Digital work

Abstract

Existing research shows that self-branding in the knowledge economy is a key promotional device for the pursuit of self-realization in a context that reifies entrepreneurialism as the main ideological stance. However, there is still reluctance to fully acknowledge the processes of sociality that constitute self-branding practice. While the relationship between branding and the affective dynamics of social production of value fostered by the diffusion of Web 2.0 is widely acknowledged in the literature, there still seems to be a lack of understanding of the extent to which self-branding relates to social relationships in the production of socialized value for individuals. The study of self-branding practices across digital freelance professions in the knowledge economy reveals how social media has come to represent a working tool that serves the curation of a professional image and the management of social relationships via the enactment of performative practices of sociality, which exist around a shared notion of reputation as value. Here, self-branding becomes an investment in social relationships with expected return for the acquisition of a reputation. This substantially equates self-branding with what social theory calls social capital, being instrumental to secure employment in the freelance-based labour market of the digital knowledge economy.

Keywords

Digital media digital work freelance knowledge work reputation self-branding social capital

Introduction

The notions of personal and self-branding over the past few decades have become central concepts in the knowledge economy, indicating those processes of marketization of the self for the empowerment and professional success of the individual. Existing marketing research acknowledges that self-branding in the knowledge economy is a device for self-promotion for the pursuit of self-realization in a context that reifies entrepreneurialism as the main ideological stance and criticizes how this becomes as an explicit form of labour in post-Fordist capitalism (Hearn, 2008). However, there still seems to be a reluctance to fully acknowledge the extent to which self-branding relates to social relationships in the production of social value for individuals.

The relationship between branding and value is widely acknowledged in the literature. Brands are commonly defined as cultural, ideological and sociological objects which do not only mediate cultural meaning but operate as ideological referents that shape cultural rituals within societal dynamics (Schroder, 2009). With the diffusion of Web 2.0 and an ever-more participatory culture, branding got subsumed into a dynamic of social production of value relying extensively on affect (Arvidsson, 2011). How this applies to personal branding remains, however, somewhat overlooked. In particular, current marketing research fails to fully acknowledge the processes of sociality that constitute self-branding and how these construct value for knowledge workers. While consumer research has seen a relatively recent narrative turn acknowledging how identity is discursively produced in the form of an identity work that accompanies current understandings of consumption (Parsons, 2010), and there is abundant literature on consumer work, ‘prosumption’ and how the immaterial labour of consumers contributes to the value of a market offering (Cova and Dalli, 2009; Dujarier, 2014), the idea of self-branding as the construction of a public and social identity remains poorly understood in relation to contemporary processes of socialization of value, and particularly to how this relates to the marketization – and the management – of social relationships across professional contexts that make intensive use of social networking sites.

This article aims to fill this gap by looking at social media usage for self-branding purposes among freelance knowledge workers in two different European urban contexts, London and Milan. Knowledge work today is converging towards a digital and freelance-based economy (Cappelli and Keller, 2013) where social media has come to represent a working tool that serves the curation of a professional image and the management of social relationships for purposes of professional success and career progression. The study of self-branding practices in this context shows how social media activity is made of what may be seen as performative practices of sociality that exist around a shared notion of reputation as the cultural conception of value. Thus, is here argued, self-branding becomes a form of ‘digital work’ as an investment in social relationships with an expected return, which points at the acquisition of a reputation. This substantially equates self-branding with what social theory calls ‘social capital’ (Granovetter, 1973, 1985; Lin, 1999, 2002) as to indicate the determinant element for successful job search and the production of socialized value across the freelance-based labour market of the digital knowledge economy.

The approach adopted in this article aligns with those believing that social theory-informed critiques of marketing processes have the potential to generate valuable advances in marketing theory (Østergaard and Fitchett, 2012). Self-branding as here evidenced combines the curation of an online branded persona with the strategic management of social relationships, pointing at the acquisition of a reputational capital which may be mobilized and accessed by professionals embedded within a network of personal contacts (Granovetter, 1973, 1985). Reputation represents the form taken by social capital within digitalized environments, where social interaction most often occurs at a distance and with a lesser extent of co-presence and proximity, being an instrumental feature in securing employment in a freelance-based economy as it represents the indigenous, cultural conception of value shared by participants in this labour market.

The use of social media serves the aim of engineering the construction of a reputation through the use of personal branding techniques. This enables new forms of managerially steered sociality that are based upon the fact that digital technologies and social media allow reputation to become tangible via a number of different – and more or less reliable – indicators, rendering it the most important asset for the individual brand. I will henceforth conceptualize this socio-economic context as a reputation economy (Hearn, 2010), as it is reputation that permits the allocation of unequal informational resources in this individualized labour market by functioning as the intermediary that transforms social relationships into value.

Self-branding and the rise of a freelance economy

The notion of personal or self-branding became popular in the late 1990s evolving out of self-help and self-improvement methods that could be managed for corporate success (Peters, 1999). This was originally conceived as a process of self-packaging of identity substantially delinked from skills, motivations and interests and centred on the crafting of a unique and authentic image to be sold on the labour market (Fisher-Roffer, 2000; Lair et al., 2005; Peters, 1999). Self-branding got rapidly involved in the dialectic between production and consumption over the Internet (Moor, 2003), quickly converging towards a broader dimension that markets the branding of reflexivity skills for the purpose of creating a brand promise (McNally and Speak, 2002; Wee and Brooks, 2010).

