Covid-19 and the Crisis of Creative Industries in Digital Capitalism: Commodification of Digital Media Workers in the Framework of Data as Labor
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25170/respons.v25i02.2461Keywords:
Covid-19, Creative Industries, Political Economy of the Media, Structural Theory of Galtung’s Cultural Imperialism, Digital Capitalism, Data as Capital and Data as Labor, Commodification of Digital Media Workers, Big DataAbstract
Entering 2020, the Covid-19 epidemic struck the lives of all people across borders of nation-states mercilessly and this triggered a global economic recession. Pandemic brought various unforeseen crises, including for Creative Industry workers. Although the last two decades show a positive trend of Creative Industry’s financial contribution for Indonesia's GDP, but, long before the outbreak of the Pandemic, the seeds of the crisis of the Creative Industries have been around for a long time, starting from the transition phase of the era of Industrial Capitalism to Digital Capitalism. Using the approach of the Analysis of Political Economy of the Media, the author will show the genealogy of the crisis by outlining the conceptual dimension of 'structural violence' refering to the Structural Theory of Galtung's Cultural Imperialism (1971). A brief history of the term Digital Capitalism is also discussed in order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the crisis. Furthermore, a number of political economy issues that emerged in Digital Capitalism were identified to indicate the locus problematicus of the ongoing crisis. The core argument of this paper will show why the problems of political economy concerning the dualism of Data as Capital and Data as Labor are serious problems in Digital Capitalism, which escapes the attention of the public. The Author offers solution by combining a more equitable pro-Structural input from Galtung analysis, Marxist perspectives, and the collective pro-agency approach from Arrieta-Ibarra, et al. (2018). Analysis of the problem of commodification of Digital Media Workers in the framework of Data as Labor is expected to increase the reader's awareness that the relationship of inequality and exploitation of workers in the era of Industrial Capitalism actually continues in Digital Capitalism when Big Data becomes the logic of new capital accumulation (within the framework of Data as Capital) with The Big Five Internet Corporations as the responsible actors. When Covid-19 hit, material conditions and the survival of creative industry workers as free labor were made even worse.
References
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Hout, W. (1993). Capitalism and the Third World: Development, Dependence and the World System. Aldershot, Hants (UK) dan Vermont (USA): Edward Elgar.
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Meier, L. M. dan Manzerolle, V. R. (2018). Rising tides? Data capture, platform accumulation, and new monopolies in the digital music economy. New Media & Society, 21(3), 543-561. DOI: 10.1177/1461444818800998
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Mosco, V. (2009). The Political Economy of Communication (2nd edition). London (UK) dan Thousand Oaks (USA): Sage Publication.
Mosco, V. (2014). To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World. London dan New York: Routledge.
Mosco, V. (2016a). Marx in the Cloud. Dalam Fuchs, C. dan Mosco, V. Tim Editor. (2016). Marx in The Age of Digital Capitalism (516-535). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Mosco, M. (2016b). Marx is Back, But Which One? On Knowledge Labour and Media Practice. Dalam Fuchs, C. dan Mosco, C. Tim Editor. Marx and The Political Economy of The Media (23-35). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Palfrey, J. dan Gasser, U. (2008). Born Digital: Understanding The First Generation of Digital Natives. New York: Basic Books.
Popkova, E. G., Ragulina, Y. V., & Bogoviz, A. V. (2019). Fundamental Differences of Transition to Industry 4.0 from Previous Industrial Revolutions. Dalam Elena G. Popkova, Yulia V. Ragulina, dan Aleksei V. Bogoviz. Tim Editor. Industry 4.0: Industrial Revolution of the 21st Century (21-29). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Posner, E. A. dan Weyl, E. G. (2018). Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society. Princeton dan Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, Digital immigrants. Dalam Bauerlein, M. Editor. The Digital Divide (3-11). New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/ Penguin.
