Student Media Labor in the Digital Age

Abstract

For all of the theorizing in the academy about whether blogging, personal websites, and social media commentaries are democratizing media production or exploiting media labor, there have been very few efforts to deeply examine students’ digital work within the academy. Literature around digital work and labor suggests that while the participants may feel personally fulfilled and engaged in a more democratic sphere for self-expression, their work also may be appropriated for profit. For these reasons, digital media work does not feel like labor in the ways that other work does; both the work and their products are largely invisible to the participants. Yet, the literature also suggests that not all digital media labor is the same; distinctions can be made between different kinds of media labor based on the participants’ expectations and goals in doing the work. In an effort to better tease out these distinctions, this chapter considers how university students might belong to a particular category of invisible worker in this crossroads between emancipated and exploited work.