This article builds upon this premise to embrace Hearn’s critical approach of the branded self (2008, 2010, 2011) that considers the reflexive project of the self a distinct form of labour under post-Fordist capitalism (Hearn, 2008). Hearn sustains that when promotionalism, intended as the winning of attention or emotion, comes to be the dominant mode of communication over the past few decades (Wernick, 1991), the construction of a branded persona becomes necessary practice in contemporary marketing regimes and represents a distinct kind of labour that involves an outwardly directed process of self-construction (Hearn, 2008). This, she argues, is particularly central in the context of the knowledge economy, which fully embodies the ethos of post-Fordist capitalism by reifying an ideological representation of entrepreneurship in a socio-economic dynamic where social relationships are central to value production. This brings to what she calls the ‘socialized worker’, drawing from the lexicon of the Italian Autonomist Marxists, as the product of the reflexive project of the self as a process of immaterial labour heavily reliant on the valorization of subjectivity (Hearn, 2011).

This nonetheless suggests two still unexplored implications. In a broader perspective, the marketing literature acknowledges the relationship between branding and value in the form of a social production of value relying extensively on affect, where value is not so much produced through proprietary resources and via commodity exchange; rather, it unfolds from the periphery and boundaries of organizational practice, where surplus can increasingly be found in non-measurable intangible assets among which branding remains central (Arvidsson, 2011). However, despite a significant body of critical media research examining online practices of affectivity and celebrity construction through networked and affective publics (Boyd, 2006, 2011; Papacharissi, 2015; Marwick, 2013; Marwick and Boyd, 2011), the extent to which social media, where the self is the device around which not just individual but social activity revolves for a variety of purposes that mix play and work (Hogan, 2010; Uski and Lampinen, 2014), intervenes in contemporary practices of professional self-branding still remains overlooked.

A second perspective concerns what self-branding practice is, for a knowledge industry that converges towards a digital and freelance-based economy based on a socialized worker; a worker for whom, centrally, value consists in the marketing of an entrepreneurial ethos (Bandinelli and Arvidsson, 2012) in a context where social relationships historically represent the main sources for the procurement of employment opportunities (Grugulis and Stoyanova, 2011, 2012; Lee 2011). The combination of these aspects determines that, in studying the relationship between branding and socially produced value at the level of the individual, we should no longer limit self-branding to a simple device for self-realization but also see it as strategic work pointing at the acquisition of economic return via the management of social relationships – which is actually what social theory calls social capital (Granovetter, 1973, 1985; Lin, 1999, 2002).

The reason of this claim resides in the fact that the digital knowledge economy is now constituted of various forms of online interaction that enable new practices of sociality based on publicity and affect, which intermediate branding and value via a shared notion of reputation. This idea is based upon Wittel’s (2001) notion of the diffusion of a network sociality that indicates the proliferation of non-communitarian modalities of network interaction over the Internet that are peculiar to urban post-industrial milieus, where networking stands out as the main social practice of value production. Self-branding in the digital knowledge economy does exactly this, by enabling new practices of sociality that do not remain limited to the branding of the self but act as marketing work that combines networking with the management of social relationships. This renders self-branding contiguous to the definition of social capital brought along by Lin (1999, 2002) as an investment in social relationships with an expected return, in a context where job search heavily relies on networks of contacts as outlined in the classic study of strong and weak ties by Granovetter (1973, 1985).

The equating of self-branding practice to the construction of social capital is ever more central for the understanding of self-marketing in the contemporary digital knowledge economy. Beals (2008), echoing the pioneering essay by Malone and Laubacher (1998), shows how marketing oneself is essential in a context increasingly made up of ‘businesses of one’ and an entrepreneurially oriented, growingly freelance workforce professionally active online. Alternatives to the archetypal model of full-time regular employment now seem to be prevalent and wide-ranging in the knowledge economy, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. A recent survey conducted by the Freelancers Union in partnership with Elance-oDesk, a major digital marketplace for contractors and freelancers worldwide, shows how 53 million Americans were generating some or their entire income earned in 2013 from freelancing, making up 34% of the entire American workforce. The report argues that ‘the way we work is changing’ and ‘gone are the days of the traditional 9-to-5. We’re entering a new era of work – project-based, independent, exciting, potentially risky, and rich with opportunities’ (Horowitz and Rosati, 2014). A typology of freelance professions is drawn here, distinguishing between: (a) independent contractors, meaning traditional freelancers; (b) ‘moonlighters’, meaning professionals with a day job doing freelance work in the evening or spare time; (c) ‘diversified workers’, who are professionals with multiple sources of income earned from a mix of freelance and dependent, often part time, work; (d) temporary workers, who are individuals with a single employer, contract or job with a temporary status, employed as freelancers and (e) freelance business owners, who are self-employed entrepreneurs with one to five employees who consider themselves as freelance professionals (Horowitz and Rosati, 2014).

