Jarrett Kylie - Feminism, Labour and Digital Media: The Digital Housewife

Feminism, Labour and Digital Media

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 the companies that provide our communication platforms. How do we reconcile these contradictions?

Feminism, Labour and Digital Media argues for using the work of Marxist feminist theorists about the role of domestic work in capitalism to explore these competing dynamics of consumer labour. It uses the concept of the Digital Housewife to outline the relationship between the work we do online and the unpaid sphere of social reproduction. It demonstrates how feminist perspectives expand our critique of consumer labour in digital media. In doing so, the Digital Housewife returns feminist inquiry from the margins and places it at the heart of critical digital media analysis.

Kylie Jarrett is Lecturer in the Department of Media Studies at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. With Ken Hillis and Michael Petit, she is co-author of Google and the Culture of Search and has researched a range of commercial web platforms such as eBay, YouTube and Facebook.

1 Cyberpop
Digital Lifestyles and Commodity Culture
Sidney Eve Matrix

2 The Internet in China
Cyberspace and Civil Society
Zixue Tai

3 Racing Cyberculture
Minoritarian Art and Cultural Politics on the Internet
Christopher L. McGahan

4 Decoding Liberation
The Promise of Free and Open Source Software
Samir Chopra and Scott D. Dexter

5 Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific
Edited by Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan

6 Virtual English
Queer Internets and Digital Creolization
Jillana B. Enteen

7 Disability and New Media
Katie Ellis and Mike Kent

8 Creating Second Lives
Community, Identity and Spatiality as Constructions of the Virtual
Edited by Astrid Ensslin and Eben Muse

9 Mobile Technology and Place
Edited by Gerard Goggin and Rowan Wilken

10 Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games
Analyzing Words, Design, and Play
Christopher A. Paul

11 Latin American Identity in Online Cultural Production
Claire Taylor and Thea Pitman

12 Mobile Media Practices, Presence and Politics
The Challenge of Being Seamlessly Mobile
Edited by Kathleen M. Cumiskey and Larissa Hjorth

13 The Public Space of Social Media
Connected Cultures of the Network Society
Thrse F. Tierney

14 Researching Virtual Worlds
Methodologies for Studying Emergent Practices
Edited by Ursula Plesner and Louise Phillips

15 Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages
Edited by Daniel T. Kline

16 Social Media, Social Genres
Making Sense of the Ordinary Stine Lomborg

17 The Culture of Digital Fighting Games
Performances and Practice
Todd Harper

18 Cyberactivism on the Participatory Web
Edited by Martha McCaughey

19 Policy and Marketing Strategies for Digital Media
Edited by Yu-li Liu and Robert G. Picard

20 Place and Politics in Latin American Digital Culture
Location and Latin American Net Art
Claire Taylor

21 Online Games, Social Narratives
Esther MacCallum-Stewart

22 Locative Media
Edited by Rowan Wilken and Gerard Goggin

23 Online Evaluation of Creativity and the Arts
Edited by Hiesun Cecilia Suhr

24 Theories of the Mobile Internet
Materialities and Imaginaries
Edited by Andrew Herman, Jan Hadlaw and Thom Swiss

25 The Ubiquitous Internet
User and Industry Perspectives
Edited by Anja Bechmann and Stine Lomborg

26 The Promiscuity of Network Culture
Queer Theory and Digital Media
Robert Payne

27 Global Media, Biopolitics, and Affect
Politicizing Bodily Vulnerability
Britta Timm Knudsen and Carsten Stage

28 Digital Audiobooks
New Media, Users, and Experiences
Iben Have and Birgitte Stougaard Pedersen

29 Locating Emerging Media
Edited by Germaine R. Halegoua and Ben Aslinger

30 Girls Feminist Blogging in a Postfeminist Age
Jessalynn Keller

31 Indigenous People and Mobile Technologies
Edited by Laurel Evelyn Dyson, Stephen Grant and Max Hendriks

32 Citizen Participation and Political Communication in a Digital World
Edited by Alex Frame and Gilles Brachotte

33 Feminism, Labour and Digital Media
The Digital Housewife
Kylie Jarrett

First published 2016

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2016 Taylor & Francis

The right of Kylie Jarrett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jarrett, Kylie.

Title: Feminism, labour and digital media: the digital housewife / by Kylie Jarrett.

Description: 1 Edition. | New York: Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge studies in new media and cyberculture; 33 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015027343

Subjects: LCSH: Information societySocial aspects. | Alienation (Social psychology) | Feminism. | Social media.

Classification: LCC HM851.J377 2016 | DDC 303.48/33dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015027343

ISBN: 978-1-138-85579-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-72011-1 (ebk)

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For Janet.
I should have listened when you told me my mother was my best friend.

The argument in this book emerged over a decade and across two countries, so I am sure I am missing important people who have contributed to its making. You have my apologies. I do know that I must thank my family, friends and work colleagues in Australia who were there for the genesis of this project. Special thanks go to my father Eric, my sister Tracey and my non-biological sister, Lyn Adams, for continuing to provide me with a home whenever I return to Adelaide, and my friends Kirsten Wahlstrom, Tammy Franks and Sergei Stabile for making it feel like I never left. My new family in Dublin, Maynooth and at the Department of Media Studies at Maynooth University Caroline Ang, Amanda Bent, Chris Brunsdon, Anne Byrne, Laura Canning, Martin Charlton, de Corley, Denis Condon, Aphra Kerr, Sophia Maalsen, Jeneen Naji, Cian OCallaghan, Tracy OFlaherty, Catherine OLeary, Eoin OMahony, Helen ONeill, Stephen ONeill, Caroline OSullivan, Maria Pramaggiore, Stephanie Rains, Moynagh Sullivan and Gavan Titley have also provided me with support, intellectual stimulation and just enough of the craic to keep going. I must also give Sheamus Sweeney special recognition for allowing me to strip-mine our friendship for the purposes of my research. My transnational family at the Association of Internet Researchers Alison Harvey, Ken Hillis, Sal Humphreys, Ben Light, Sharif Mowlabocus, Susanna Paasonen, Michael Petit, Tamara Shepherd and Julia Velkova, to name a few have also been invaluable in the framing and reframing of this argument over the years. I am always learning so much from you all. This book wouldnt exist, though, without the GBBC Mary Gilmartin, Sinad Kennedy and Anne OBrien. Their wisdom, kindness, support and insightful reviewing not only added to the quality of my argument, but these amazing women helped me find my voice. I had lost the sense of myself as a researcher. They helped me build that confidence again. I owe them pints.