Critical analysis of user commodities as free labour in social networking sites: A case study of Cyworld

Abstract

This article examines how young SNS users engage with SNSs with a case study of Cyworld. It focuses on the political economy analysis of Cyworld primarily in two ways, both through the commodification of SNSs as an emergent Web 2.0. technology and the appropriation of users as free labour, because Cyworld is engaged in the commodification of what can be understood as free labour. The political economic overview of Cyworld is meant to unpack some structural elements of this new cultural practice. However, it also contextualizes an attempt to understand the role of users in the reproduction of capital relations towards user commodity via the modification of Dallas Smythe's audience commodity to user commodity. As Cohen points out, these sites can be situated within more general capitalist processes that follow familiar patterns of asymmetrical power relations between users and owners, commodification, and the harnessing of user power. It therefore discusses the commodification of Cyworld and its users in broader perspectives, such as ‘user as markets’, ‘user as advertising-medium labor,’ and ‘user as content-creator labor,’ as well as ‘user as free labor’ rather than analysing SNS users from a narrow-minded free labour perspective in order to map out the comprehensive commodification process of Cyworld users.

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Dal Yong Jin

Dal Yong Jin finished his Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. His major research and teaching interests are on globalization and media, new media and gaming studies, transnational cultural studies, and the political economy of media and culture. He is the author of two books entitled Korea's Online Gaming Empire (MIT Press, 2010) and Hands On/Hands Off: The Korean State and the Market Liberalization of the Communication Industry (Hampton Press, 2011). Jin also edited two books, including The Political Economies of Media (with Dwayne Winseck, Bloomsbury, 2011), and Global Media Convergence and Cultural Transformation (IGI Global, 2011). His works also appeared in several scholarly journals, including Media, Culture and Society, Games and Culture, Telecommunications Policy, Television and New Media, Information Communication and Society, and International Communication Gazette.