In the United Kingdom, D’Arcy and Gardiner (2014) reveal a similar picture, with the number of self-employed growing from 650,000 to 4,500,000 in the past 5 years. It is estimated that the freelance economy is worth £21 billion to the UK economy in added value (IPSE, 2011). At a European level, data show how freelancing is efficiently resilient to the economic crisis as it remained steady at around 15% of the overall employment figures despite the rise of unemployment rates (EEOR, 2010). Freelancing also seemingly emerges as a favourable option to live off in crisis times, being sometimes a forced condition fostered by necessity or as a consequence of downsizing (Lopez-Jimenez, 2013) but also increasingly often a strategic switch. The overall tendency seems to be that of looking towards freelancing with increasing interest, as 45% of European working citizens declare thinking positively of the idea of a freelance career (EEOR, 2010).

The rise of a freelance workforce is arguably the consequence of a long-term neo-liberal push for project-based employment and budget shrinking that is incidentally justified by the actual nature of the tasks requested in the job market, as work is essentially organized around projects for which organizational arrangements and budgets vary from time to time (Christopherson, 2002, 2008). Employment in the knowledge economy historically consists of portfolio careers (Platman, 2004) where ‘you are as good as your last job’ (Blair, 2001), and a successful job search depends upon the worker’s capacity to manage one’s own personal networks of contacts. This is entertained via recursive networking practices for the acquisition of social capital to keep the flow of work alive in an increasingly freelance-based environment, where relationships need to be constantly refreshed and maintained (Grugulis and Stoyanova, 2011, 2012; Randle et al., 2015). Lee (2011) underlines how such practices also enable exclusionary dynamics that favour individuals with high levels of cultural and social capital over others. However, there is scarce acknowledgement on this side of the fact that social capital actually consists in the construction of a branded persona. Professions in the knowledge economy are connoted by an eminently entrepreneurial trait (Dex et al., 2000), which represents an ideological stance that promotes the image of cultural professionals as new economic pioneers (McRobbie, 2004).

This overall entrepreneurial ideology, however, conflicts with the actual working conditions that permeate the knowledge and creative industries. Phenomena of low-paid or unpaid labour (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2013) are frequently reported as epitomes of a context, where the elements of passion and ‘coolness’ give meaning to jobs and often cover for long hours of work, anxiety and stress, alienation and unfair pay (Arvidsson et al., 2010; Ross 2009). This stream of research is substantially based on ideas coming from the Autonomist Marxist literature, as it sustains that the central element in this process is the valorization of subjectivity, which configures a socialized dimension of labour that Gill and Pratt (2008) define as a ‘social factory’.

These processes of socialized value production focused on identity and the self are propelled even further by social media activity. Digital media has come to be used as a professional tool in a managerial logic that is instrumentally pointed towards the curation of a professional image, the cultivation of social relationships and the construction of a professional reputation, which seems to be an increasingly determinant aspect for professional success and career progression in a fragmented and highly individualized labour market (Randle et al., 2015). The junction of these instances detaches contemporary self-branding from the original corporate notion of the late 1990s to embrace a networked and socialized perspective; one that seems to be epitomized by freelance workers in the digital knowledge economy, who embody an entrepreneurial ethos and transform this into value through socially produced networked branding techniques.

Research design and methods

The empirical research took place in the cities of London and Milan, both internationally recognized hubs for the knowledge and creative economy (Musterd and Murie, 2010). It is made up of N = 80 interviews (38 in London, 42 in Milan) with a broad range of multiskilled professionals including illustrators, communication designers, audiovisual producers, media workers, digital consultants, and strategists, all working on a freelance basis in different sectors of the knowledge and creative industries. The choice of London was determined by its status as a city which was widely studied in the past decade, not only as the centre of the media and creative industries in the United Kingdom (DCMS, 1998) but also as the hallmark of the narrative, brought along in the early 2000s, which particularly incentivized entrepreneurial activity by culture professionals (McRobbie, 2002, 2004). Also, as previously observed, a recent significant rise in freelancing can be witnessed in the British economy (D’Arcy and Gardiner, 2014) thus providing a further element of interest for the purpose of this work.

Alternatively, the choice of Milan represents an attempt to examine a context that is not frequently studied at the international level, one which presents significant elements of interest for the case in point. Milan, popularly known as the economic capital of Italy, is paradigmatic for a country which presents a diffusion of self-employment and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that is largely above the European average, especially within design and fashion, which are strongly at the heart of the Italian industrial structure (Barbieri, 1999; EEOR, 2010). Italian independent workers file under the name ‘partite IVA’, a term that indicates both the tax code used to send invoices during self-employment and a registration code for self-employed status. The number of self-employed individuals in Italy is significantly high (around 25%) if compared to the EU average (17%). This number comprises a variety of independent workers but also ‘bogus’ self-employment, for which figures are still difficult to collect, hidden among the different types of atypical contracts in force in the current labour market (EEOR, 2010; Ranci, 2012).

The logic of this research was to undertake a qualitative network analysis, using snowball sampling to access and immerse into the professional social networks of the interviewees. Despite being affected by known shortcomings, particularly a potential homophily bias – which was limited, adopting what Stuart and Sorenson (2007) suggest, by establishing a bond of trust between the researcher and the interviewee in order to know as much as possible of the dimensions along which actors prefer to match with others in the networks considered – snowball sampling is frequently used in social network analysis (Carrington et al., 2005), as it is particularly useful for the study of social capital across highly relational environments and to also provide a certain degree of randomness (Biernacki and Waldorf, 1981).

