(Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work

An illuminating investigation into a class of enterprising women aspiring to “make it” in the social media economy but often finding only unpaid work

Profound transformations in our digital society have brought many enterprising women to social media platforms—from blogs to YouTube to Instagram—in hopes of channeling their talents into fulfilling careers. In this eye-opening book, Brooke Erin Duffy draws much-needed attention to the gap between the handful who find lucrative careers and the rest, whose “passion projects” amount to free work for corporate brands.
 
Drawing on interviews and fieldwork, Duffy offers fascinating insights into the work and lives of fashion bloggers, beauty vloggers, and designers. She connects the activities of these women to larger shifts in unpaid and gendered labor, offering a lens through which to understand, anticipate, and critique broader transformations in the creative economy. At a moment when social media offer the rousing assurance that anyone can “make it”—and stand out among freelancers, temps, and gig workers—Duffy asks us all to consider the stakes of not getting paid to do what you love.

• Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy
• Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media
• The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think
• Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
• Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest
• Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online (SocietyNow)
• AuthenticTM: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (Critical Cultural Communication)
• Writing to Persuade: How to Bring People Over to Your Side
• If...Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics (Oxford Studies in Digital Politics)
• Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code