The primary communities investigated in this project
Creatives in Crisis Project
Background
Creative industries in the UK have, at least since the UK government’s 2001 Creative Industries Task Force, been recognised as a driver of economic growth and cultural expression. However, much academic work has catalogued the low paid (e.g. Siebert and Wilson, 2013), insecure (e.g. Gill and Pratt, 2008), and sometimes exploitative (Banks and Hesmondhalgh, 2009) nature of labour relations in the sector. The often individualised and freelance nature of creative work, and the power imbalance between these workers and those who purchase their labour or products has led to falling wage rates and insecure employment across many creative occupations. As a largely non-unionised group of workers, creatives have often found it challenging to resist these power imbalances and achieve fairer pay for all. This research extends previous work to consider how creative workers are affected by the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic and how they are mobilising online communities to respond.
Methods
The research used a netnographic approach (Kozinets, 2010) as adopted by previous research on online communities (e.g. Kirk and Milnes, 2015, Patrick and Kranert, under review), supplemented by online video interviews. The netnography studied online communities, pirmarily on Facebook and Twitter. The data was gathered and analysed using NVivo and the findings (see the presentations tab) are helping to shed light on how creative workers were initially affected by the pandemic, and how they organised in response.