í Assignments

I do not think the buying and selling of data complicates the way that we differentiate between work and leisure.  I think the only effect it might have is the eventual bombardment of advertising.  In which case, it becomes more of a nuisance rather  than work.  I believe Scholz’s Digital Labor refers to the exchange of getting a “free” service for the cost of your information.  The closest thing to labor is when Scholz says, “ Harry Potter fans produce fan fiction and give their creative work away for free in exchange for being ignored by the corporation that owns the original content” in which case it is not really work if you did not do it expecting to be compensated.  Updating statuses and likes are not considered work either if it is not obviously coming at an actually monetary price.

Ross Definitions: Distributed Labor

According to Andrew Ross, “distributed labor has been suggested as a way of describing the use of the Internet to mobilize the spare processing power of a widely dispersed crowd of discrete individuals” (Ross, p. 29).This term was previously used to describe the way businesses corresponded with employees working from different places at different times and also mobile office. These days, distributed labor is used to describe users who provide their input or content but do not view their contributions as a form of labor. The new kind of distributed labor also includes workers taking on different small tasks requiring minimal concentration only. Unlike the old distributed labor that relied on relocation and cheap labor markets to save costs, the new type of distributed labor that is being used by businesses today save money through remotely hiring employees who are comparatively talented as the employees here in the US at lower costs. “Microtasks” or the jobs that require only little amount of time and/or concentration also allow businesses to save on costs. This type of tasks, however, requires that the task or the job be broken down into small pieces like puzzles and bits. Ross also added that, “Taskers are effectively deskilled, dispersed, and deprived of any knowledge about the nature of the product to which their labor contributes” (Ross, p. 29) Because of this, the person doing the task does not know exactly what the purpose of his job is.

This article talks about discounted labor. Ross considers discounted labor as the result of digital media. One of the examples that stood out for me is white collar/no collar interns. This is close to me because it is what I am dealing with right now. If you have internship it is the same as having a job. Internship requires lots of hours. You do everything, you do around 30 hours per week but you don’t get pay for it. Free internships are growing very fast, 50% of U.S. internships are unpaid or below minimum wage. The main point of the free internship is the employer, but of course it happens very rare; “An unpaid internship might help build a resume and win a foot in the door, or leg up in the skilled labor market”. All this internships were made to help the students in their future. The purpose is to give them a hand and a lot of experience. But at the end it benefit only corporations who uses free labor. Personally in my situation I cannot afford having an internship because I don’t have family here to support me, so some how I need to pay my bills and school.

Another example is reality TV shows. TV starts using free labor also. “The production costs of these shows are a fraction of what producers pay for conventional, scripted drama, while the rating and profits have been mercurial. Indeed, they are so cheap to make the virtually all the production costs are earned back from the first network showing: syndicated or overseas sales are pure profit”. Why would they pay lots of money for the professional actor if they can have people who can do it for free. Their payment will be their faces on TV, chance to show yourself and may be become famous.

With the rise of digital media, labor has really lost its way in giving back to those who do the most for it. Reality TV has become such a big thing nowadays that as viewers, we sometimes forget that most of the “reality” is actually scripted. These reality shows are not at all expensive to make and they earn back what they spent on it, the first time it is shown on TV. So we are left to question why most of the workers behind the scenes are left in the dust? The eighteen-hour workdays with no meal breaks and no health or any other kind of benefits is blatantly unfair to these workers. Digital media has allowed for this industry to not have a standard for both their workers and what they put out. Ross points out that “…networks have begun to categorize game shows as reality programming in order to produce them without contracts.” This proves that there is no standard to which TV shows fall into. All they want is to pay less so to make more money at the end of the day.

Internships are very common as they are usually more open to young people who are looking for a foot in to the choice of career they want. Most times if the person has done very well in their unpaid internship it opens the chance for an actual job. However, most young people don’t get this opportunity. They are simply used for their work and never heard from again. The companies that hire interns are getting money from this. They take advantage of the intern who just wants to do their best and gain experience. Companies are good at exploiting the youthful mind into thinking that all the professional and challenging work they will do will be worth it in the end, when in reality it’s sadly not the case.

Ross describes distributive labor as a way of the Internet to be able to use the left over mind power of random individuals. In this new model of distributive labor, Ross says that those who participate in this are not paid workers or your stereotypical people who go to coffee shops to write in their notebooks instead of the privacy and silence of their own home because they gain something from hearing other people’s stories. The people that can actually be seen participating in this type of labor are those who do not necessarily think or realize that what they are doing online is really considered work. This type of labor does not require much of the individual. It is not difficult and it does not need much concentration, since it is only supposed to be a distraction for the people. It’s very simple, non-excruciating labor. The people doing the jobs, called “taskers” usually have no prior knowledge about what product they are working for. Coordinating managers are the people that have all the authority and control over what happens with the labor process these “taskers” go through. According to what we read from Ross, we can assume that this kind of labor leads into what is called the donor labor. It is more or less giving up your time to do “work you just couldn’t help doing.” What kind of labor is real hard work anymore, when employers don’t expect much from you or expect you to just want to give up your time to do whatever they want you to?

Ross talks at length about the new forms of free or token-wage labor that are available to employers today. He makes a point of saying that while free labor on the web gets most of the attention, it is not only a web problem. One of the increasing uses of free labor is through internships. While some internships, such as those in finance, are often paid, many others are not, especially in the social services or non-profit world. For college students in some concentrations, it is understood that the only way to secure a job after college is to do a summer internship (or 2 or 3) in that field before graduation. An article in the NY Times by Steven Greenhouse describes the lengths some parents will go to in order to have their child work for “experience” but no pay. (Internships Abroad, Unpaid with a $10,00 Price Tag, 2-5-15). In the new normal, some people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for the chance to work. Of course, this creates a disparity between those who can afford to work for nothing (or pay to work) and those who must take a paying job over an unpaid internship. Ross says “The internship is particularly relevant to our overall discussion because most interns do not see themselves as hard done by.” Where people tend to recognize unfair labor practice in say, a sweatshop, they tend not to recognize the exploitation of interns.

