and gradually becomes the mainstream. Dallas Symthe ’s audience commodity thesis,audiences are consider as commodities,provides a foundation to capital accumulation and a theoretical basis for economical reasons and political reasons of "fake news"making up and spreading. This paper interprets the capital accumulation processes which is the exploitation of digital labor and explains the mandatory,spatial and alienated characteristics of "fake news"from an alternative perspective of political and economic criticism,and it has contributed some thoughts on how digital labor in the production of fake news and ordinary Internet users can be transformed into commodities.