There is a contradiction at the heart of digital media. We use commercial platforms to express our identity, to build community and to engage politically. At the same time, our status updates, tweets, videos, photographs and music files are free content for these sites. We are also generating an almost endless supply of user data that can be mined, re-purposed and sold to advertisers. As users of the commercial web, we are socially and creatively engaged, but also labourers, exploited by t...

While the working lives of tech entrepreneurs and delivery platform workers seem far removed, both are engaged in digital labor. What unites their experience and allows us to speak of their work under the same umbrella? Is it even possible to talk about digital labor as if it were a single form of work?Digital Labor explores these questions and critically examines the economics, politics, and experiences of workers in these new modes of employment. Using a novel definition...

An exploration of how and why social media content is tagged as “not safe for work” and an argument against conflating sexual content with risk.The hashtag #NSFW (not safe for work) acts as both a warning and an invitation. NSFW tells users, “We dare you to click on this link! And by the way, don't do it until after work!” Unlike the specificity of movie and television advisories (“suggestive dialogue,” “sexual content”), NSFW signals, nonspecifically, sexually exp...

What did you do before Google?The rise of Google as the dominant Internet search provider reflects a generationally-inflected notion that everything that matters is now on the Web, and should, in the moral sense of the verb, be accessible through search. In this theoretically nuanced study of search technology’s broader implications for knowledge production and social relations, the authors shed light on a culture of search in which our i...

The Sage Handbook of Digital Labour is a comprehensive exploration of the multifaceted and evolving concept of digital labour. Originally coined in Marxist analyses to explain the exploitation of user data in the digital economy, the term has since expanded to encompass a wide range of paid work influenced by digital technologies. This includes traditional jobs transformed by platforms, new roles emerging in today′s digital society, and cultural producers like influencers ...

The call is being answered.Women all around the world are rising and stepping into their power that for so long was suppressed.What does it mean to be an empowered woman?It goes beyond having the perfect – relationship, family, successful job/career or business, a healthy bank account, and social status. Instead, it is a woman who is willing to re-discover who she is, to let go of the need to be the “good girl” and the “people pleaser,” and to be accepted. She embra...