Anonymity was granted to participants in all phases of the research. Starting from five informants who acted as gatekeepers, interviewees were required to provide names of their own professional contacts; specifically, those whom the interviewee considered high ranking in their professional domain as well as whom the interviewee would seek out for career advice. The interview setting consented to deeply make sense of the qualitative dimension of social networking in a freelance environment, pointing towards an understanding of the cultural meanings of professional networks and contacts. The response rate and participation acceptance were approximately 50% of the overall 163 people contacted for the purposes of the research.

Digital work: Self-branding as social capital

Yeah, I mean, I am a brand, you know …. (Digital strategist, 41, London, female)

The study involved 38 freelance, London-based professionals within the age range 28–60 with a perfect gender balance (19 men and 19 women). Among them, 29 of 38 participants have a professional Twitter account, 36 of 38 have a LinkedIn profile, 5 of whom have more than 500 connections and 9 of 38 interviewees have a professional blog. In Milan, the sample is made of 42 freelancers within an age range 24–55, with 25 men and 17 women. Among them, 30 of 42 participants have a Twitter account largely used for professional reasons, 38 of 42 have a LinkedIn account, 12 of whom have more than 500 connections and 17 of 42 have a professional blog.

In the Milanese network, all interviewees apart from one are Italian. In London, there is a more diverse mix of geographical origins, with 21 participants of British provenience and 17 participants from other areas of Europe, the United States, Australia and China. Almost all interviewees in both contexts attained an academic degree related to their working discipline, obtained in the fields of design, arts, media and communication, and would be largely considered to have a middle-class background, with some also having a history of entrepreneurship within the family. An average gross annual income of £38,257 is reported in London, while in Milan income is reported at an average €32,487. In both cases, these amounts are almost equally distributed between age groups and genders but also still very much polarized, with a few earning considerably well and many struggling at the lower end of the scale, often leaning on familial support or previous savings. Nonetheless, although income is admittedly unstable for the majority of participants, economic compensation does not seem to be a distinctive priority, rather a basic need, as they consider irregular revenues somewhat normal:

Income kind of varies a lot … The really difficult thing, which I think a lot of freelancers find themselves in, is how much to charge for your own time. What do I charge? I mean, I want to be respected in the field, I think I’m a professional in the field … And you can get free jobs like a gate to have other jobs in in the future. (Arts professional, 34, London, male)

The use of digital platforms for these professionals constitutes a widely diffused and almost totalizing self-branding activity. The large majority of interviewees believe social media activity is very important or important for their professional success, while only a minority considers social media practice as scarcely useful or useless. Twitter and LinkedIn are the most utilized platforms, while Facebook (though with some exceptions) is largely perceived as a private social network. Frequency of usage varies significantly, from more than one posting of content a day to no less than one posting a week. Overall, social media is approached, managed and utilized as a shop window that serves to find or be found, being visible on a 24/7 basis. Social media presence is instrumental for searchability and is detrimental for credibility when absent:

LinkedIn is like the professional Facebook, isn’t it? It’s Facebook for professional people. I think it’s ok, I think it’s useful if you look for a full time job, and for looking for information about what people do. That’s what I do, if I meet somebody I’ll look at their LinkedIn profile. People all the time contact me on LinkedIn for work … People I’ve never met. (Copywriter, 53, London, male)

–

Social media is fundamental, not simply for direct advantages, I don’t generally get work directly from Facebook or LinkedIn … But it’s true that if I have to meet someone, I will look at the social networks. Maybe we are meeting because someone recommended you, or I met you somewhere, but social media is a portfolio and I want to know how you work. Through social media I look for information and I use it as a shop window, also on my side. If I have to work with you and I can’t find you, I won’t hire you. (Communication consultant, 24, Milan, male)

Among those who do not have an established social media presence, a minority in the sample, there is a general understanding of the growing relevance of such instruments, paired up with a vague concern for privacy issues. Essentially, those who do not use social media enact a strictly dualistic separation between offline and online contacts – considered as separate environments. On the contrary, those with an established social media presence adopt a strategic approach to digital resources. For the majority of interviewees, there is no distinction between offline and online contacts. A clear sense of continuity and interdependence emerges between the offline and the online realms from a professional perspective, inasmuch as both lead into job opportunities and the fuelling of word-of-mouth – which is the central aim, whatever the means through which this is pursued.

The self-branding activity perpetrated by freelancers is instrumentally pointed at the acquisition of a reputation in the industry. This is done via a set of practices of sociality whereby the branding of one’s professional identity and public image cannot but take place in a social realm, made of an interdependent relationship between offline and online networking. The observation of the participants’ professional activity evidences how these recurrent practices have an eminently performative nature, as these essentially consist in a constant production of content that presupposes a conception of the digital arena as a sort of performance space for the enactment of a branded identity – aiming, ultimately, at social recognition. Their self is first and foremost public as it represents a visible display of a juxtaposition of professional skills and personal taste, the rationale of which echoes the work of a curator in an art gallery, or a visual merchandiser that chooses which products best represent the brand. However, this public self is inevitably and decisively also a social one, since this display also involves one’s connections and networks. The ultimate outcome is the construction of a reputational capital, which leads to capitalization in terms of job opportunities and revenues across a network of social relationships. This is regularly pursued via the use of common marketing techniques, such as storytelling, pointing at creating engagement with the self-brand to fuel the construction of connections that can then function as a capital, which may be mobilized or accessed when needed:

What the Web consents to do to a professional with something to tell, is that by simply writing what you know you can reach a visibility and a popularity that is simply impossible otherwise. The blog is useful for more in-depth discourses … it gives you the chance to express what you mean. Twitter is more a copywriter kind of thing, whilst LinkedIn is more enclosed, too serious … Good for “suit and tie” consultants. (Communication professional, 43, Milan, female)

The production of a coherent public and social self via what were defined as performative practices of sociality is a branding activity delinked from the establishing of communitarian relations, conducted via a curatorial logic which points at authenticity. The management of the content posted and the networking activity are perceived as two equally fundamental aspects in the marketability of a digital worker for the acquisition of a reputational capital. The activity within the online sphere is performative since it is not just an act that communicates, as it is one that defines a social identity that links into value. Therefore, it has to be frequent and recurrent, without significant gaps, breaks or interruptions. This brings visibility and recognition and connects directly to offline interaction. Below are a couple of examples of these practices in the words of a London-based designer and a Milanese copywriter, who reveal how visibility and socialization are bound together in a socially oriented, self-branding activity:

I do use social media to sort of make people aware that you are there, you are working, you are active (…) Sometimes people see I’m at (X) by checking in on location, and then phone me to have lunch, and I might get a job from that. (Designer, 43, London, male)

–

LinkedIn to me is very important as you can show how much you are into a sector, for instance, someone who goes into my profile can see who I know. There you can find names that can make you say “Oh, he’s really into this sector”. And then, second step, maybe I go to some of my contacts “… So you know about this guy? Have you worked with him?”. It’s all a big phonebook. If my contacts are qualified, you can see that. (Copywriter, 48, Milan, male)

This curatorial nature of self-branding serves the construction of a productive network of contacts both offline and online; that is, what leads to jobs and employment chances. In London, this is almost compulsively reiterated as the ideological pursuit of two commonsensical statements: ‘it is all about who you know’ and ‘you are as good as your last job’ (Blair, 2001), both of which are mantras for freelance knowledge professionals. In Milan, conversely, there is often a recurrent discourse giving a negative connotation to these concepts, being associated to clientelism. Professional relations and social capital, especially in Milan, are regularly perceived as exclusionary networks and lobbying, as the participation with non-professional informal networks allows participants to access otherwise unavailable information and opportunities:

Non-professional networks matter a lot in the way you can get in touch with people, confidential information, events, opportunities … (Journalist, 30, Milan, male)

Most participants in both contexts claim that, despite the centrality of this self-branding activity in their work practice, skills and talent are actually what counts more, being related to their actual job capacities. Yet, this study seems to show exactly the opposite, that is, a somewhat secondary importance of human and cultural capital as significant elements for employability. Interviewees in both samples possess the same broad sets of skills, and the large majority of interviewees have an academic degree that is related to their professional environment. This confirms Christopherson’s (2008) argument of knowledge and creative workers possessing a multifunctional set of skills that are substantially similar among their peer group. Also, there are no significant differences in terms of earnings among the different educational categories; in other words, it may be said that having a degree does not automatically imply being better off in this labour market. Participants implicitly seem to confirm this when they describe how CV circulation is substantially useless, since the CV as traditionally conceived is generally discarded as something that does not provide significantly rich information to potential clients in the industry. If what makes a difference is one’s reputation, the education title and skills therefore seem to be merely entry tickets, and one’s professional success appears to be ultimately related to the capacity to connect self-branding practice to the construction of a reputational capital and the management of this asset over the professional network:

[The] creative world works through personal relationships, and to a certain extent it has to do with your CV. But the most of it is what job is this person doing here and now and what they would be interested to do in the other job. In other sectors the whole CV matters. (Creative manager, 45, London, female)

–

If you are a freelancer your education title does not matter much, whereas if you want to compete for a permanent job it matters more. Some of my colleagues did not even finish university, and they can easily live out of their freelance work. For firms, however, it matters, it is an old requisite for recruitment. (Designer, 27, Milan, male)

The digital space functions for digital professionals as a milieu to support and fuel this self-branding work and the circulation of word of mouth and recommendations subsume these information networks both offline and online, with no distinction or difference. The importance of this multiple dynamic of interaction is substantially taken for granted by most participants and translates into a shared recognition of reputation as value. The acquisition of a reputational capital is perceived as directly linked to professional success:

Social media pays back in terms of awareness to people that you’re out there, [with] visibility, credibility and people having an understanding of what is it that you’re doing. People found me on the Internet, looked at my profile on LinkedIn and then sort of feel the deal to phone me and ask to do something. (Brand consultant, 40 London, male)

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Using social media well means a lot. Many people find you through these tools, it’s an online and an offline word-of-mouth but these two things are correlated and they reciprocally fuel each other. (Digital consultant, 44, Milan, Male)

This connects to what seems to be the most problematic aspect that centrally pertains to these scenes. Self-branding, as seen, is considered work by digital professionals but is largely an unremunerated part of their work. It is, nevertheless, mandatory practice in securing employment. In various accounts in the literature, especially those directly making use of the Autonomist lexicon, the notions of precarity and exploitation are often directly put in relation to such digital media activity via the concept of free labour (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2013; Terranova, 2000). However, as noted in the first interview quoted in this article, free jobs appear to be gates towards other employment. As a result, controversially, most participants do not perceive this practice of free labour as exploitation – rather, as an ‘investment’:

In my experience, it was always the case (of being noticed, nda) only because of someone who knew me for things I had done in the past, as of word-of-mouth. So I would suggest everyone to do something wonderful, for free, immediately. That’s the best investment. (Media professional/journalist, 36, Milan, female)

This, I would argue, is an inevitable turnaround in the extent to which self-branding in the digital knowledge economy equates to the construction of social capital. The performance of a certain amount of free and unpaid labour is perceived not just as a natural element in the freelance scene but an eminently strategic and managerial device to start the loop of self-branding, visibility and reputation construction across a network of social relations. If this, on the one hand, confirms the strong link between self-branding and labour sustained by Hearn (2008), it also, more problematically, delinks from a simple narrative of exploitation to put the word investment – in self-branding, in social relations, in time and free work – at the core of the self-entrepreneurial ethos defining freelancers, particularly in their start-up phase. Most of them, in terms of identity, are in fact explicitly reluctant to self-define as workers but tend to prefer definitions connoting them as self-employed entrepreneurs who, in relation to free labour, invest into unpaid work for the strategic pursuit of social relations that lead into expected economic returns – which is, incidentally, Nan Lin’s definition of social capital (1999, 2002).

This notion of free labour as investment is believed by participants to be extremely functional to the acquisition of a reputation among one’s professional network of contacts. Acquiring a reputation seems to be the most decisive stance, as reputation seems to be the form taken by social capital across such a digitally mediated labour market where the possibility of meeting in person and engaging into face-to-face interaction is strongly reduced. This fosters those networking dynamics that are connected to employability, given that only the individual’s embeddedness in a network of productive professional connections (Granovetter, 1973, 1985) and the capacity to demonstrate such embeddedness via this digital work lead into job opportunities. Working for free is part of this process, as one of the many practices used to pursue this aim:

I did some jobs for free because I think strategically it was a good idea to do. It was a strategic job. (Arts consultant, 35, London, male)

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At the beginning I worked a lot for free. It is difficult to show you can do something, without doing it. Now you can publish your own work, you can demonstrate this capacity to all those who may be interested. It’s like living a public portfolio. (Communication professional, 43, Milan, female)

This does not undermine the controversial nature of this conception of free labour as investment – actually, the opposite. Some participants are well aware of the contradictory aspects of their entrepreneurial ethos. However, even the most critical accounts claim that the entrepreneurial element is primary, as this London-based videographer evidences:

People think that you will be paid by status, they say “I’m working in London”, for free, and I say no, you are a slave in London, let’s be honest. They’re not working in the strict sense. I’m not here to make money, but I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t making money. If you have to work six months for free, better you work six months for free for you and not for someone else, if you have ideas … This is the new working class, you see what I mean? (Videographer, 38, London, male)

Another aspect that seems to be striking in this context is the uncommon nuance given to competition for jobs. Self-branding is not simply performed for self-realization, or to stand out among competitors, but explicitly points at collaboration, interaction and networking with contacts widely recognized as influential by peers in the industry. The reason lies in a basic network process: the digital and freelance knowledge economy is a small world. Competition seems to be found much more between closed circles rather than within them in an individual dog-eat-dog dynamic, given that ultimately there is no work without social connections. ‘Collaborative’ for freelancers outperforms ‘competitive’ since reputation is their most valuable asset, and jobs come from recommendations, referrals and word of mouth. It is not strategically as rewarding in the long term to be competitive and selfish, as it is to be collaborative and social:

Because it’s so competitive, it’s also down to your reputation, and the people you’ve worked with. The circuit is so small: in design everyone knows each other, of course you have the top 10 per cent, the top 5 per cent, they all know each other. The people you’ve worked with form more established companies. Your portfolio is the most important thing, getting your work seen, and your reputation as a person to actually work with, are you a good person to work with? Aren’t you a good person to work with? You might be very good, but if you’re lacking social skills, it’s your problem. If you’re selfish it’s your problem. Reputation spreads quite fast. (Graphic designer, 38, London, male)

These accounts show how the practices of presentation of the self within the online sphere for digital freelancers in the knowledge economy are not merely for exhibition or representational (Hogan, 2010); on the contrary, there is a performative and productive element that emerges out of forms of sociality that directly connect them to socialized value production and the construction of social capital. This has huge implications for an understanding of the branding of the individual in the ever nearer relation to immaterial labour practices (Hearn, 2008). In the following section, I will discuss these instances more closely.

Within a reputation economy

The study of self-branding and freelancing in the knowledge economy in London and Milan shows a contradictory landscape with significant elements of novelty. In both London and Milan, self-branding is pervasive and almost mandatory. There is a shared understanding of the curatorial management of social media presence and social relationships for the purpose of a greater reputation, as well as the awareness that this practice boosts employability as it is articulated in the form of an investment in social relationships with expected return. This points directly at notions of social capital for job search that are common in social theory. Such a process seems to be more visible and acknowledged in London and less visible – but equally significant – in Milan. This difference may be due to the fact that freelancing, although very diffused, is still somehow perceived in Milan as a second best option, with networking and embeddedness often negatively associated to clientelism. As suggested by an interviewee, freelancers in Milan are still often perceived as ‘children of a lesser God’ (Journalist, 30, Milan, male).