As Ross points out, self-service in the digital age also contributes significantly to the cheapening of the labor market. Back when phones that could be dialed by people first replaced telephone operators, the public had to be convinced to take on the task of dialing. When Bank ATMs were first introduced, people feared it was the end of the job of the bank teller and many were skeptical about using them at all. When they first appeared, Citibank actually stationed actors at the newly invented ATMs to convince people to try them. The notion seemed to be that a friendly face (and carefully scripted upbeat dialog) could ease the transition from man to machine. Indeed, ATMs did greatly reduce the number of bank tellers in banks but today we don’t think twice about using them. (I now deposit checks with my phone app– how long until we don’t even need the ATMs?) We now scan our own purchases at CVS and I am sure many stores will soon adopt this cost saving practice as well. Whether it is online or off, we have become accustomed to taking on tasks that workers are no longer being paid to do.

The new trend on cheap labor is what Ross calls “crowdsourcing”. In a time where businesses once utilized tools such as outsourcing, sending jobs overseas where it costs less to run a business, are now using everyday people to gather a plethora of information to gain the most revenue at the lowest possible cost. This type of legal solicitation of groups of talented individuals is just one example of the cheapest form of labor. More and more companies are capitalizing on communal work environments where shared information is the new innovation. They have succeeded in the ability to have writers, artists, and musicians, participate is the end goal, while getting nothing in return.

This extraction of cheap digital labor as Ross calls it, is how companies are able to continue to make a profit while online users are forced to “work” for minimal if not any pay at all. He uses the example of interns and how they are utilized. For “white collar/no collar interns”, engaging in this form of work environment leaves them with little compensation and are made out to believe the greater benefits to their future is worth working for nothing. When in reality, the companies are gaining all of the benefits of a full working week, tasks completed, for a fraction of the cost it would be to hire a full time employee.

With the rise of digital media, digital “free” labor has, according to Ross, expanded.

One example that deserves mentioning is the self-proclaimed online celebrity. YouTube videos of musicians or online personalities sharing their lives and talents for free with the hopes of gaining fame has only increased in recent years. This activity can be viewed as unpaid labor. The more views, and subscribers, the more money YouTube has made. Youtube has even started advertising on buses. It is a way to draw people to watch with the belief that they have a chance too.

Angeline Henriquez

Digital Media and Society

Assignment 05

October 6, 2015

Throughout this chapter Ross explains how the rise of digital media has given way to what he describes as “token-wage” labor. “In most corners of the information landscape, working for nothing has become normative, and largely because it is not experienced as exploitation.” (17) One way in which corporations have used digital technologies to reduce professional pay scales, is by monetizing the “cognitive surplus”.  Corporations are taking advantage of all the free time people have by promoting tasks that feel like fun, thus blurring the line of work and play. One example of this is crowdsourcing. To make his point, Ross directs us to the popularity of the “Comments Section” not only on social media platforms but also in popular news sites, where users that post their comments become a source for extracting ideas, images, and information for little to no compensation. Why pay for a creative team to come up with new ideas for articles when the users can provide them without demanding a salary? “Readers will be gratified to participate” (19) is the underlying principle.

Another aspect of the “corporate race to the bottom” is the distributed labor technique. In this occurrence, the micro division of labor into bits and pieces allows for cost – saving. “Taskers are effectively deskilled, dispersed and deprived of any knowledge about the nature of the product to which their labor contributes” (21). At the same time, this reinforces long-held believes about and among creative types, about sacrificing monetary compensation in return for job gratification. About this Ross writes, “This willingness to donate labor was referred to as self-exploitation”. However Ross, emphasizes that new media is not to be blamed for this token-wage labor economy. In turn he states that “while digital technology did not give birth to the model of free labor, it has proven to be a highly efficient enabler of nonstandard work arrangements”.

Marisa Chung
Ross Definition
10/06/15

Ross describes feminization of labor as doing unpaid work that involves women in the majority, such as (unpaid) internships. He includes that women are most likely to dominate the most precarious sectors of white collar and no collar employment, and are assigned the majority of unpaid internships (77% according to one survey).  Although getting an internship is a great opportunity to step in the workplace, unpaid internships requires as much hard work and effort as any other paid worker, but unfortunately do not guarantee an individual with a job when the internship is finished.

We have seen a drastic change in how the economy produces. Where it was once the exchange of goods, which began with the industrial revolution, has now turned into an exploitative version of mass production. Only this time, it is not just underpaid workers banging out merchandise at record speeds, but online activity that is considered free labor. Andrew Ross describes this as “attention economy”. Essentially, what the online users draw their attention to is what the CEO’s of major web companies such as AOL, FB, of today are aiming to grasp, analyze, gather, and gain revenue from. Ross examines this idea and discusses the case against Arianna Huffington, Ceo of Huffington Post, where she blatantly denied her users/bloggers the right to be compensated for their activity. Many were appalled at her brazen responses to the idea of “being paid”. The case found that the owner had no obligation to pay for something that was never agreed upon in any form of contract between the two parties. This kind of behavior is precisely the type of behavior that promotes attention economy, where users attention is measured more as a product and consider the findings of data to determine their “next move” as a motive for further advertising. It is all largely motivated by dollars and branding. The deliberately placed ads in our computers are constantly drawing us to a specific place. However with the underlying compulsion that grips people to be in constant connection on social media and share digital content without the thought of compensation is the driving force behind the success of this ongoing reality on the web.