Knowledge Workers of the World! Unite?

Abstract

Research in communication studies has tended to cluster around the exploration of three interconnected topics: media, messages, and audiences. Those who focus on media tend to look at power and control, including media ownership and the social, political, and economic relations that are at play in the construction of messages and of audiences. Research on messages tends to examine content, ranging from news to propaganda to advertising, and on the discursive and technological forms these messages take. Those concentrating on audiences tend to focus on the way individuals or groups receive, make sense of, understand, act on, ignore, or incorporate messages into daily life. The field has produced rich and varied work, but one aspect has received little attention: labor. Intellectual and physical labor are required to produce messages and the technologies used to disseminate them. Receiving and acting on messages also requires labor. However, communications scholars rarely address the various forms of laboring. In addition, the organizations that represent media and information workers, and the presentation of labor in the media, also receive relatively little attention. It is with this in mind that McKercher and I have taken on a research project that aims to expand the attention scholars pay to the laboring of communication and culture. Two recent collections demonstrate that research is growing in this area (McKercher & Mosco, 2006, 2007b) and this paper reports on how to build on this work.

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