Digitizing freelance media labor

A class of workers negotiates entrepreneurialism and activism

Bibliographic Data

ID12654535
AuthorsErrol Salamon (0000-0002-7335-5190, University of Minnesota, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume22
Issue1
Pages105-122
Publication date2019-07-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Media & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1461444819861958
OpenAlexW2962187954
LanguageEN
Citations received47
References cited42

Due to economic instability and technological change in digital media industries, media organizations and educators have encouraged freelance media workers to see themselves as individual businesses rather than a class of workers that should collectively protect their rights and fair pay. This article examines how freelance media workers negotiate individualism and collectivism, producing a contradictory freelance class ideology. It is grounded in an exploratory critical political economy of communication and sociology of work approach. It is based on interviews with 21 freelance journalists and professional writers, considering how they discursively construct their work practices and coping strategies vis-à-vis their uses of digital technology and the structural factors that shape media industries. Through discourse, these workers produce a contradictory “e-lance” class ideology as both entrepreneurs who temporarily sell goods and services and activists who temporarily resist demands from clients that they give up their rights and pay

Digital media · Ideology · Individualism · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Gender Studies · Labor Movements and Unions · Law