scholarly journals In/visibility in Social Media Work: The Hidden Labor Behind the Brands

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Erin Duffy ◽  
Megan Sawey
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Emotional Labor ◽  
Technical Communication ◽  
Cultural Industries ◽  
The Media ◽  
Marginal Status ◽  
Media Professionals ◽  
Media Work ◽  
Depth Interviews

Despite the staggering uptick in social media employment over the last decade, this nascent category of cultural labor remains comparatively under-theorized. In this paper, we contend that social media work is configured by a visibility paradox: while workers are tasked with elevating the presence—or visibility—of their employers’ brands across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more, their identities—and much of their labor—remains hidden behind branded social media accounts. To illuminate how this ostensible paradox impacts laborers’ conditions and experiences of work, we present data from in-depth interviews with more than 40 social media professionals. Their accounts make clear that social media work is not just materially concealed, but rendered socially invisible through its lack of crediting, marginal status, and incessant demands for un/under-compensated emotional labor. This patterned devaluation of social media employment can, we show, be situated along two gender-coded axes that have long structured the value of labor in the media and cultural industries: 1). technical-communication and 2). creation-circulation. After detailing these in/visibility mechanisms, we conclude by addressing the implications of our findings for the politics and subjectivities of work in an increasingly digital media economy.

scholarly journals The Nested Precarities of Creative Labor on Social Media

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110213
Author(s):  
Brooke Erin Duffy ◽  
Annika Pinch ◽  
Shruti Sannon ◽  
Megan Sawey
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Ecological Model ◽  
Creative Economy ◽  
Cultural Industries ◽  
Professional Success ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
Depth Interviews

While metrics have long played an important, albeit fraught, role in the media and cultural industries, quantified indices of online visibility—likes, favorites, subscribers, and shares—have been indelibly cast as routes to professional success and status in the digital creative economy. Against this backdrop, this study sought to examine how creative laborers’ pursuit of social media visibility impacts their processes and products. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 30 aspiring and professional content creators on a range of social media platforms—Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, and Twitter—we contend that their experiences are not only shaped by the promise of visibility, but also by its precarity. As such, we present a framework for assessing the volatile nature of visibility in platformized creative labor, which includes unpredictability across three levels: (1) markets, (2) industries, and (3) platform features and algorithms. After mapping out this ecological model of the nested precarities of visibility, we conclude by addressing both continuities with—and departures from—the earlier modes of instability that characterized cultural production, with a focus on the guiding logic of platform capitalism.

Conflict and interest between journalists and politicians in Iraq in the age of media entrepreneurship

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Omar Bali
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Smartphone Applications ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Media Space ◽  
The Media ◽  
Depth Interviews

This study examines the ethical conflict of interest that exists in this sphere between journalists and politicians in an age of media entrepreneurship in Iraq, which theoretically would enable journalists to express their own voices and hold a greater stake in the media market. A qualitative method was adopted for this study using open, in-depth interviews with 36 participants. The study found that relative freedom, smartphone applications and social media helped innovative Iraqi journalists to become media entrepreneurs and own media enterprises themselves. These media enterprises are characterized by activities such as publishing material that is critical in tone and satirical in content and accompanied by short videos that are broadcast on social media. This is then easily accessible for media consumers using their smartphones. Media enterprises appear to offer journalists an opportunity for professional and financial independence, but their operation in the Iraqi media space tends to reflect the propagandistic function of traditional media outlets instead of fulfilling this emancipatory role. The findings also showed that there is a dark side to Iraqi digital media enterprise, which involves politicians exploiting journalists to troll and attack activists through anonymous digital media. This in turn harms the freedom of expression and suppresses critical views voice against the political establishment.

scholarly journals The Nested Precarities of Platformized Creative Labor

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Erin Duffy ◽  
Annika Pinch ◽  
Shruti Sannon ◽  
Megan Sawey
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Ecological Model ◽  
Creative Economy ◽  
Cultural Industries ◽  
Professional Success ◽  
The Media ◽  
Depth Interviews

While metrics have long played an important, albeit fraught, role in the media and cultural industries, quantified indices of visibility—likes, favorites, subscribers, and shares—are indelibly cast as routes to professional success and status in the digital creative economy. Against this backdrop, this study sought to examine how creative laborers’ pursuit of social media visibility impacts their processes and products. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 30 aspiring and professional content creators—including Instagrammers, YouTubers, TikTok creators, and those seeking monetization through Pinterest and Twitter—we contend that their experiences are not only shaped by the promise of visibility, but also by its precarity. As such, we present a framework for assessing the volatile nature of visibility in platformized creative labor, which includes unpredictability across three levels: (1) markets, (2) industries, and (3) platform features and algorithms. After mapping out this ecological model of the nested precarities of visibility, we conclude by addressing both continuities with—and departures from—the earlier modes of instability that characterized cultural production, most especially the guiding logic of platform capitalism.

