Presented at MeCCSA PGN, University of Leicester, 7-8 July 2016

1. Social Media Labour and
Cultural Work
Karen Patel

2. 1. Social media informs artistic process and the creation of
cultural products
2. Social media use punctuates artists’ daily rhythms of work
3. Expertise is performed by artists in a relational manner,
through associations with others, retweeting
endorsements, and mutual aid.
Social media and artistic practice

3. Labour
• Cultural labour: “all the work which goes into enabling the
communication media as traditionally understood (television, the
press, film, recordings, etc.). Cultural labor usually includes media
labor but also includes work in “the arts”, performing or otherwise.”
(Hesmondhalgh, 2015:38)
• Digital labour: “can be defined as all the work that goes into the
computer mediated experience” (Hesmondhalgh, 2015:38)
• Relational labour: “regular, ongoing communication with audiences
over time to build social relationships that foster paid work” (Baym,
2015:16)

5. Expertise?
A social process, involving a generally positive
consensus about someone’s knowledge and competency
within a particular field. This is substantiated by
reputation, which is forged through relevant working
relationships and associations with others.

6. Adapted from Candace Jones (2002)
• Institutional context (the context of the user, their background and
career trajectory)
• Signalling content (the aesthetic style of social media text and
images, exhibiting the requisite skills in both their social media posts
and presentation of their art, and career relevant connections and
interactions on social media)
• Signalling strategies (using social media affordances such as
retweets to enhance status, the type of relationships pursued and
how they are manifest on social media, and strategic approaches to
impression management on social media).
Signalling expertise framework

7. Mutual aid
Development of
“bottom-up
infrastructures to
support independent
work”
(de Peuter and Cohen,
2015:306)

8. Associations and endorsements

9. “The way it comes up on Instagram, it's like a
stream of images, isn't it? I always feel like the
pattern and the way it looks represents me. You'd
be able to look at a painting that I was doing now,
and you'd be able to look at all of those images, and
see what my inspiration has been. So it's kind of
like a big, ongoing mood board.”
(Cherie)
Inspiration

10. “That’s what I attribute a lot of my success to, just
constantly talking about my practice on the internet
and talking about it other ways, so especially with
digital art…it is a very new thing. A lot of people
don’t really know about it that much, like the ins and
the outs, so just like with art in general, especially
contemporary art, people spend a lot of time
explaining it, and through writing tutorials, writing
about my artwork, whether it’s through 140
characters on Twitter or in long form blog posts”
(Anthony)
Creation

11. “I felt really uncomfortable doing it. I know I don’t
have a lot of followers, and a couple of people have
liked or commented or something but I felt like I was
being watched, so I stopped doing it. I didn’t like the
feeling of exposing the process to the world.”
(Jason)
Creation

12. “I have writing friends who have programmes which
actually turn the internet off, so they don’t get
distracted. And I think distraction is one of our
biggest problems, when we’re working we’re on the
computer so click one more button and you’re on
the internet again.
Sometimes I feel a bit guilty and think I should just
turn it off and do something else.”
(Lisa)
Distraction

13. “If I miss a day I get really upset with myself, it’s
really stupid. I am under no pressure whatsoever to
do it, it’s only self-imposed. But because I’ve been
doing it for so long and so regularly, it’s kind of like
taking tablets in the morning, if you miss one you’d
wish you had taken it.”
(Patrick)
“It’s like taking tablets in the morning”

14. Conclusion
(For artists who use social media)
Cultural labour
+
Digital labour
+
Relational labour
= Social media labour

15. Thank you
karen.patel@bcu.ac.uk
http://karenpatelresearch.wordpress.com
@KarenPatel