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In/Visibility in Social Media Work: The Hidden Labor Behind the Brands

Author

Listed:
  • Brooke Erin Duffy

    (Department of Communication, Cornell University, USA)

  • Megan Sawey

    (Department of Communication, Cornell University, USA)

Abstract

Despite the staggering uptick in social media employment over the last decade, this nascent category of cultural labor remains comparatively under-theorized. In this article, we contend that social media work is configured by a visibility paradox: While workers are tasked with elevating the presence—or visibility—of their employers’ brands across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more, their identities, and much of their labor, remain hidden behind branded social media accounts. To illuminate how this ostensible paradox impacts laborers’ conditions and experiences of work, we present data from in-depth interviews with more than 40 social media professionals. Their accounts make clear that social media work is not just materially concealed, but rendered socially invisible through its lack of crediting, marginal status, and incessant demands for un/under-compensated emotional labor. This patterned devaluation of social media employment can, we show, be situated along two gender-coded axes that have long structured the value of labor in the media and cultural industries: a) technical‒communication and b) creation‒circulation. After detailing these in/visibility mechanisms, we conclude by addressing the implications of our findings for the politics and subjectivities of work in the digital media economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Brooke Erin Duffy & Megan Sawey, 2022. "In/Visibility in Social Media Work: The Hidden Labor Behind the Brands," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(1), pages 77-87.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v:10:y:2022:i:1:p:77-87
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Michel Anteby & Curtis K. Chan, 2018. "A Self-Fulfilling Cycle of Coercive Surveillance: Workers’ Invisibility Practices and Managerial Justification," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(2), pages 247-263, April.
    2. Gershon, Ilana, 2017. "Down and Out in the New Economy," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226452142, September.
    3. Rajagopal, 2013. "Social Media Metrics," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Managing Social Media and Consumerism, chapter 7, pages 132-151, Palgrave Macmillan.
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