Work in the Digital Media and Entertainment Industries A Critical Introduction

This book is a first of its kind critical inter-disciplinary introduction to the economic, political, cultural, and technological dimensions of work in the rapidly growing digital media and entertainment industries (DMEI).

Tanner Mirrlees presents a comprehensive guide to understanding the key contexts, theories, methods, debates and struggles surrounding work in the DMEI. Packed with current examples and accessible research findings, the book highlights the changing conditions and experiences of work in the DMEI. It surveys the DMEI?s key sectors and occupations, and considers the complex intersections between labour and social power relations of class, gender, and race, as well as tensions between creativity and commerce, freedom and control, meritocracy and hierarchy, and precarity and equity, diversity, and inclusivity. Chapters also explore how work in the DMEI is being reshaped by capitalism and corporations, government and policies, management, globalization, platforms, A.I., and worker collectives such as unions and cooperatives. This book is a critical introduction to this growing area of research, teaching, learning, life, labour, and organizing, with an eye to understanding work in the DMEI and changing it, for the better.

Offering a broad overview of the field, this textbook is an indispensable resource for instructors, undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars.

Introduction: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About “Being Creative” and Love the “Labour Turn” 1. What is Work? Meanings, Matters, Motivations 2. What are the Digital Media and Entertainment Industries (DMEI)? 15 Convergent Industry Groups, Central to Modern Work in the Digital Society 3. What is Research on Work in the DMEI? A Toolkit for Labor Theory and Method 4. What is Capitalism and How Do Corporations Shape Work in the DMEI? 5. What is the State and How Does it Govern Work in the DMEI? Explicit and Tacit Labor Laws, Policies, and Regulations 6. What is the Management of Work in the DMEI? Putting Leadership Power, Decision-Making Power, Soft Power, Hard Power, and Market Power to Work On Workers 7. Is Meritocracy at Work in the DMEI? Intersectionality and Inequality, with Distinction 8. What is the Globalization of Work in the DMEI? Outsourced Hardware, Software, Content and Service 9. What is the Platformization of Work in the DMEI? Online Creators, Cultural Producers and Influencers 10. What is the Automation of Work in the DMEI? Generative AI and / as Labor Saving Technologies (LSTs) 11. Is Work in the DMEI ‘Free’? Advertising, Audience Commodities, Social Media Users, Brand Loyal Fans, Crowdsourced Task-Takers, Interns and Athletes 12. What Are Workers Doing to Make the DMEI’s Future of Work Better for All? Collective Action 13. Postscript: Not “Being Creative”: For a Study of Work in the DMEI, Post-“Creative Exceptionalism”

Tanner Mirrlees is the current Director of the Communication and Digital Media Studies program in the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at Ontario Tech University, where he has been teaching the Work in the Creative and Tech Industries course for over a decade. He is the author of numerous publications including Global Entertainment Media (2013), Hearts and Mines: The US Empire’s Cultural Industry (2016), and EdTech Inc.: Selling, Automating and Globalizing Higher Education in the Digital Age (2019).