Digital Labour in the Platform Economy: The Case of Facebook

Andrea Fumagalli (), Stefano Lucarelli, Elena Musolino and Giulia Rocchi
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Elena Musolino: Department of Management, Economics and Quantitative Methods, Università di Bergamo, Bergamo 24127, Italy
Giulia Rocchi: Axe Économie Politique, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris 75013, France

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 6, 1-16

Abstract: The aim of the paper is to analyse the features of the digital labour connected with the so-called platform economy. Many platform-based business models rely on a new composition of capital capable of capturing personal information and transforming it into big data. Starting with the example of the Facebook business model, we explain the valorisation process at the core of platform capitalism, stressing the relevance of digital labour, to clarify the crucial distinction between labour and work. Our analysis differs from Fuchs and Sevignani’s thesis about digital work and digital labour and seems consistent with the idea that Facebook extracts a rent from the information produced by the free labour of its users.

Keywords: organization of digital labour; platform economy; valorisation process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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