Abstract:

Internet technologies and social media are a long-standing part of social life. The activities of users in social media tools and their place in the internet economy include a range of emotional and social activities in forms of production that are not seen as work with the concept of digital labor. Digital labor is defined as the exploitation of unpaid work while creating information and content for online media. This study aims to examine the contradictions and positive/negative aspects of the digital labor and content production process, examining the contradictions of concrete-abstract (non-material) commodities, investigating the nature of such intangible labor and commodities. For this purpose, with the analysis of in-depth interviews with the users of participant dictionaries in Turkey, the trends of social media users were revealed. By discussing experiences in social networks and participant dictionaries, we also tried to identify the thoughts of the secondary use of participant dictionary writers’ personal data in research that explains the relationship and awareness of labor. The study also revealed that users do not define the duration of writing and working in participant dictionaries as “overtime” but rather see it as “fun”. In addition, it was found out that the sense of belonging and identity that users developed in the participant dictionaries.

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