Richard Florida’s best selling book ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’ (2002) set out the blue print for an urban revival which was to capitalise on the economic prosperity of young workers in metropolitan areas. He defined a fast-growing, well-paid and well-educated (Florida, 2002) section of the workforce as the creative class, with members commonly working in industries such as technology, journalism, the arts, entertainment, finance and more. According to Florida, the creative class centre around an ethos of individuality, creativity and individual merit (Florida, 2002) while their affinity to quirky and accepting places meant that towns and businesses adopt strategies aimed to attract creative people (Florida, 2002). During the seminar for this session, we discussed the reason behind this idea being so popular. We concluded that Florida’s work was exactly what neoliberal policy makers wanted to hear, with the creative workforce representing an ideal vehicle to ‘pave the way for a post-welfare era’ (McRobbie, 2018: 35). Almost 20 years since his book was published, Florida’s optimistic world view of a civilisation of young workers defining a new social and economic geography (Florida, 2002) has not quite unfolded how he predicted.

To bring in some context, after the 1997 election of Britain’s New Labour government, the term ‘creative industries’ was adopted to account for the jobs commonly filled by members of the creative class. This new set of ‘ideas and policies privileging the capture of collective creativity as intellectual property’ (De Peuter, 2011: 418), is what brought about a new creative economy. Although falling in line with Florida’s ideas, traditional ‘cradle-to-grave jobs have been outpaced by non-standard work’ (De Peuter, 2011: 418), resulting in a landscape where labour precarity and job uncertainty have become an increasingly defining feature (De Peuter, 2011). Florida also failed to account for the fact that the self-romanticism of creativity would be taken advantage of by businesses (McRobbie, 2018), meaning the idea of work without protection is sold as ‘exciting compensation’ (McRobbie, 2018: 35) for being a member of the creative class.

(Russo, 2019)

So if the reality for many people working in the creative industries is job insecurity, where are the highly educated and well paid workers (Florida, 2002)? This begs another question to do with the diversity of Florida’s creative class, which seems to represent a ‘new assemblage of the middle class’ (McRobbie, 2018: 35). For those who aren’t white, middle class workers, there is an additional labour struggle that must take place to battle against prejudice before getting into interesting work (McRobbie, 2018). Florida’s ideas have been labelled elitist and blamed for the rich getting richer (Wainwright, 2017) and when taking into account the growing precedence of the post-fordist economic model (De Peuter, 2011) which sees businesses aim to access ‘labour like water’ (De Peuter, 2011: 419), you can begin to see why.

As an idea, the creative class is a pleasant thought where like minded individuals drive the economy via the development of intellectual property. While for some people this is the case, the reality is that the creative economy is a ‘neoliberal idiom’ (De Peuter, 2011: 418) which takes accountability and responsibility away from big businesses and places it on the shoulders of the individual.

References:

De Peuter, G., 2011. Creative economy and labor precarity: A contested convergence. Journal of communication inquiry, 35(4), pp.417-425.

Florida, R. (2002) The rise of the creative class (Vol. 9). New York: Basic books.

McRobbie, A. (2018) Be creative: Making a living in the new culture industries. John Wiley & Sons.

Russo, C. (2019) ‘The Creative Class: Big Business Builders’ [image] Available at: https://www.therobinreport.com/the-creative-class-big-business-builders/ [Accessed: 22 November]

Wainwright, O. (2017) ‘‘Everything is gentrification now’: but Richard Florida isn’t sorry’. Guardian. 26 October 2017. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/oct/26/gentrification-richard-florida-interview-creative-class-new-urban-crisis [Accessed: 21 November 2020]. 

During a time where the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic is forcing people to stay at home and utilise digital platforms as a means to get by; the ready-to-hand and participatory nature of online virtual communities (Cavalcante, 2015) seems to take on an even greater importance than usual. Cited in Parks (2011), Rheingold believes that the ‘popularity of online communities is a response to the hunger for community that has followed the disintegration of traditional communities’ (p. 107).  In accordance with this idea, virtual spaces can act as an effective replacement for real social circles, carrying expectations of sociality, conviviality, empathetic emotional support and meaningful connection to others (Parks, 2011). These characteristics mean that online communities are particularly important to socially marginalised groups, as they have the potential to ‘improve well-being and provide a safe space to explore and manage identity’ (Smiths, Wickes, Underwood, 2015).

