Nicole S. Cohen

Cultural Work as a Site of Struggle: Freelancers and Exploitation

This paper argues that Marxist political economy is a useful framework for understanding contemporary conditions of cultural work. Drawing on Karl Marx’s foundational concepts, labour process theory, and a case study of freelance writers, I argue that the debate over autonomy and control in cultural work ignores exploitation in labour-capital relationships, which is a crucial process shaping cultural work. To demonstrate the benefits of this approach, I discuss two methods media firms use to extract surplus value from freelance writers: exploitation of unpaid labour time and exploitation of intellectual property through aggressive copyright regimes. I argue that a Marxist perspective can uncover the dynamics that are transforming cultural industries and workers’ experiences. From this perspective, cultural work is understood as a site of struggle.

From Pink Slips to Pink Slime: Transforming Media Labor in a Digital Age

This paper examines some of the labor processes involved inthe expansion of digital journalism to comment on the nature and implications of transformations in journalistic work in a digital age. Specifically, I survey four practices that stand out as putting pressure on traditional journalism production: outsourcing, unpaid labor, metrics and measurement, and automation. Although these practices are unevenly incorporated into mainstream news production (and in some cases are still marginal), they demonstrate viable options for media corporations seeking to streamline production. Drawing on labor process theory, I emphasize that media corporations use strategies of efficiency and rationalization to lower labor costs. Unpaid labor, robot reporters, algorithms, and outsourcing demonstrate that changes in the media production process are not the inevitable results of technology but, as the long history of journalism and technological change demonstrates, strategies for lowering labor costs.

At Work in the Digital Newsroom

Labor remains sidelined in journalism studies, especially the working conditions and experiences of journalists in digital-first newsrooms and those whose work primarily involves engagement with social media. This article reports on the findings of an exploratory study on the work of digital journalism. Based on interviews with self-identified digital journalists in Canada and the United States about their daily work experiences, the paper outlines entry points for understanding what it is like to labor in networks of high-speed information production and circulation. Drawing on a critical political economy framework, the paper begins with an overview of the structural dynamics shaping digital journalists’ working conditions, then examines how these dynamics manifest in daily working conditions, including issues of control, speed, analytics and measurement, intensification, commodification and resistance. The paper aims to contribute to furthering a labor-focused agenda in digital journalism studies.

The ambivalence of coworking: On the politics of an emerging work practice:

Self-employed media and cultural workers are key users of co-working spaces, where a growing number of independent workers share desks and office amenities, escape the isolation of working from home and seek contacts for paid work. Informed by interviews with coworking space operators and members, this article assesses coworking as a response to precarity. We argue that social and political ambivalence is intrinsic to the culture of coworking. First, we situate coworking in a political–economic context, claiming that coworking emerged as a worker-developed response to changing economic conditions but, in its current form, is increasingly commodified and ultimately reinforces labour flexibilization. Second, we survey meanings attached to coworking, highlighting tensions between coworking’s counter-corporate identity and its recapitulation of neoliberal norms. Third, we address subjectivity formation, proposing that coworking spaces are a stage for the performance of network sociality. We conclude by considering coworking’s political potential as a platform for collective action. This article forms part of the Special Issue ‘On the Move’, which marks the twentieth anniversary of European Journal of Cultural Studies.