Prodnik, J. A. (2016). 3C: Commodifying Communication in Capitalism. Dalam Fuchs, C. dan Mosco, V. Tim Editor. (2016). Marx in The Age of Digital Capitalism (233-321). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Pun, N., Tse, T., & Ng, K. (2017). Challenging digital capitalism: SACOM's campaigns against Apple and Foxconn as monopoly capital. Information, Communication & Society, 22(9), 1253-1268. DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2017.1414290.
Pupillo, L., Noam, E., dan Waverman, L. Tim Editor. (2018). Digitized Labor: The Impact of the Internet on Employment. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan
Sandoval, M. (2016). Foxconned Labour as the Dark Side of the Information Age: Working Conditions at Apple’s Contract Manufacturers in China. Dalam Fuchs, C. dan Mosco, V. Tim Editor. (2016). Marx in The Age of Digital Capitalism (350-395). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
San-Juan, D. M. M. (2017). Why Marx Was Right: Third World Edition. Journal of Developing Societies, 33(1), 1–26. DOI: 10.1177/0169796X16653333
Schiller, H. I. (1976). Communication and Cultural Domination. International Journal of Politics, 5(4), 1-127. Diakses dari http://www.jstor.org/stable/27868829
Schiller, D. (1999). Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System. Cambridge, MA dan London (UK): The MIT Press.
Scholz, T. (2013). Why Does Digital Labor Matter Now? Dalam Scholz, T. Editor. Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory (1-9). New York dan London: Routledge.
Schwab, K. (2016). The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Jenewa: World Economic Forum.
Schwarz, O. (2019). Facebook Rules: Structures of Governance in Digital Capitalism and the Control of Generalized Social Capital. Theory, Culture & Society, 36(4), 117-141. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276419826249
Smythe, D. W. (1977). Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism. Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 1(3), 1–27.
Sudibyo, A. (2019). Jagat Digital: Pembebasan dan Penguasaan. Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia.
Thomas, M. Editor. (2011). Deconstructing Digital Natives: Young People, Technology and the New Literacies. London and New York: Routledge.
Thrift, N. (2001). Perspectives on New Political Economy: Chasing Capitalism. New Political Economy, 6(3), 375-380. DOI: 10.1080/13563460120091360
Towse, R. (2002). Book Review. Richard E. Caves. (2000). Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Journal of Political Economy, 110(1), 234-237.
Wasko, J. (2014). The study of the political economy of the media in the twenty-first century. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics. 10(3), 259–271. doi: 10.1386/macp.10.3.259_1
Wittel, A. (2016). Digital Marx: Toward a Political Economy of Distributed Media. Dalam Fuchs, C. dan Mosco, V. Tim Editor. (2016). Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism (68-104). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Zanoni, P. (2019). Labor Market Inclusion Through Predatory Capitalism? The "Sharing Economy," Diversity, and the Crisis of Social Reproduction in The Belgian Coordinated Market Economy. Work and Labor in the Digital Age: Research in the Sociology of Work, 33, 145–164. Emerald Publishing Limited. doi:10.1108/S0277-283320190000033009
Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75–89. https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.5
Betancourt, M. (2015). Th e Critique of Digital Capitalism: An Analysis of Th e Political Economy of Digital Culture and Technology. Brooklyn, New York: punctum books.
Cameron, N. M. S. (2017). Will Robots Take Your Job? A Plea for Consensus. Cambridge (UK) dan Malden, MA (USA): Polity Press.
Dingli, A. dan Seychell, D. (2015). Th e New Digital Natives: Cutting the Chord. Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht, London: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
Dobrick, F. M., Fischer, J., dan Hagen, L. M. Tim Editor. (2018). Research Ethics in the Digital Age: Ethics for the Social Sciences and Humanities in Times of Mediatization and Digitization. Wiesbaden, Jerman: Springer VS.
