A Study Of Labor Control Of Creative Workers By Social Media Platforms

Unlike the traditional media era,the development of Internet technology has enabled users in the new media era to become active participants rather than passive audiences.They create and share videos,images,and sounds on various social media platforms based on their own experience and knowledge.These activities constitute creative labor,while Uploaders become creative workers on the platform.Because creative labor is highly dependent on digital technology,it can be classified as digital labor and studied based on this theory.As a well-known video website in China,Bilibili video barrage network at the beginning of its creation of the user’s independent creation of the work as the main content of the platform,its unique community culture has attracted more and more users to participate in it,to this day,94% of the video views of the Bilibili still come from the works of the Uploaders,these creative workers are the mainstay to support the development of the Bilibili.The reason why Uploaders participate in creation is due to various motives such as interest exchange,self-presentation,and obtaining economic returns,while Bilibili meets the needs of Uploaders by building a community atmosphere,establishing an honor mechanism,and providing creative incentives,attracting more and more creative workers to join it.It seems that the platform and the Uploaders are in a mutually beneficial and benign relationship,but in fact,the various mechanisms set up by Bilibili not only meet the needs of the Uploaders,but also complete the management of their subjective consent to manufacturing,technical discipline and business cooperation,and thus form the control of the creative labor of the Uploaders,so that their creation can better serve the commercial interests of the platform.In the face of the labor control of the platform,the Uploaders also carried out fragmented resistance,but due to the disparity in the strength gap between labor and management and the differentiation of members within the group,this resistance could not fundamentally change the control exerted by Bilibili,and the Uploaders under this control eventually faced the result of labor alienation,they were no longer the dominators of creative labor,but became dominated.The dominant platform further deepens the exploitation of creative workers,but the intensification of this exploitation also makes creative workers aware of the falseness of the ideology constructed by the platform,which provides the possibility for the liberation of this group.This article takes the Uploaders subject of Bilibili station as the research object,and uses digital labor theory,labor value theory,and labor process theory as the basis.Multiple methods such as participatory surveys and unstructured interviews are used for analysis and research.Starting from the creative motivation of Uploaders,this article analyzes the labor control they are subjected to on the platform,describes in detail the design and operation principles of these control mechanisms,as well as the Uploaders’ reactions to control.It then summarizes the labor control mechanisms of social media platforms for creative workers,and finally reveals the fact that labor control brings alienation to creative workers,and discovers that behind labor control,The possibility of achieving the liberation of creative workers.This article provides a certain reference for research related to creative labor and also contributes to the development of digital labor theory in certain empirical fields.