Expertise and Collaboration: Cultural Workers’ Performance on Social Media

Patel, Karen (2017) Expertise and Collaboration: Cultural Workers’ Performance on Social Media. In: Collaborative Production in the Creative Industries. University of Westminster Press, pp. 157-176. ISBN 978-1-911534-29-7

[img]
Preview
Text
expertise-and-collaboration-cultural-workers-perfo.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives.

Download (859kB)

Abstract

In cultural work, how important is expertise for securing work and ensuring career progression? Working in the cultural industries is argued to be precarious and very competitive. Social media offers opportunities for public displays of expertise for artists that can potentially reach a global audience, and this has implications for how we conceptualise contemporary cultural work, and in particular, collaboration. Conceptions of cultural work such as Pierre Bourdieu’s illusio demonstrate the importance of social consensus in the process of artists’ elevation above others, or consecration. This chapter explores the concept of illusio in relation to artistic expertise in the social media age. How does expertise manifest on social media? What could social media use tell us about the illusio? The chapter analyses the social media posts of a sample of artists, considering the context of the individual and their situation, the nature of the connections and relationships they pursue on social media and the strategies they employ to perform expertise. The analysis reveals that associations and consensus are crucial for performing expertise. Social media ultimately allows for public endorsement from other people and institutions, which contribute to artists’ performance of expertise. Within that, artists also engage in supportive acts of ‘mutual aid’ manifest on social media through their retweeting of fellow artists. I argue that on social media, artists negotiate these platforms in a dichotomy between competition and collaboration, which contributes to their overall performance of expertise.

Item Type: Book Section
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.16997/book4
Dates:
DateEvent
29 June 2017Published
Subjects: CAH24 - media, journalism and communications > CAH24-01 - media, journalism and communications > CAH24-01-05 - media studies
Divisions: Faculty of Arts, Design and Media > Birmingham Institute of Media and English > Birmingham School of Media
Depositing User: Karen Patel
Date Deposited: 11 Jul 2017 08:43
Last Modified: 03 Mar 2022 15:59
URI: https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/4771

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Research

In this section...