The effects of digital media upon labor knowledge and attitudes: a study of Chinese labor subjectivity in a vocational training school

ABSTRACT

Existing studies on digital media and labor seldom pay attention to youth in vocational education (VE), nor do they consider the use of and attitudes towards digital media in connection with labor subjectivity. This research fills the gap by exploring how patterns of digital communication relate to each other in exerting influence on labor knowledge and attitudes in the setting of a vocational school. We present findings from a unique survey dataset (N = 1761) collected in Shaanxi, China. Aided by fieldwork, interviews, and observations of online discussions among students, we constructed reliable composite variables for behavioral and attitudinal patterns of digital communication and found that (a) participation in online forum discussion enhances labor-rights knowledge and predicts more consumerist usage of WeChat, but it does not encourage more reflections on gaming or achieve more labor-related attitudes; (b) reflective attitudes does not increase labor knowledge, but it is positively correlated with work-related attitudes; (c) there is no significant relationship between consumerist usage on the one hand and labor knowledge or attitudes on the other; and (d) labor knowledge indeed helps enhance labor attitudes. Contributions and implications of these findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital media
• consumerist use
• reflective attitudes
• labor
• vocational education (VE)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [grant number C5010-15G].

Notes on contributors

Jack Linchuan Qiu

Jack Linchuan Qiu is a Professor and Research Director at the Department of Communications and New Media, the National University of Singapore, carrying out work on issues of digital media and social change in relation to labor, class, globalization, and sustainability, especially in the contexts of Asia and the Global South. He has published 10 books in both English and Chinese including Goodbye iSlave: A Manifesto for Digital Abolition (U of Illinois Press, 2016), World Factory in the Information Age (Guangxi Normal U Press, 2013), and Working-Class Network Society (MIT Press, 2009) [email: [email protected]]

Minglun Chung

Minglun Chung is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Affairs and Civic Education, National Changhua University of Education (Taiwan), currently conducting research on issues of youth political participation and subjective well-being as well as school anti-bullying policy in Taiwan [email: [email protected]].

Ngai Pun

Ngai Pun is a Chair Professor in Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong. She obtained her PhD from SOAS, University of London. She was honored as the winner of the C. Wright Mills Award for her first book Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace (2005), which has been translated into French and Chinese. Her co-authored book, Dying for iPhone: Foxconn and the Lives of Chinese Workers (2020) has also been translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish and Chinese. She is the sole author of Migrant Labor in China: Post Socialist Transformation (Polity Press, 2016), editor of seven book volumes in Chinese and English. She has published widely in leading journals in the fields of labor and gender, media and cultural studies, and China studies [email: [email protected]].