| Description |
This dissertation brings a humanities perspective to an analysis of the state of digital labor in the twenty-first century, with particular emphasis on the ways in which the rise of new media participates in its patriarchal and neoliberal cultural context. Based on interdisciplinary sources-from economists, to feminist theorists, and scholars of digital labor-this analysis employs a variety of critical approaches, featuring race, class, and gender, among other intersectional factors. More importantly, it illustrates the ways in which digital labor in technology excludes women and minorities from the profession, and in so doing creates the ‘precariat,' a term that alludes to a class of insecurity and exploitation. In drawing attention to the underlying relations of power, this research emphasizes the paradoxical double role of new media in the process of discrimination against women, as well as ethnic, racial, nonheterosexual identified, and disabled people, among other minorities. Reading and interpreting statistics and other data gleaned from a host of sources enables a more fully articulated contextualization of the state of digital labor, and becomes the foundation of this hermeneutic approach. Moreover, digital labor examined in this dissertation is not only intellectual and nonmaterial, but a form of writing, or creation of text. As a result, digital labor is subject to questions of rhetorical, philosophical, historical, and cultural analysis and interpretation. Reflecting current iv trends in the study of literature that include digital humanities, my dissertation demonstrates the transformation of analytical methods applied to an enlarged textual corpus expressed in three consistent genres explored in the chapters: popular books, films, and digital networks. Specifically, using different authors in the same genres in each chapter, I explore the bottom strata of the digital hierarchy comprised of female and minority members that form the digital precariat. Through analyzing modern forms of digital expression such as film, video, and online social networks, I demonstrate the reproduction of twentieth century's power dynamics among class, race, gender and other identities in the new digital economy. |
