1. WOMEN MAKING MEDIA:
REVISITING QUESTIONS OF
GENDER AND LABOR IN THE
DIGITAL AGE
Brooke Erin Duffy, Ph.D. @brookeerinduffy Theorizing the Web 2013

2. WOMEN + MEDIA
INDUSTRY AUDIENCE
Female Female
Producers Consumers
TEXT
Female
Subjectivities

3. DIGITAL MEDIA “PRODUCERS”: THREE
CASES
• Women’s Magazine Producers:
Digital Media Professionals
• Members of blog communities
IFB and BlogHer: Digital Media
Amateurs
• Participants in User-Gen.
Spaces: Digital Media Interactive
Audiences

4. DIGITAL MEDIA PROFESSIONALS
• Producers as “Jacks-of-All
Trades”
• Work as “juggling act”
• Movement toward multi-
skilled and increasingly
precarious work

5. DIGITAL MEDIA PROFESSIONALS
“The reality of the tech world is that there are a lot
of men….So I think a lot of times that can
overshadow some of the participation by women.”
-Digital Assets Manager, Marie Claire.

6. DIGITAL MEDIA AMATEURS
• BlogHer: “Economically
empower women” striving
to capitalize off their
expertise
• Independent Fashion
Bloggers: “enabl[e]
bloggers to reach their
social media goals….and
work with relevant brands.”

7. DIGITAL MEDIA AMATEURS
• Miss Who Ever You Are:
“It’s because of my blog I
currently work where I do! I
was exposed to different
bloggers early on and
networked my way into an
internship at a social media
marketing agency, which
eventually led to getting
hired.”

8. DIGITAL MEDIA AMATEURS
“Build your brand”
“Your Twitter account is part
of you marketing your blog
too.”
“We are both entrepreneurs
& bloggers.”

9. DIGITAL MEDIA INTERACTIVES
Media and marketers are luring female
participants into “branded spaces”
 Comment boards
 Polls
 Q&A
 Social media sites
 User-generated contests

10. DIGITAL MEDIA INTERACTIVES
Marie Claire editor:
“connecting with the
community”
Glamour publisher: “It’s the
consumer, it’s bottom up, it’s a
high-low mix.”
Affective labor or “labor of
devotion” (Campbell, 2011)

11. DIGITAL MEDIA INTERACTIVES
“….Hearst can edit, rewrite, use, and reuse the
content, including your name, likeness,
photograph, and biographical information you
provide, with or without attribution, including
publication in the Magazines, and in trade media,
and advertising.”

12. CONCLUSIONS
Digital work structures encourage
overlapping (and gendered) forms of
labor
1. Accounted Labor
2. Aspirational Labor
3. Affective Labor

13. “The political (new) economy of the internet thus tends to
reconstruct the common gendered distinction between
consumption and production, between entertainment and
information.” -van Zoonen

14. THANK YOU!
Questions/Comments? Email me @
bduffy@temple.edu