Elif Birced, Ph.D.

Using qualitative methods, my research addresses the following questions:

(1) How do content creators experience and resist both platform governance and other companies' (e.g., brands, agencies) control over their creative process?

(2) How do workers, like content creators and Uber drivers, commit to low pay and precarious platform work?

(3) How do cultural intermediaries, like influencer marketers or talent agents, evaluate influence, and how do their evaluations engender unequal outcomes for content creators?

My solo- and co-authored research projects have addressed these questions by focusing on different contexts (e.g., Turkey, the US, and South Africa) and conducting pooled comparisons across multiple cases (e.g., a comparison of two groups of content creators in the US, or a comparison of Uber drivers in South Africa with Turkish YouTubers).

Below, you can find an overview of my dissertation, as well as some published, forthcoming, or under-review articles. For a complete list of my papers and book chapters, please visit this link.

Rethinking Labor Control and Resistance in the Age of Platforms

My dissertation examines transformations in control over work with the rise of platform economies, where workers no longer have in-person management to control their work. Using content creation on YouTube in Turkey as a case, I analyze how content creators make creative decisions and navigate control over their work when multiple organizations (like brands, platforms, and agencies) and consumers attempt to influence their creative process. Drawing on 60 interviews with creators and industry actors, as well as ethnographic observations, I find that control over creator labor goes beyond a platform’s algorithmic management, and it is a dynamic process in which none of the organizations, including social media platforms, brands, or influencer marketing agencies, can fully dominate the content creation process. In fact, each organization needs to continually align its business interests with the creators’ concerns regarding diversifying income streams and maintaining its authentic and relatable image in the eyes of audiences. If an organization (e.g., a brand sponsoring content) fails to do so, content creators can leverage audiences and other organizations (e.g., platforms) to resist control of their creative process. With its multi-actor focus, my dissertation contributes to multiple disciplines, including sociology, management, and media studies, by theorizing how control over work and possibilities of worker resistance are reshaped when the labor process cannot be managed by a single company’s in-person or algorithmic management.

Empowered by Consumers:

How Content Creators Use Relational Labor to Resist Labor Control

Socio-Economic Review

Researchers often discuss consumers as a means of labor control. In contrast, I ask how workers leverage consumers to resist control over their work. Focusing on sponsored content creation as a case, I explain how creators prioritize audience interests to resist sponsors’ control over their creative decisions. Using semi-structured interviews with 39 content creators and observations of a conference session, I show that the managerial practices of sponsoring brands contradict audience expectations due to the relational labor that creators perform to build a sense of community, authenticity, and trustworthiness in the eyes of audiences. Second, I document the role of part-time content creation and YouTube’s paid channel memberships in enhancing creators’ capacity to be selective with sponsorship requests and resist brand interventions that may ultimately lead to a decline in audience engagement. I extend the literature by theorizing when consumers enable or fail to enable workers to resist labor control.

Right Amount of Sex: Digital Work in the Grey Zone of Platform Governance

(with Ashley Mears & Thao Nguyen)

Work and Occupations

On platforms, workplace rules are often vaguely stated and inconsistently enforced. This article examines the labor process within the “grey zone” of platform governance, extending previous models of organizational misbehavior into digital work. We compare two groups of content creators—sex workers and viral entertainers—who earn a living by sharing pictures and videos on social media. Both strategically utilize sexual imagery to boost their visibility and income. While platforms impose restrictions on explicit content, the distinction between what is allowed and what is prohibited often remains unclear. Through 94 interviews and ethnographic research, we identify a three-step process of strategic risk-taking: edging past the rules, floodgating successful strategies, and recuperating after punishment. Ultimately, the “grey zone” allows workers to test and occasionally break rules, engaging in activities that benefit the platform by keeping both users and creators engaged. The concept of the grey zone advances the sociology of work by linking the digital labor process to value production in the platform economy. In other words, grey zones perpetuate the interests of capital by engaging both creators and users on platforms.

All One Million Views Are Not Equally Worthy:

Assessing Influence in the Creator Economy

(Revise & Resubmit, Second Round)

From bookers to talent managers, cultural intermediaries have acted as significant brokers by matching talent or products with the right audience or client. In doing that, their evaluation of the “right fit” has engendered social consequences such as reproducing class hierarchies. I examine how cultural intermediaries’ evaluation practices are reshaped in the age of social media. Focusing on influencer marketing agencies in Turkey, I answer how agencies assess influence when selecting the “right content creator” for different marketing projects of brands. I draw on semi-structured interviews with 60 individuals like talent managers, influencer marketers, and content creators to analyze agencies’ decision-making processes and consequences. I also conducted ten weeks of participant observation at an influencer marketing agency in Turkey. Despite the increasing availability of real-time audience engagement and reach metrics, I show that influence assessment becomes a relational process in which metrics are selectively employed and interpreted through a class lens. I argue that agencies, as cultural intermediaries, create covert barriers by reinscribing class-based cultural distinctions in the age of social media.