[Note: This is a lightly edited re-post of a blog-post originally published on Work in Progress, a public sociology blog created by the American Sociological Association to disseminate research results. It summarizes findings from “Engineering a platform: The construction of interfaces, users, organizational roles, and the division of labor” in New Media and Society, first published online in […]
The following is an excerpt from my new book, Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today. In most workshops on how to use LinkedIn, some new adopter would ask: how public must my profile be? This question is about participant structure–who is the audience of a given profile? […]
Fashion bloggers and Instagrammers seem to enjoy a coveted lifestyle–one replete with international jet-setting, designer-comped fetes, and countless other caption-worthy moments. Yet the attention lavished on these so-called “influencers” draws attention away from a much larger class of social media content creators: those aspiring to “make it” amid a precarious, hyper-competitive creative economy. I tell […]
Digital platforms are rapidly transforming the way we work and generate income, create and share value, and sustain ourselves in post-welfare societies. By merging functions traditionally associated with either market or state actors, such as the orchestration of basic services like temporary housing or transportation, they act as new institutional forms that help to redraw […]
Last week was New York Fashion week, and the Kardashian sisters were there in force. After juggling interviews, runway walks, and Uber filled traffic jams, all five managed to descend upon the Apple store to promote their new apps, which, according to The Cut blog of New York Magazine, featured “videos, photos, and musings from […]