Venture Labor| Entrepreneurial Subjects: Venturing from Alley to Valley

Authors

  • Alice E. Marwick Data & Society Research Institute, USA

Keywords:

technology scene, ideal worker, Web 2.0, self-branding

Abstract

In Venture Labor, Neff describes an entrepreneurial subjectivity in which creative workers focus on presenting a portfolio of work to potential employers, positioning themselves not as employees of a company, but as creators of a particular voice or style. In my book, Status Update, I examine the logical outgrowths of the practices examined in Venture Labor, three self-presentation techniques aimed at attracting attention—microcelebrity, self-branding, and live streaming—all representing the leading edge of social media practice. In Status Update, I show how presenting the self became a form of labor that extends venture labor to formulating, packaging, and presenting the self.

Author Biography

Alice E. Marwick, Data & Society Research Institute, USA

Alice Marwick is a Fellow at the Data & Society Research Institute. Until recently, she was Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies and the Director of the McGannon Communication Research Center at Fordham University. Her work examines the impact of the large audiences made possible by social media on individuals and communities from a social, cultural, and legal perspective. She is the author of Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity and Branding in the Social Media Age (Yale, 2013), an ethnography of the San Francisco tech scene which examines how people seek online status through attention and visibility. She is currently conducting research on privacy and socio-economic status, supported by the Digital Trust Foundation. Alice has a PhD from the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University.  

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Published

2017-05-09

Issue

Section

Forum