Research On The Generation And Alienation Of Affective Labor Of Film And Television Star Fans

In the new era of rapid development of digital technology,more and more Internet users are absorbed into the digital capital space built by the Internet,accepting the call of commercial ideology and gradually becoming the "affective laborers" driving the development of the Internet industry.In this process,the emotions of Internet users are often commercialized and laborized.Therefore,exploring the generation and alienation of Internet users’ affective labor from the perspective of affective labor is not only conducive to revealing the hidden labor exploitation behind capital and the disturbance of the normal industrial ecology by capital,but also conducive to cultivating the rationality of Internet users’ interaction and improving their media literacy.The rapid development of China’s film and television industry since the 21 st century has led to a dramatic increase in the size of film and television star fans.They are active in all kinds of social media platforms and perform various kinds of data labor for idols,such as supporting them in the charts,controlling comments and fighting against hackers,as well as creative labor such as making videos and writing homages.Their labor is essentially a kind of emotional labor,and in the process of labor,their emotions are easily incorporated into the capital appreciation process and alienated,which has become a major hidden danger affecting the healthy development of the film and television industry.This study takes film and television star fans as the research object,and explores the mechanism of generation and alienation of fans’ affective labor through a combination of participant observation,in-depth interviews,case studies,supplemented by questionnaires.This study consists of the following five chapters.The first chapter explains the dynamics and specific types of fans’ affective labor.The second chapter explores the multiple values of fans’ affective labor.The third chapter analyzes the manipulation of fans’ affective labor by internal and external forces involved in the fan circle field.The fourth chapter sorts out the reality of the alienation of fans’ affective labor and its negative effects.The last chapter proposes a path to govern the chaos in the fan circle caused by the alienation of fans’ affective labor.The study finds that movie and television star fans’ affective labor is both empowered by media technology and their emotional identification with their idols,and manipulated by their communities and the external forces involved in the fan circle field,represented by capital and platforms.In this process,the fans’ affective labor has the dual attributes of empowerment and exploitation.On the one hand,they reap great emotional satisfaction from the affective labor of following idols,and to a certain extent,they create market economic value and social public welfare value.On the other hand,they are excessively involved in the industrial chain of capital circulation,and their emotions are alienated into labor productivity,resulting in the problem of alienation of affective labor,which has led to many problems in the fan circle,causing greater negative impact on individual fans,the film and television industry and even the entire cyberspace.Therefore,both the symptoms and the root causes of the chaos in the fan circle need the concerted efforts of government departments,the film and television industry,film and television stars,schools and parents,fans and other multiple entities,and actively create a clean and upright cyberspace ecology.