Cultural Work as a Site of Struggle: Freelancers  and Exploitation

Cohen, Nicole S.

doi:10.31269/vol10iss2pp141-155

Cited by 25 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…It is "not about 'bossing' but about the relationship between effort and reward, labour intensification and work measurement" (p. 45). Capital can, and does, cede control in particular areas if it functions to hinder the appropriation of surplus value (N. S. Cohen, 2012). 3.…”

Section: Declaration Of Conflicting Interestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Weapons of the Chic: Instagram Influencer Engagement Pods as Practices of Resistance to Instagram Platform Labor

O’Meara

2019

Social Media + Society

103

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This article examines the phenomenon of Instagram influencer "engagement pods" as an emergent form of resistance that responds to the reconfigured working conditions of platformized cultural production. Engagement pods are grassroots communities that agree to mutually like, comment on, share, or otherwise engage with each other's posts, no matter the content, to game Instagram's algorithm into prioritizing the participants' content and show it to a broader audience. I argue that engagement pods represent a response to the material conditions of platformized cultural production on Instagram, where proprietary curation algorithms wrest knowledge and control of the labor process from producers. Cooperative algorithm hacking of this sort, although quite distinct from traditional organizing strategies, responds to the coercive force of the "threat of invisibility" that necessitates constant data production. They represent a collective attempt to exert some control over their "conditions of presence-to-others" and, in so doing, combat precarity and protect wages in the field. In a post-industrial economy where traditional models of labor organizing have struggled to address the conditions of platformized cultural work, I argue that the unusual phenomenon of Instagram engagement pods represents an organic form of worker resistance that responds to the unique conditions of these workers.

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Section: Declaration Of Conflicting Interestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Weapons of the Chic: Instagram Influencer Engagement Pods as Practices of Resistance to Instagram Platform Labor

O’Meara

2019

Social Media + Society

103

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“…There are, of course, some prominent examples of collective organisation within the arts, including alliances with trade unions to represent cultural workers, establish fair pay scales and eliminate exploitative contracts (Cohen, 2012). There are also concerns about the impact, extent and longevity of these initiatives, and the capacity of established trade unions to secure bargained rights and benefits for freelance and other disadvantaged workers beyond their traditional heartlands (Beirne & Wilson, 2016;Neilson & Rossiter, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autonomy and resilience in cultural work: looking beyond the ‘creative industries’

Beirne

Jennings

Knight

2017

Journal for Cultural Research

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a adam smith Business school, university of Glasgow, Glasgow, uK; b school of Creative arts and technologies, university of ulster, Magee Campus, Derry/londonderry, uK ABSTRACT How do cultural workers deal with the tension between autonomy and control in their working lives? One answer, advanced in this journal by Mark Banks in 2010, is that cultural autonomy provides scope for self-realisation, and potentially for ways of working that challenge commercial and managerial constraints. It allows those with critical inclinations to resist unpalatable controls and initiate processes of struggle which may deliver improvements in the conduct and experience of work. More recent empirical studies have cast doubt on this interpretation, pointing to patterns of instrumental behaviour and conforming autonomy that reinforce earlier images of controlled or self-interested 'creatives' . With most of the relevant research focused on commercial contexts, this article considers whether publicly funded art provides more fertile terrain for the destabilising autonomy thesis. Four years of fieldwork with community arts practitioners in Scotland and Northern Ireland captures the everyday pressures of struggling to survive and to resist neoliberal cultural policies, managerial controls and fluctuating incomes. It also reveals collective capacities to intervene that are consistent with the Banks image of dissenting activists for change. The abiding impression at the end of the research is of grinding struggle rather than progressive change, however, or even sustained relief.

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“…Freelance journalists earn low incomes compared to other professionals with similar levels of skills, experience, and education, have limited access to benefits, face high stress and health problems, and experience intermittent work and an inability to plan their futures (Gollmitzer 2014;McKercher 2014;Cohen 2012;PWAC 2006;Walters, Warren, and Dobbie 2006;Nies and Pedersini 2003). Most freelancers must do greater amounts of non-journalistic work for income.…”

Section: The Freelance Journalist: Entrepreneur or Precarious Worker?mentioning

confidence: 97%

Entrepreneurial Journalism and the Precarious State of Media Work

Cohen¹

2015

South Atlantic Quarterly

Self Cite

146

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Amid the current “crisis” in the business and practice of journalism, entrepreneurial journalism has been offered as a solution. While the precise set of practices that constitute entrepreneurial journalism remain unclear, such discourse promotes a notion of the enterprising individual journalist forging a career for herself through practices of self-branding and self-employment and learning to be adaptable, flexible, and self-sufficient. This essay challenges the notion of entrepreneurial journalism, arguing that it emerges at a time of institutional crisis for journalism and uncertainty for journalists, intersecting with neoliberal enterprise culture and the spread of digital technologies to promote an ideology that masks the precarious nature of contemporary media work. The article considers the work of freelance journalists in historical context and argues that the discourse of entrepreneurial journalism closes the space required to envision alternative ways to organize the production of journalism and journalistic labor.

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Cultural Work as a Site of Struggle: Freelancers and Exploitation

Cited by 25 publications

References 24 publications

Weapons of the Chic: Instagram Influencer Engagement Pods as Practices of Resistance to Instagram Platform Labor

Weapons of the Chic: Instagram Influencer Engagement Pods as Practices of Resistance to Instagram Platform Labor

Autonomy and resilience in cultural work: looking beyond the ‘creative industries’

Entrepreneurial Journalism and the Precarious State of Media Work

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