Consumers Or Labors? The Identity Construction Of "Wool-Collecting" Online Community

The digital economy has only changed the combination of means of production and labor,but has not changed the ownership attributes of digital means of production such as platform systems,information networks,data processing equipment,etc.In the sharing economy model,a large number of platform front-end services are implemented in the form of unpaid voluntary labor for consumers.The development of China’s internet industry has brought prosperity to online marketing,and under the stimulation of new consumption scenarios,consumers have become online consumers who even spend their time on the platform.However,online consumers are not absolutely passive technology users.Some consumers use technology to empower them and form self-organizing models through group communication,challenging the platform’s overall calculation of consumers.For example,some consumers who are familiar with e-commerce marketing methods purposefully capture and utilize the information published on the platform,use social media tools provided by online platforms to establish large-scale communities,and achieve economic activities that are beneficial to themselves.The "wool-collecting" online community of a social media platform studied in this paper has gone through three organizational iterations and developed two unpaid labor organization models based on members’ voluntary contributions,posting and management,forming the change of online consumers’ self-identity under the platform economy and the evolution of labor patterns under its influence,which caused some reflection on the exploitative nature of the platform economy.This research adopts the field research method to conduct a digital ethnography study on the identity within the group of China’s "wool-collecting" online consumer community.This article focuses on the identification formed by online consumers who are exploited by social media in the platform economy through consumption,and how they utilize and resist the digital worker identity defined by the platform through organized consumption behavior,exploring the subjectivity of online consumers.Research has found that " wool-collecting" enthusiasts have formed large-scale consumer online communities on social media platforms,relying on relatively low-cost consumption schemes for dissemination and member voluntary management to maintain community development.They have spontaneously established a unpaid digital labor model within the group under the name of "work for love" in the process of conceptual conflicts and iterations,and have constructed a model of saving money,mutual assistance,volunteering in community development and patriotic events Patriotic consumer community identity as the theme.This article argues that in the social and consumption scenarios created by digital platforms,more complex and invisible forms of exploitation are taking place in the form of labor such as posting and management.Consumers,in pursuit of the value identification and self realization brought by the identity of online community communities,voluntarily engage in digital labor and attempt to beautify and de label the identity of exploited consumers.Therefore,online communities have always been hovering between the identities of consumers and workers.On the one hand,they exhibit collective unconsciousness as digital labor.On the other hand,they demonstrate a certain level of actor rationality in attempting to resist the disadvantaged position of consumers caused by the platform economy through reflection and action.