Social networking platform TikTok has proved to be popular within the transgender community, being hailed in the media as the ‘Gen Z tool for LGBTQ+ education’ (Raza- Sheikh, 2020). The short-form videos on the platform allow for a lot of creativity and a quick exchange of messages between users, falling in line with the three social affordances of membership, personal expression and connection that is required to form a virtual community online (Parks, 2011). Videos on the platform can be grouped into categories based on the hashtag assigned to it, making it easy to search out particular communities and contribute to stream of content. Some of the popular hashtags in the TikTok transgender community include #trans, #transgender, #transbeauty and #transisbeatiful.

(Criddle, 2020)

Cavalcante (2015) outlines how transgender people often turn to digital media to create a life which is consistent with their desires. In the case of TikTok, the platform takes on the roll of a virtual counter public which acts to furnish ‘feelings of belonging and ideological affiliation’ (Cavalcante, 2015). However, despite offering a safe space for many users, the platform has come under criticism for its censorship polices which seem to unfairly target members of the LGBTQ+ community (Criddle, 2020). Trans users have complained about their videos being taken down or having the sound removed without any explanation, while a study from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) revealed that LGBTQ+ hashtags were being shadow banned to make them more difficult to find (Badham, 2020).

This is extremely problematic for marginalised communities on the platform, who use TikTok as a form of escapism from negative societal views. By censoring and shadow-banning content, the platform’s policies ‘enact and reinforce a hegemonic process that actively contributes to the legitimation of the social order’ (Chunn and Lamcombe in Olszanowski, 2014). Olszanowski points out that censorship on social media platforms contributes to how sub-alternative communities are ‘built and maintained’ (2014: 85), therefore showing TikTok’s responsibility to make sure users on the platform are not subjected to the same discrimination which may meet them in everyday life.

References:

Badham, R. (2020) ‘LGBTQ+ content censored by TikTok’. GScene. 9 September 2020.  Available at: https://www.gscene.com/news/lgbtq-content-censored-by-tiktok/ [Accessed: November 9 2020]

Cavalcante, A. (2016) “I Did It All Online:” Transgender identity and the management of everyday life. Critical studies in media communication, 33(1), pp.109-122.

Criddle, C. (2020) ‘Transgender users accuse TikTok of censorship’. BBC. 12 February 2020. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51474114 [Accessed: 9 November 2020]

Criddle, C. (2020) ‘Transgender users accuse TikTok of censorship’. BBC. [Image] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51474114 [Accessed: 9 November 2020]

Olszanowski, M. (2014) Feminist self-imaging and Instagram: Tactics of circumventing sensorship. Visual Communication Quarterly, 21(2), pp.83-95.

Parks, M.R. (2011) Social network sites as virtual communities. A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites, pp.105-123.

Raza-Sheikh, z. (2020) ‘It’s here and queer: how TikTok became the Gen Z tool of LGBTQ+ education’. Gay Times. 23 October 2020. Available at: https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/originals/its-here-and-queer-how-tiktok-became-the-gen-z-tool-of-lgbtq-education/ [Accessed: 9 November]

Smith, N., Wickes, R. and Underwood, M. (2015) Managing a marginalised identity in pro-anorexia and fat acceptance cybercommunities. Journal of Sociology, 51(4), pp.950-967.

K Pop stan accounts have been gaining a lot of positive publicity in recent times for their potential to rally as force for political activism (Bruner, 2020; Reddy, 2020). But who are they and what have they achieved? To put it briefly, ‘a K-pop stan is simply an enthusiastic and active fan of Korean pop music’ (Bedingfield, 2020) who show their support via social media platforms, most famously on Twitter. However, this online community has been making headlines for its involvement in political issues, namely the Black Lives Matter movement, by rallying in vast numbers to flood online platforms with messages of their choice. Dean (2005) is a sceptic of the circulation of political messages through social media, stating that ‘messages are more likely to get lost as mere contributions to the circulation of content’ (2005: 53). Contributions made to the info stream are said to have a ‘subjective registration effect’ (Dean, 2005: 60), where the fantasy of participation sees technology function as a fetish that disguises passivity and makes the user believe they are being politically active (Dean, 2005). This is the phenomenon of ‘technological fetishism’ (p. 60).

