A Voice of Our Own: Labor, Power, and Representation in the New Cultural Industries

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

In the past decade, new production and distribution technologies have enabled content creators—including authors, journalists, filmmakers and many others—to bring their work directly to audiences. This reconfiguration has altered cultural producers’ relationships with traditional gatekeepers and generated new organizational, employment and income patterns. Discussions regarding the impact of digital media on cultural work, however, have often overlooked the disparate effects of new technologies on underrepresented voices. Women, people of color and the LGBTQ community face urgent questions regarding their position in evolving cultural industries. Are new production and distribution models creating more diverse stories? Are digitally enabled media workers securing new systems of support? Or, do these participants remain trapped on a treadmill of “free labor” which pays in the always-deferred promise of exposure?
In keeping with this year’s theme, “Voices,” this panel explores the impact of digital technologies on underrepresented cultural workers, including social media workers, journalists, authors, TV producers, and film directors. In research spanning five cultural industries and six countries, this panel identifies conditions guiding the fates of contemporary cultural workers for better or for worse, and offers interventions and ideas to enable new voices.
Brooke Duffy opens the discussion, providing context for understanding the experiences of young creative workers in the digital economy. She notes how women dominate the emerging field of social media promotion, and yet, their voices are rendered invisible by the nature of this work.
Next, A.J. Christian draws on his own experiences launching Open TV, a web-based platform to develop intersectional creators. Inequality in media, he argues, cannot be understood without analyzing the inherently discriminatory development process.
Christine Larson notes that digital self-publishing has created new market opportunities for romance writers of color, who were largely excluded from traditional publishing. She shows how certain authors of color adopted digital tactics that accelerated demand for their work both in digital self-publishing and traditional publishing formats.
Mark Deuze identifies emerging journalistic organizations run entirely by women in Canada, Columbia and the Netherlands, while Elizabeth Prommer illuminates a structural barrier to women filmmakers in Germany: In a risk-averse industry, film executives rely on inaccurate stereotypes of women as “risky” employees, perpetuating male domination of the industry.
At a time of profound global media restructuring, this panel raises critical questions around cultural labor, power and underrepresented voices, shedding light on patterns of voice and representation in the digital age.

Sub Unit

• Theme Sessions

Individual Presentations

• Gender and Invisible Labor in Social Media Work by Brooke Duffy - Brooke Erin Duffy, Department of Communication, Cornell U

• The Critical Role of Development in Representation - Aymar Jean Christian, Northwestern U

• Writing the Romance: Women Romance Writers of Color - Christine Larson, University of Colorado Boulder

• Female-Led Startups in Journalism Around the World - Mark Deuze, U of Amsterdam

• Working in the creative industry: Invisible organizing structures - Elizabeth Anna Prommer, U of Rostock

Respondent

• Gina Neff, U of Oxford