Brooke Erin Duffy

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. Entrepreneurial Wishes and Career Dreams -- 2. The Aspirational Ethos: Gender, Consumerism, and Labor -- 3. (Not) Just for the Fun of It: The Labor of Social Media Production -- 4. Branding the Authentic Self: The Commercial Appeal of "Being Real"--5. "And Now, a Word from Our Sponsor": Attracting Advertisers, Building Brands, Leveraging (Free) Labor -- 6. The "Instagram Filter": Dispelling the Myths of Entrepreneurial Glamour -- 7. Aspirational Labor's (In) Visibility -- Epilogue: The Aspirational Labor of an Academic -- Appendix: Method and List of Interview Participants -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work

(Not) Getting Paid to Do what You Love

Thomas Poell

David B. Nieborg

The widespread uptake of digital platforms – from YouTube and Instagram to Twitch and TikTok– is reconfiguring cultural production in profound, complex, and highly uneven ways. Longstanding media industries are experiencing tremendous upheaval, while new industrial formations – live-streaming, social media influencing, and podcasting, among others – are evolving at a breakneck pace. Platforms and Cultural Production explores both the processes and implications of platformization across the cultural industries. Poell, Nieborg, and Duffy identify key changes in markets, infrastructures, and governance at play in this ongoing transformation, as well as pivotal shifts in the practices of labor, creativity, and democracy. Though they foreground the implications for three particular industries – news, gaming, and social media creation – the authors also draw upon examples from music, advertising, and more. Diverse in its geographic scope, the book builds on the latest research and accounts from across North America, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and China to reveal crucial differences and surprising parallels in the trajectories of platformization across the globe. Offering a novel conceptual framework that is grounded in illuminating case studies, this book is essential for students, scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners seeking to understand how the institutions and practices of cultural production are transforming –and what the stakes are for understandings of platform power.

Platforms and Cultural Production

An illuminating investigation into a class of enterprising women aspiring to "make it" in the social media economy but often finding only unpaid work Profound transformations in our digital society have brought many enterprising women to social media platforms--from blogs to YouTube to Instagram--in hopes of channeling their talents into fulfilling careers. In this eye-opening book, Brooke Erin Duffy draws much-needed attention to the gap between the handful who find lucrative careers and the rest, whose "passion projects" amount to free work for corporate brands. Drawing on interviews and fieldwork, Duffy offers fascinating insights into the work and lives of fashion bloggers, beauty vloggers, and designers. She connects the activities of these women to larger shifts in unpaid and gendered labor, offering a lens through which to understand, anticipate, and critique broader transformations in the creative economy. At a moment when social media offer the rousing assurance that anyone can "make it"--and stand out among freelancers, temps, and gig workers--Duffy asks us all to consider the stakes of not getting paid to do what you love.

Gender and Aspirational Labor in the Social Media Economy

(Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love

The widespread uptake of digital platforms – from YouTube and Instagram to Twitch and TikTok – is reconfiguring cultural production in profound, complex, and highly uneven ways. Longstanding media industries are experiencing tremendous upheaval, while new industrial formations – live-streaming, social media influencing, and podcasting, among others – are evolving at breakneck speed. Poell, Nieborg, and Duffy explore both the processes and the implications of platformization across the cultural industries, identifying key changes in markets, infrastructures, and governance at play in this ongoing transformation, as well as pivotal shifts in the practices of labor, creativity, and democracy. The authors foreground three particular industries – news, gaming, and social media creation – and also draw upon examples from music, advertising, and more. Diverse in its geographic scope, Platforms and Cultural Production builds on the latest research and accounts from across North America, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and China to reveal crucial differences and surprising parallels in the trajectories of platformization across the globe. Offering a novel conceptual framework grounded in illuminating case studies, this book is essential for students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to understand how the institutions and practices of cultural production are transforming – and what the stakes are for understanding platform power.

Brooke Erin Duffy

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