Dean makes an interesting point about the spreading of messages on social media, insofar that it questions ‘the democratic potential of computer networking’ (Dahlberg, 2015: 1) by suggesting ‘the frantic activity of the fetish works to prevent actual action’ (Dean, 2005: 60). However, her thesis is now fifteen years old and it’s possible that she did not foresee how users on contemporary media platforms are able to harness the power of the fetish ‘to amplify messages about injustice’ (Brown et al, 2017: 1841). During the Black Live Matter (BLM) protests, sparked by the death of George Floyd, the Dallas Police Department asked people to ‘share videos of “illegal activity protests” through the iWatch Dallas app’ (Reddy, 2020). K-Pop fans flooded the app with fan-recorded videos and memes in an effort to stop protesters’ actions being tracked , shuttling down its ability to function and rendering it useless.

Due to technical difficulties iWatch Dallas app will be down temporarily. pic.twitter.com/zksA1hkVhV

— Dallas Police Dept (@DallasPD) May 31, 2020

(Dallas Police Department, 2020)

In this instance, the K-Pop fans harnessed the technological fetish to achieve an effect similar to a Denial of Service (DDoS) cyber attack, showing how quantity of messages can prevail over quality. This means of activism, where a large amount of the messages in the info stream (Dean, 2005) were not related to BLM at all (Reddy, 2020), is in stark contrast to the #SayHerName campaign which made ‘intersectional mobilisation part of its agenda’ (Brown et al, 2017: 1832). Where that campaign specifically intended to ‘challenge the cultural domination of a group’ (2017: 1834), creating a legitimate space for debate and ‘leading democratic politicians to invoke the importance of intersectionality’ (p. 1841), the K-Pop method mostly ‘drowns out’ (BBC, 2020) messages.

While in the case of the Dallas iWatch app this can prove useful, if anti-racism is to become a mere fact of fandom with K-Pop stan accounts being labelled in the media as forces of social justice, it may make it harder for Black fans in these online spaces to feel as if they’re being heard. From this viewpoint, Dean’s stance that the circulation of content ‘secures and protects the space of official politics’ (2005: 61) seems to particularly resonate. Wherever there are legitimate attempts to spread awareness of injustices in society, it should be encouraged, however, intersectionality is critical to black and minority politics (Brown et al, 2017) and without true interrogation of the power structures at play, messages run the risk of being purely noise.

References:

BBC (2020) ‘K-pop fans drown out #WhiteLivesMatter hashtag’. BBC. June 4 2020. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52922035 [Accessed 3 November 2020].

Bedingfield, W. (2020) ‘How K-Pop Stans Became an Activist Force to Be Reckoned With’. Wired. June 25 2020. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/how-k-pop-stans-became-an-activist-force-to-be-reckoned-with/ [Accessed: 2 November 2020]

Brown, M., Ray, R., Summers, E. and Fraistat, N. (2017) ‘# SayHerName: A case study of intersectional social media activism’. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(11), pp.1831-1846.

Bruner, R. (2020) ‘How K-Pop Fans Actually Work as a Force for Political Activism in 2020’. TIME. July 25 2020. Available at: https://time.com/5866955/k-pop-political/ [Accessed: 2 November 2020]

Dahlberg, L. (2015) ‘Which social media? A call for contextualization’. Social Media+ Society, 1(1).

Dallas Police Department (2020) June 1. Available at: https://twitter.com/DallasPD/status/1267236088755695618 [Accessed: 2 November 2020].

Dean, J. (2005) ‘Communicative capitalism: Circulation and the foreclosure of politics’. Cultural Politics, 1(1), pp.51-74.

