Don’t work for free: online discursive resistance to precarity in commercial photography
Don’t work for free: online discursive resistance to precarity in commercial photography
While increasing academic attention has been paid to the precariousness of contemporary work, less research has examined how workers organise in response. This article examines how a group of precarious workers – commercial photographers – use an online forum to resist changes to their working conditions. Our findings illustrate how the forum enables photographers to share knowledge, debate rules and organise collectively. We discuss two implications: firstly that the forum performs many of the functions of a professional association, and so gives us a new insight into how traditional forms of worker organisation may be translated in the digital realm; and secondly, that the form of collective resistance produced by the group may constitute a move beyond existing understandings of online resistance as relatively ineffectual. Our work contributes a new perspective on how precarity is reshaping workers’ collective organisation and resistance mechanisms.
discourse analysis, online methods, photography, precarity, professions, social media
Patrick-Thomson, Holly
e23973f7-efd5-420a-98ca-78cb245b8406
Kranert, Michael
2054176a-2b70-491b-9ee7-5388ae25296f
12 November 2020
Patrick-Thomson, Holly
e23973f7-efd5-420a-98ca-78cb245b8406
Kranert, Michael
2054176a-2b70-491b-9ee7-5388ae25296f
Patrick-Thomson, Holly and Kranert, Michael
(2020)
Don’t work for free: online discursive resistance to precarity in commercial photography.
Work, Employment and Society.
(doi:10.1177/0950017020952630).
Abstract
While increasing academic attention has been paid to the precariousness of contemporary work, less research has examined how workers organise in response. This article examines how a group of precarious workers – commercial photographers – use an online forum to resist changes to their working conditions. Our findings illustrate how the forum enables photographers to share knowledge, debate rules and organise collectively. We discuss two implications: firstly that the forum performs many of the functions of a professional association, and so gives us a new insight into how traditional forms of worker organisation may be translated in the digital realm; and secondly, that the form of collective resistance produced by the group may constitute a move beyond existing understandings of online resistance as relatively ineffectual. Our work contributes a new perspective on how precarity is reshaping workers’ collective organisation and resistance mechanisms.
Text
Patrick-Kranert-2020-Don’t Work for Free-Author accepted Manuscript
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Submitted date: 30 January 2020
Accepted/In Press date: 19 July 2020
Published date: 12 November 2020
Additional Information:
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Keywords:
discourse analysis, online methods, photography, precarity, professions, social media
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 439572
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/439572
ISSN: 0950-0170
PURE UUID: f924dd01-1692-4f65-96a9-116f40e041c1
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Date deposited: 20 Jul 2020 16:31
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 05:30
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Author:
Holly Patrick-Thomson
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