Transmedia Work: Privilege and Precariousness in Digital Modernity

Description

In Transmedia Work¸ Karin Fast and André Jansson explore several key questions that frame the study of the social and cultural implications of a digital, connected workforce. How might we understand ‘privilege’ and ‘precariousness’ in today’s digitalized work market? What does it mean to be a privileged worker under the so-called connectivity imperative? What are the social and cultural forces that normalize the appropriation of new media in, and beyond, the workplace? These key questions come together in the notion of transmedia work – a term through which a social critique of work under digital modernity can be formulated. Transmedia work refers to the rise of a new social condition that saturates many different types of work, with various outcomes. In some social groups, and in certain professions, transmedia work is wholeheartedly embraced, while it is questioned and resisted elsewhere. There are also variations in terms of control; who can maintain a sense of mastery over transmedia work and who cannot? Through interviews with cultural workers, expatriates, and mobile business workers, and ancillary empirical data such as corporate technology and coworking discourse, Transmedia Work is an important addition to the study of mediatization and digital culture. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements 1. Why transmedia work matters The book’s key contributions What is transmedia work? Structure of the book: a social critique of transmedia work Four settings of occupational privilege 2. Understanding transmediatization Current issues of transmedia identity From mediatization to transmediatization Transmedia and the coming of digital modernity Conclusion 3. The rise of transmedia work What is ‘going on’ with work? The problems of contextualization The mass media work regime: mechanization and electrification The transmedia work regime: digitalization and datafication Conclusion Notes 4. Discourses and materialities of transmedia work ‘Connect or perish’: transmedia work in tech-utopia ‘Do-what-you-love’: transmedia work re-embedded Technology and coworking discourse as legitimization of transmediatization Why promises might break – a cultural-materialist critique Concluding remarks 5. Transmedia work as recognition work From recognition to strategic recognition work Managing elasticity and visibility: gendered transmedia work in the United Nations system Alone with transmedia: managing artistic recognition from the margins Conclusion 6. The social costs of transmedia work Transmedia managers: mobile business work in the borderlands Transmedia entrepreneurs: music work in the ‘gig economy’ On the social consequences of transmediatization Conclusion 7. How transmedia work changes modern society Entangled lives as a threat to occupational privilege Four elementary types of transmedia work Design for a better life with transmedia Expanding the agenda: counter-movements and sub-structures of transmedia work References Index