Reddy, S. (2020) ‘K-pop fans emerge as a powerful force in US protests’. BBC. June 11 2020. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-52996705 [Accessed: 2 November 2020]

The proliferation of digital technology has meant that we now live in a world which is fully submerged in digital culture. This ‘state of affairs after the initial upheaval caused by comperization’ (Cramer, 2015: 14), is what Cramer refers to as the post-digital (2015). During the seminar this week, we contested the idea of technology being neutral, agreeing with Feenberg who states it ’embodies the values of a particular industrial civilisation’ (2002: 5). An example of this can be found in the low-hanging bridges on Long Island, which according to Winner ‘were deliberately designed to achieve a particular social effect (1986: 123), by denying  access to buses which the lower classes and black community relied on at the time. Winner believed that this intentionally resulted in a better experience for the white middle class who were free to enjoy the roads on their own (1986). Despite being designed in a pre-digital world, the low-hanging bridges show how machines, structures and systems can come to embody forms of authority and power.

(Larvalsubjects, 2018)

As digital technology has become increasingly intertwined into our everyday lives, it is important to reflect on how, where and why certain power dynamics present themselves in modern digital technology. There is a case to suggest that protocols, algorithms and AI decision making are the digital versions of the Long Island bridges, with a productive power to explain and produce the sociopolitical logics of contemporary civilisation. This becomes particularly pertinent when considering the growth of the scored society (McCann, Hall & Warin, 2018), whereby ‘access to public and private services are increasingly being mediated through algorithms’ (McCann, Hall & Warin, 2018) which uses personal data to decide whether certain digital profiles match the requirements for access. A growing trend of algorithms granting or denying access to services is evident in the health care industry, where patients are prioritised for surgical procedures based on their data profile. In theory, ‘the algorithm would help health systems allocate resources to achieve optimal health outcomes’ (Owens & Walker, 2020: 1327), however, this method has been revealed to reinforce health inequalities and produce racist decisions (McCann, Hall & Warin, 2018).

(Bloomberg Quicktake: Now, 2020)

A new study of kidney patients in Boston is one of the first to document the harm that can be caused when race is factored into algorithms. It examined ‘a widely used but controversial formula for estimating kidney function that by design assigns Black people healthier scores’ (Simonite, 2020), resulting in a third of Black patients being placed in a less severe health category than the white patients using the same formula (Simonite, 2020). In this instance, race was explicitly factored into the code to smooth out statistical differences in their data, however, other medical algorithms ‘do not use race as a predictor’ (Owens & Walker, 2020) in their models and still produce discriminatory results.

If we revisit the low-hanging bridges, a main criticism of Winner’s idea came from Joerges (1999), who stated that the bridges were not designed with the intention of being racist, highlighting that buses were excluded from those roads anyway (1999). It could be argued that if not done intentionally, the bridges simply mirrored the embedded racism in society. This relates to how algorithms digitally reproduce biases which have existed long before the technology itself, showing a crucial need to design them with actively anti-racist principles at their core.

References:

Bloomberg Quicktake: Now. (2020) ‘Are Algorithms Racist?’ [online video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=971CFnYrBgw [Accessed: 27 October]

Cramer F. (2015) What Is ‘Post-digital’?. In: Berry D.M., Dieter M. (eds) Postdigital Aesthetics. London: Palgrave Macmillan

Feenberg, A. (2002) Transforming Technology: a Critical theory revisited. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Joerges, B. (1999) Do politics have artefacts?. Social studies of science, 29(3), pp.411-431.

Larvalsubjects (2018) ‘Do Artefacts Have Politics?’ [online image] Available at: https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2018/07/12/do-artifacts-have-politics/ [Accessed: 26 October 2020]

McCann, D., Hall, M., Warin, R. (2018) ‘Controlled By Calculations? Power and accountability in the Digital Economy’ in New Economics Foundation. [PDF] Available at: https://neweconomics.org/uploads/files/Controlled-by-calculations.pdf [Accessed: 25 October 2020]

Owens, K. and Walker, A. (2020) Those designing healthcare algorithms must become actively anti-racist. Nature medicine, 26(9), pp.1327-1328.

Simonite, T. (2020) ‘How an Algorithm Blocked Kidney Transplants to Black Patients’. Wired. [online] Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/how-algorithm-blocked-kidney-transplants-black-patients/ [Accessed: 25 October 2020]

Winner, L (1986) ‘Do Artefacts Have Politics?’ in The Whale and the Reactor: a Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.