Yet, the evidence here suggests also that the construction of a branded persona is not simply an explicit form of labour (Hearn, 2008: 197) but a more complex set of social practices – that I have labelled as performative practices of sociality – which entail the production and the display of a public and social self across social network sites. These negotiations are necessary to establish professionally as a freelancer to build reputation and status (Hearn 2008, 2010; Marwick, 2013). It may be argued that self-branding practice directly links to processes of socialized value production in the digital knowledge industries, as the social construction of a branded persona via identity work (Schoneboom, 2011). I have called this process digital work since it sits in interdependent relationship with networking as a value production device enacted through forms of sociality that transform personal branding into the main regime of immaterial production.

Drawing again from Hearn (2010), I call the broader scenario where these networked branding techniques exist a ‘reputation economy’ (Botsman, 2012; Hearn, 2010). The acquisition of reputational capital appears in fact to be the main element for employability as reputation emerges to be the cultural conception of value indigenously shared by operators within this professional context. Hearn (2010) theorized the existence of a digital reputation economy that links self-branding to reputation as an asset. This is clearly evidenced here inasmuch as reputation represents the element that connects the offline and online domains, rendering self-branding a process of social capital construction managerially conceived that uses reputation to allocate unequal resources. The employability of knowledge professionals in the digital age seems to be inextricably bound to (and, to some extent, depend upon) the acquisition of a reputational capital across the personal network of professional contacts. Reputation, once an intangible asset with unquantifiable proxies and valuation, is now increasingly tangible, visible and to some extent also measurable via the activity of individual users on social media platforms. This measurability extends its effects over the whole labour market.

As physical face-to-face interaction diminishes its importance and gets together with digital interaction that is demonstrated by a lesser extent of co-presence and proximity, reputation seems to be the form taken by social capital in the network sociality (Wittel, 2001), as the asset that manages to secure a bond of trust by way of the mosaic of public information commonly available around a branded individual (Marwick et al., 2010). The recognition of self-branding practice as the process of construction of social capital is functional to the existence of a reputation economy, as reputation often substitutes for face-to-face trust building. As Boyd and Ellison (2007) noted, although exceptions exist, digitally mediated social relations largely support existing offline social relations, to some extent mirroring the everyday networking experience, and producing some different sort of social capital (Ellison et al., 2007) here identified in reputation – that becomes algorithmically calculated by Online Reputation Systems that regulate interaction over digital marketplaces such as Elance-oDesk and similar others. This poses consistent issues in terms of reliability and the establishment of what may be seen as an algocratic culture of interaction towards which we should maintain a critical reading. Despite some, such as Schaefer (2012), sustain that these dynamics provide a democratization of social influence, there is enough on the other hand to see a rather serious potential for distortion.

Digital freelance professionals are in fact induced into what seems to be a significant example of emotional labour (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2008, 2013; Hochschild, 1979, 2001) as of participating in a labour market where value is increasingly socialized and produced via network-based arrangements that require a significant extent of subjectivity. Still, the relationship between digital activity on social network sites and the affective dimensions of labour remains problematic – and the issue of free labour demonstrates this clearly (Terranova, 2000). This, ultimately, is a quite controversial aspect that emerges from this account. Is self-branding a form of free labour? For the participants in this study, it is not so much free labour as exploitation as it is a useful and potentially profitable form of investment – in social relationships, in time and free work – strategically pursued for self-branding purposes. The notion of free labour as investment here given renders a process of self-exploitation or false consciousness around the production of subjectivity by freelancers – yet, it coherently goes hand in hand with a managerial concept of self-branding as social capital. In fact, the distance between this concept and the positions of the Autonomists, I would argue, is just as apparent; the justification of this statement lies in the broader framework, where both the Autonomist readings of knowledge work and the present account on self-branding intervene.

What I mean here is that, incidentally, the rise of self-branding actually occurred more or less simultaneously with the proliferation of ideas of a rising ‘creative class’ (Florida, 2002) that promised an age of economic prosperity and development through the valorization of individual talent and entrepreneurial creativity. Arguably, it can now be witnessed how such a claim is a case of an unfulfilled promise. Contemporary digital freelance professionals in the knowledge economy are what remains of that idea, being the product of an entrepreneurial ethos combined with extensive precarity, low-paid or unpaid jobs, devaluation of work and of free labour (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2013). However, as argued by Brouillette (2014), actually Florida and the Autonomists substantially agree on the fact that, over the past few decades, knowledge work has become comparable to artists’ work. This is a positive innovation for Florida, who envisaged that the fostering of entrepreneurship, talent, creativity and empowerment will bring the renewed success of post-industrial capitalism – and it is obviously negative for the Autonomists, who highlight how the (arguably present) controversial aspects listed above are the symptoms of the forthcoming demise of late capitalism.

Indeed, Brouillette argues, both accounts share the assumption that creativity and capital have now merged in the production of symbolic content that is economically dominant – and that this is an inescapable condition. The study of self-branding on social media by digital knowledge professionals confirms the centrality of such immaterial and affective labour regimes but also shows how these translates into performative practices of sociality, which convert identity work into social production of value and reputational capital. In other words, it may be argued here that the notions of free labour and investment are not purely oppositional but actually represent two sides of the same thing – that is, the evolution of networked techniques of branding of the individual pointing at social production of value across a network sociality, more or less enthusiastically embraced.

