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The Nested Precarities of Creative Labor on Social Media
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

The Nested Precarities of Creative Labor on Social Media

Brooke Erin Duffy, Annika Pinch, Shruti Sannon and Megan Sawey
Social media + society, v 7(2), p205630512110213
Apr 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211021368
url
https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211021368View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY-NC V4.0,  Open

Abstract

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.

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140 citations in Scopus

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