Digital “women’s work?”: Job recruitment ads and the feminization of social media employment

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 2972-2989 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Erin Duffy ◽  
Becca Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Emotional Labor ◽  
Emotional Management ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Media Markets ◽  
Media Work ◽  
Job Recruitment ◽  
Insight Into

In the wake of profound transformations in digital media markets and economies, the structures and conditions of cultural production are being radically reconfigured. This study explores the nascent field of social media work through an analysis of job recruitment ads—texts, we contend, that provide insight into a key discursive site of imagining the ideal digital laborer. Drawing upon a qualitative textual analysis of 150 adverts, we show how employers construct workers through a patterned set of features, including sociability, deft emotional management, and flexibility. Such industrial imaginings incite workers to remain ever available, juggle various roles and responsibilities, and engage in persistent emotional labor—both online and off. These expectations, we argue, allude to the increasingly feminized nature of social media employment, with its characteristic invisibility, lower pay, and marginal status within the technology field.

scholarly journals Social Media Influencer’s Reputation: Developing and Validating a Multidimensional Scale

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 631
Author(s):  
Eun Ah Ryu ◽  
Eun Kyoung Han
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Reliability And Validity ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Measurement Tool ◽  
Opinion Formation ◽  
Consumption Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media

Since the introduction of smartphones in 2009, social networking services (SNS), which have seen a surge in users, facilitated changes in the media environment along with social influence that has increased the economic value and political influence of SNS. In particular, as consumers’ media use and consumption behavior change around digital media, social media plays a very important role in consumers’ lives. From this perspective, influencers who influence not only consumers’ consumption behavior, but also decision-making and opinion formation based on social media are attracting attention. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop items to measure an influencer’s reputation as a new source of information in the SNS environment; no previous researchers have presented generalized measurement items for an influencer’s reputation. We intended to identify what dimensions and items in the existing literature could effectively measure a social media influencer’s reputation and to verify each item’s relevance as a measure of a social media influencer’s reputation. Based on in-depth interviews with 30 experts and empirical findings from 557 adults, this study identified dimensions that impact on a consumer’s perception of a social media influencer and developed a scale. The results showed that the social media Influencer’s Reputation scale comprises four distinctive dimensions: Communication skills, influence, authenticity, and expertise. Additionally, the reliability and validity of the scale were assessed, using exploratory and confirmatory analyses and construct validity. The findings confirmed that the social media influencer’s reputation scale measurement items, in this study, can be used as a consistent measurement tool for each dimension. It is also important to develop value in favor of the marketing strategy by increasing value through the influencer’s reputation.

scholarly journals Native Advertising—The Formats and Types of Content Most Demanded by Brands in the Spanish Media

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-544
Author(s):  
Daniel Zomeño ◽  
Rocío Blay-Arráez
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Editorial Content ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Ecosystem ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Formats ◽  
Depth Interviews

Media convergence and the incorporation of new narratives typical of the consumption habits of younger audiences in the social media environment have led to the proliferation of a wide variety of formats and types of content in the media ecosystem through which the editorial content offered to brands is being distributed. This qualitative research, using in-depth interviews with a qualified sample of branded content managers from the main Spanish media, allows us to determine the main characteristics of the native advertising demanded by advertisers. The results corroborate observations that content channelled through more sophisticated consumption experiences, using both multimedia and interactivity with a clear transmedia approach, tends to be better received by the audience and, therefore, in greater demand by brands. It also confirms that both video and social media formats have grown exponentially when it comes to providing an outlet for branded content. Based on the results obtained, a proposed classification of these products, including definitions, has been drawn up so they can be publicised to the professional world, offering the reflection and precision that their rapid development has not allowed until now.