The aesthetic curation of the self across social media arguably demonstrates the validity of the critique to the valorization of subjectivity promoted by the Autonomists and particularly that aspect of virtuosity related to work highlighted by Virno (2004). However, these dynamics might now be read as the grammar of an unavoidable and compulsory work of reputation construction based on new forms of sociality fostered by the digital intermediation. The metaphor of the investment supports what McRobbie (2002, 2004) has described as the marriage between counterculture and the financial economy realized through the narrative of self-realization. Ultimately, as in the example of ‘changemakers’ brought forward by Bandinelli and Arvidsson (2012), the entrepreneurial ethos of digital workers seems to be just another symptom of the real subsumption of the neo-liberal entrepreneurial rationale that manifests its surprising survival (Crouch, 2011) within those new models of work that should declare its aftermath – and which actually produce phenomena of compulsory sociality that are typical of neo-liberalism (Gregg, 2011). Critical accounts of free labour, precarity and neo-liberalism today probably need to acknowledge this compulsory aspect more comprehensively to build a critique that does not end within individual issues, such as precarious income or free labour, but peculiarly stresses the invisibility and the taken for grantedness of those in the mindset of workers, which is due to an entrepreneurial ethos that self-realizes via a rhetoric of compulsory and inevitably positive innovation.

Conclusion: The socialization of the enterprise

Freelancers today are commonly assumed to be among the new economic protagonists at the forefront of the developments in knowledge work in the 21st century. This article has proposed an exploration of the role of the social in the study of the networked branding practices of the self as these are enacted by this specific segment of the professional sphere, which has seemingly internalized the characteristics of the market to perform a digital work of identity production that extends also offline in a continuum. These practices seem to be no longer mere promotional devices perpetrated for self-realization or to outperform competitors as in the early days of corporate self-branding but present an eminently social element. The productive identity work for the creation of a professional self in the digital economy cannot but be a social process embedded in a web of ties where collaboration mingles with competition and cooperation in a unique domain. For such reasons, it may be argued this process outlines what seems to be a ‘socialization of the enterprise’, rather than a social factory (Gill and Pratt, 2008), meaning the transformation of an entire labour market in an entrepreneurial, venture scene (Neff, 2012).

If a freelance economy is arguably rising, as sustained already in the late 1990s (Malone and Laubacher, 1998), to become the central employment regime in a post-crisis knowledge industry moving from mass production to production by the masses (Rifkin, 2014), yet any enthusiasm regarding this is probably premature, given the number of critical implications such transformation brings – some of those also witnessed here. Actually, a freelance economy centred on the networked branding of the individual via performative forms of sociality, despite the emphasis on collaboration, remains an essentially neo-liberal one. There seems to be no demise of neo-liberalism when its own assumptions – entrepreneurialism, individualism and flexibility – are also the flagships of today’s sharing economy, which presupposes a new era of collaboration and impact in a start-up ecology (Botsman and Rogers, 2011).

The evidence presented here shows how the significance of knowledge work today departs from notions of skills and human capital in favour of forms of production based on the marketization of different sorts of intangible assets – but leaves unquestioned the importance of class background. Although this scenario is arguably the outcome of a long-term process of casualization and precarisation of middle-class corporate full-time employment, the issue of class was not directly at the centre of this work. We know how important class origins are to get jobs and access to those weak ties that constitute the core of Granovetter’s work (1973, 1985) and the preoccupations around clientelism encountered in the Milanese context still partially reflect this instance. However, the assumption of a broad middle-class background does not sufficiently explain whether any class difference may apply to determine a discrepancy in the processes of reputation construction. It would be interesting to see future sociological and marketing research questioning the acquisition of reputational capital from a class perspective; not only to see if class and reputation as here defined are somewhat related but also to enquire about the extent to which the fragmentation of the middle class might eventually find a way to a potential recomposition.

In this sense, recent accounts of different sorts (Mosco and McKercher, 2009; Standing, 2011) have sustained the potential rise of a new social class around precarity and freelance work. Although fascinating, at present these accounts fail to recognize how much digital freelancers are particularly reluctant, broadly speaking, to be associated with precarity. Despite often struggling with their income, freelancers are more inclined to see themselves as entrepreneurs and creatives, innovators and ‘changemakers’ – rather than a precarious, freelance working class that opposes capitalism and its latest advancements. The rise of freelancers actually represents one among these advancements. It seems difficult, although perhaps desirable, to see these singularities coalesce around a critical stance in the near future. The construction of an entrepreneurial subjectivity and its translation into a market subject that completely embodies the logic of venture labour and individualization of risk permeating the first wave of Internet start-ups (Neff, 2012), transforming exploitation in investment and false consciousness in self-branding, is a success that perhaps even the most audacious supporter of neo-liberalism could not almost dare to dream.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

My deepest thanks go to Adam Arvidsson, James Fitchett and James Graham for their support at different stages in the writing process. I am also particularly grateful to the three anonymous reviewers, who offered helpful suggestions and advice in the various revisions of this paper.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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