{"title":"Making virtual celebrity: Platformization and intermediation in digital cultural production","authors":"Jingyan Elaine Yuan","doi":"10.1177/13678779241230564","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Focusing on intermediation in cultural production in a digital ecology consisting of multiple platforms mediating simultaneously converging and diverging industries, this study critically engages with the thesis that platforms act primarily as a disintermediation vector in a linear value chain within a single industry. With two empirical cases of intermediation in the emerging virtual celebrity sector – one organizing the recursive loop of prosumption, the other articulating authenticity against technological standardization and overproduction, the study shifts the focus away from questions of labor and agency of individual creators and unpacks the conditions of intermediation in the context of new industrial models of value creation, commodification, and division of labor. The empirical cases demonstrate that the implications of platforms for digital cultural production are paradoxical – while their business models lead to a centralized process of value capture, their flexible organizational forms may afford new distributed patterns of value creation.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779241230564","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Focusing on intermediation in cultural production in a digital ecology consisting of multiple platforms mediating simultaneously converging and diverging industries, this study critically engages with the thesis that platforms act primarily as a disintermediation vector in a linear value chain within a single industry. With two empirical cases of intermediation in the emerging virtual celebrity sector – one organizing the recursive loop of prosumption, the other articulating authenticity against technological standardization and overproduction, the study shifts the focus away from questions of labor and agency of individual creators and unpacks the conditions of intermediation in the context of new industrial models of value creation, commodification, and division of labor. The empirical cases demonstrate that the implications of platforms for digital cultural production are paradoxical – while their business models lead to a centralized process of value capture, their flexible organizational forms may afford new distributed patterns of value creation.
期刊介绍:
International Journal of Cultural Studies is committed to rethinking cultural practices, processes, texts and infrastructures beyond traditional national frameworks and regional biases. The journal publishes theoretical, empirical and historical analyses that interrogate what culture means, and what culture does, across global and local scales of power and action, diverse technologies and forms of mediation, and multiple dimensions of performance, experience and identity. Dedicated to theoretical and methodological innovation in cultural research, the journal is multidisciplinary in outlook, publishing relevant contributions that integrate approaches from the social sciences, humanities, information sciences and more. International Journal of Cultural Studies publishes original research articles. The journal gives preference to papers that extend existing theory or generate new theory through interpretive engagement with empirical cases. Papers based on single country case-studies should clearly indicate and develop the broader relevance of their analyses for an international readership. The journal does not publish close readings of single texts; but it does consider critical, contextualised readings that similarly indicate and develop the broader relevance of their analyses to the field. International Journal of Cultural Studies regularly publishes special issues on urgent questions in the field as well as on specific regions, industries and practices.