Digital Labour Group announces new publication

The Digital Labour Group in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario and ephemera: theory and politics in organization are pleased to announce the arrival of Volume 10: 3-4:

Digital Labour: Workers, Authors, Citizens
Edited by Jonathan Burston, Nick Dyer-Witheford and Alison Hearn

Born out of the conference of the same name held in the fall of 2009 at the University of Western Ontario, this special double issue of ephemera addresses the implications of digital labour as they are emerging in practice, politics, policy, culture, and theoretical enquiry. As workers, as authors, and as citizens, we are increasingly summoned and disciplined by new digital technologies that define the workplace and produce ever more complex regimes of surveillance and control. At the same time, new possibilities for agency and new spaces for collectivity are borne from these multiplying digital innovations. This volume explores this social dialectic, with a specific focus on new forms of labour. Papers examine the histories and theories of digital capitalism, foundational assumptions in debates about digital labour, issues of intellectual property and copyright, material changes in the digital workplace, transnational perspectives on digital labour, the issue of free labour and new definitions of work, and struggles and contests on the scene of digital production. Contributors include Brian Holmes, Andrea Fumagalli and Cristina Morini, David Hesmondhalgh, Ursula Huws, Barry King, Jack Bratich, Enda Brophy and many others. This issue also contains vital contributions from union and guild activists hailing from the Canadian Media Guild (CMG), the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), the University of Western Ontario Faculty Association and the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).

The Digital Labour Group: Jonathan Burston, Edward Comor, James Compton, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Alison Hearn, Ajit Pyati, Sandra Smeltzer, Matt Stahl, Samuel E. Trosow.