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 <em>visibility</em>—of their employers’ brands across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more, their identities, and much of their labor, remain <em>hidden </em>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.
Highlights
Though “going viral” on social media is—at best—a lofty ambition, the internet is rife with pseudo‐experimental “hacks” and “tricks” assuring individuals and businesses that they can garner likes, comments, shares, and other markers of reputational currency
Social media is by no means the only site of such a paradox, we argue that this employment field is analytically rich given both its recency and its divergence from many other categories of digital labor defined exclu‐ sively through their hidden status (e.g., Crain et al, 2016; Hatton, 2017; Jarrett, 2016; van Doorn, 2017)
We examine what it means for social media workers to simultaneously pro‐ mote branded content and have their personal identity markers—and much of their labor—hidden
Summary
Though “going viral” on social media is—at best—a lofty ambition, the internet is rife with pseudo‐experimental “hacks” and “tricks” assuring individuals and businesses that they can garner likes, comments, shares, and other markers of reputational currency. Social media success owes much to the con‐ certed efforts of a relatively new sub‐category of digital laborers: social media managers In chronicling these so‐ called “cabals” of social media professionals, the Digiday report helped draw attention to the invisible laborers powering the accounts of major media and marketing brands. Visibility functions as a proxy for other sys‐ tems of value exchange, including social status/esteem (Abidin, 2016; Duffy, 2017); contribution to consumer capitalism (Budd, 2016), and/or recognition within a reg‐ ulatory/institutional system (Crain et al, 2016; Ticona & Mateescu, 2018). Crain et al (2016, p. 6) define invisible labor as the activities: Workers perform in response to requirements (either implicit or explicit) from employers and that are cru‐ cial for workers to generate income, to obtain or retain their jobs, and to further their careers, yet are often overlooked, ignored, and/or devalued by employers, consumers, workers, and the legal system itself
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