Elliott, D. dan Spence, E. H. (2018). Ethics for a Digital Era. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Fuchs, C. (2013). Class and Exploitation on the Internet. Dalam Scholz, T. Editor. Digital Labor: Th e Internet as Playground and Factory (211-224). New York dan London: Routledge.
Fuchs, C. (2013). Class and Exploitation on the Internet. Dalam Scholz, T. Editor. Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory (211-224). New York dan London: Routledge.
Fuchs, C. dan Mosco, V. (2016). Introduction: Marx is Back – The Importance of Marxist Theory and Research for Critical Communication Studies Today. Dalam Fuchs, C. dan Mosco, V. Tim Editor. (2016). Marx in The Age of Digital Capitalism (1-21). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Fuchs, C. (2016). Towards Marxian Internet Studies. Dalam Fuchs, C. dan Mosco, V. Tim Editor. (2016). Marx in The Age of Digital Capitalism (22-67). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Galtung, J. (1971). A Structural Theory of Imperialism. Journal of Peace Research, 8(2), 81-117. Artikel dapat diakses di https://www.jstor.org/stable/422946
Graham, R. (2017). Google and advertising: digital capitalism in the context of Post-Fordism, the reification of language, and the rise of fake news. Palgrave Communications, 3(45), 1-19. DOI: 10.1057/s41599-017-0021-4
Hesmondhalgh, D. (2010). User-generated content, free labour and the cultural industries. Ephemera: theory & politics in organization, 10(3/4), 267-284.
Hesmondhalgh, D. & Baker, S. (2011). Creative Labour: Media work in three cultural industries. London dan New York: Routledge.
Hout, W. (1993). Capitalism and the Third World: Development, Dependence and the World System. Aldershot, Hants (UK) dan Vermont (USA): Edward Elgar.
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Kasali, R. (2017). Disruption. Jakarta: PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
---. (2018). The Great Shifting: Series on Disruption, Lebih Baik Pegang Kendali daripada Dikuasai. Jakarta: PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Koloğlugil, S. (2015) Digitizing Karl Marx: The New Political Economy of General Intellect and Immaterial Labor. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, 27(1), 123-137. DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2014.980678
Lanier, J. (2013). Who Owns the Future? New York: Simon & Schuster.
McChesney, R. W. & Schiller, D. (2002). The Political Economy of International Communications: Foundations for the Emerging Global Debate Over Media Ownership and Regulation. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.
McQuivey, J. (2013). Digital Disruption: Unleashing The Next Wave of Innovation. Las Vegas: Amazon Publishing.
Meier, W. A. (2019). Towards a policy for digital capitalism? Dalam Trappel, J. Editor. Digital media inequalities: Policies against divides, distrust and discrimination (265-284). Göteborg: Nordicom.
Meier, L. M. dan Manzerolle, V. R. (2018). Rising tides? Data capture, platform accumulation, and new monopolies in the digital music economy. New Media & Society, 21(3), 543-561. DOI: 10.1177/1461444818800998
Miller, Toby (2009). "From Creative to Cultural Industries: Not all industries are cultural, and no industries are creative." Cultural Studies, 23(1), 88-99. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380802326660
Mosco, V. (2009). The Political Economy of Communication (2nd edition). London (UK) dan Thousand Oaks (USA): Sage Publication.
Mosco, V. (2014). To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World. London dan New York: Routledge.
Mosco, V. (2016a). Marx in the Cloud. Dalam Fuchs, C. dan Mosco, V. Tim Editor. (2016). Marx in The Age of Digital Capitalism (516-535). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Mosco, M. (2016b). Marx is Back, But Which One? On Knowledge Labour and Media Practice. Dalam Fuchs, C. dan Mosco, C. Tim Editor. Marx and The Political Economy of The Media (23-35). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Palfrey, J. dan Gasser, U. (2008). Born Digital: Understanding The First Generation of Digital Natives. New York: Basic Books.