Unknown Publics

2018 ◽  
pp. 207-214
Author(s):  
Susan Zieger
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Information Overload ◽  
Information Storage ◽  
First Century ◽  
Media Consumption ◽  
The Media ◽  
Twenty First Century

The conclusion reviews the five central components through which the book has posited connections between nineteenth- and twenty-first century habits of media consumption. It shows how “addiction” still serves as a descriptive metaphor for the consumption of information, now networked and constantly refreshing itself; how the fantasy of infinite mental retention still governs fantasies of mastering information overload; how playback has only continued to conflate memory with information storage, resulting in programmable subjects and information as a super-commodity; how digital media reproduction and circulation ironically still creates the aura of mass live events; and finally, how the media consumer’s dilemma of establishing authenticity has only become more aggravated in an era of self-branding on social media.

scholarly journals More than a trivial pursuit: Public order policing narratives and the ‘social media test’

2020 ◽  
pp. 174165902091863
Author(s):  
Justin R Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Excessive Force ◽  
The Social ◽  
Police Accountability ◽  
Trivial Pursuit ◽  
Media Narratives ◽  
Depth Interviews

Social media has transformed public discourse on policing and the contest of control over the police image. This article draws on original, empirical research to conceptualise the phenomenon of the ‘social media test’ – the evolution of social media into a legitimate measure of police performance. Through in-depth interviews with police and non-police respondents the article maps the genealogy of, and provides perspective on, one of the first viral cases of bystander video of police excessive force in Australia filmed and uploaded to YouTube. The study shows the video’s impact on hegemonic mainstream and police news media narratives, processes of criminalisation and police accountability and the merit of narrative criminology in unpacking these phenomena. Police alluding to the ‘social media test’ in in-depth interviews shows that digital media in general and social media in particular can no longer be dismissed as peripheral or subsidiary to public discourse on policing in a digital society.

scholarly journals Digital (dis)connectivity in fraught contexts: The case of gay refugees in Belgium

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 784-800 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Dhoest
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Country Of Origin ◽  
Mobile Media ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Sexual Orientations ◽  
The Family ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
Depth Interviews

The key role of digital and mobile media for refugees is increasingly acknowledged, but while the literature on the topic tends to celebrate the advantages of digital media, it is important to also acknowledge limitations. Thus, the focus on the creation and maintenance of connections through digital media may obscure experiences and practices of disconnection. This is certainly the case for forced migrants with non-normative sexual orientations, for whom experiences of homophobia within the family and ethno-cultural community in the country of origin may extend to fraught situations in the country of residence. As with digital media in general, it is important to consider the ‘offline’ social and cultural conditions determining online media uses. This article focuses on the specific challenges for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer refugees, both in general and in Belgium, drawing on desk research and expert interviews, as well as nine in-depth interviews with gay-identifying male refugees. While the refugees are relatively positive about the Belgian situation, they do identify a number of challenges. They use digital media to stay connected to family and other people in the country of origin, but often this connection has become difficult. Social media and dating sites also offer a way to connect to other gay men, but these connections can be equally fraught, particularly in the country of origin for danger of exposure but also in Belgium as social media transcend national boundaries. For this reason, some participants created new or parallel profiles, to keep their gay lives disconnected from their family lives. Overall, then, digital media are a tool not only of connection but also of strategic disconnection for gay refugees.

Iraqi media entrepreneurs across social media: Factors and challenges

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Omar Bali ◽  
Sherko Jabar ◽  
Hazhar Jalal ◽  
Mahdi Sofi-Karim
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
International Media ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Firms ◽  
Media Market

Influenced by digital technologies, the cost of media production has considerably decreased, and the traditional media is faced with new agile, flexible and low-cost media entrepreneurs. This article examines the dynamics of the Iraqi media market transformation with an emphasis on factors that help to merge media entrepreneurs and digital media firms that target an audience on social media. A qualitative method was adopted in this study using open, in-depth interviews with nineteen media entrepreneurs and three managers of media firms. The study revealed that relative freedom and advanced communication technologies have encouraged media entrepreneurs to drive the new media on producing short videos and broadcast them on social media, which has become popular among media consumers. This new era in Iraqi media entrepreneurship has created an abstract space in which media entrepreneurs get involved in the media market, collaborate with international media and deliver values through the use of user-generated content and flexible journalism. This opportunity is shaped by three key interrelated factors: first, the relative freedom of journalism that resulted from the political environment, current regulations and advanced communication technologies that provide more space of freedom; second, the development of communication technologies that allow journalists and media entrepreneurs to employ the media market effectively; third, the emergence of media entrepreneurs themselves who are convinced to seize the opportunities presented by the two previous factors.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document