[ecrea] Digital Labour: Workers, Authors, Citizens - ephemera special issue

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

http://www.ephemeraweb.org/

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.



Matt Stahl, PhD

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Information and Media Studies

University of Western Ontario