Popkova, E. G., Ragulina, Y. V., & Bogoviz, A. V. (2019). Fundamental Differences of Transition to Industry 4.0 from Previous Industrial Revolutions. Dalam Elena G. Popkova, Yulia V. Ragulina, dan Aleksei V. Bogoviz. Tim Editor. Industry 4.0: Industrial Revolution of the 21st Century (21-29). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Posner, E. A. dan Weyl, E. G. (2018). Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society. Princeton dan Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, Digital immigrants. Dalam Bauerlein, M. Editor. The Digital Divide (3-11). New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/ Penguin.
Prodnik, J. A. (2016). 3C: Commodifying Communication in Capitalism. Dalam Fuchs, C. dan Mosco, V. Tim Editor. (2016). Marx in The Age of Digital Capitalism (233-321). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Pun, N., Tse, T., & Ng, K. (2017). Challenging digital capitalism: SACOM's campaigns against Apple and Foxconn as monopoly capital. Information, Communication & Society, 22(9), 1253-1268. DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2017.1414290.
Pupillo, L., Noam, E., dan Waverman, L. Tim Editor. (2018). Digitized Labor: The Impact of the Internet on Employment. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan
Sandoval, M. (2016). Foxconned Labour as the Dark Side of the Information Age: Working Conditions at Apple’s Contract Manufacturers in China. Dalam Fuchs, C. dan Mosco, V. Tim Editor. (2016). Marx in The Age of Digital Capitalism (350-395). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
San-Juan, D. M. M. (2017). Why Marx Was Right: Third World Edition. Journal of Developing Societies, 33(1), 1–26. DOI: 10.1177/0169796X16653333
Schiller, H. I. (1976). Communication and Cultural Domination. International Journal of Politics, 5(4), 1-127. Diakses dari http://www.jstor.org/stable/27868829
Schiller, D. (1999). Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System. Cambridge, MA dan London (UK): The MIT Press.
Scholz, T. (2013). Why Does Digital Labor Matter Now? Dalam Scholz, T. Editor. Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory (1-9). New York dan London: Routledge.
Schwab, K. (2016). The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Jenewa: World Economic Forum.
Schwarz, O. (2019). Facebook Rules: Structures of Governance in Digital Capitalism and the Control of Generalized Social Capital. Theory, Culture & Society, 36(4), 117-141. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276419826249
Smythe, D. W. (1977). Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism. Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 1(3), 1–27.
Sudibyo, A. (2019). Jagat Digital: Pembebasan dan Penguasaan. Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia.
Thomas, M. Editor. (2011). Deconstructing Digital Natives: Young People, Technology and the New Literacies. London and New York: Routledge.
Thrift, N. (2001). Perspectives on New Political Economy: Chasing Capitalism. New Political Economy, 6(3), 375-380. DOI: 10.1080/13563460120091360
Towse, R. (2002). Book Review. Richard E. Caves. (2000). Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Journal of Political Economy, 110(1), 234-237.
Wasko, J. (2014). The study of the political economy of the media in the twenty-first century. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics. 10(3), 259–271. doi: 10.1386/macp.10.3.259_1
Wittel, A. (2016). Digital Marx: Toward a Political Economy of Distributed Media. Dalam Fuchs, C. dan Mosco, V. Tim Editor. (2016). Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism (68-104). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Zanoni, P. (2019). Labor Market Inclusion Through Predatory Capitalism? The "Sharing Economy," Diversity, and the Crisis of Social Reproduction in The Belgian Coordinated Market Economy. Work and Labor in the Digital Age: Research in the Sociology of Work, 33, 145–164. Emerald Publishing Limited. doi:10.1108/S0277-283320190000033009
Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75–89. https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.5
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Published
2021-04-24
How to Cite
Putranto, H. (2021). Covid-19 and the Crisis of Creative Industries in Digital Capitalism: Commodification of Digital Media Workers in the Framework of Data as Labor. Respons: Jurnal Etika Sosial, 25(02), 9–48. https://doi.org/10.25170/respons.v25i02.2461
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