Freelancing in Digital Profiles: A Content Analysis Experience

Abstract

Nowadays, the issue of self-employment is extremely urgent and it requires attention as its significance and prevalence will only grow. The Russian self-employed are mostly concentrated in traditional kinds of business and occupied with low-skilled activities, and cannot demonstrate an outstanding level of innovative potential. Nevertheless, thanks to the active development of information society, its digitalization and the wide spread of the Internet, the number of highly qualified self-employed professionals, engaged mainly in intellectual work, who stand out from the general pool of the self-employed, is growing rapidly in our country. In their job, they actively use technology and work mainly through Internet-based remote work websites. Considering marked differentiation within the pool of self-employed, in order to concretize the portrait of an online freelancer, we conducted a content analysis of personal pages of freelancers in the “Best Performers” category of FL.ru website, which is the largest Russian-language remote work website. The method consisted of a mass observation of the presented profiles. The results made it possible to describe the socio-demographic characteristics of freelancers, make conclusions about the professional composition of the “Best Performers”, identify the most popular specializations and determine average rating of online freelancers. The article reviews performance rating of the freelancers, reveals the average number of years of work in the field of freelancing, characterizes the content of personal profiles, analyzes information about the cost of services, reveals the availability of information about the legal status of the “Best Performers”. The data obtained are useful and relevant in the light of the growth of the segment of online freelancers in Russia and the processes of institutionalization of self-employment nationwide.