Welcome to the Unregulated Wild, Wild, Digital West

Abstract

An impasse between Hollywood and Silicon Valley over streaming rights to home entertainment has created a power vacuum, prompting a number of virtual entrepreneurs to look for alternative ways to monetize online media. This essay examines the "transmedia" industries and multichannel networks as transitional workspaces — innovative new forms of industrial organization, emerging forms of creative work, new technologies and economic models, and creative relations among consumers, marketers, and producers. A number of cultural industries scholars are engaged in productive critiques of digital media labor practices. 2 In contrast, humanities-based critical and cultural studies scholars tend to ignore the economic realities of web-based production, focusing instead on the unpaid (albeit volunteer) labor of fans. Far fewer consider the more widespread, invisible labor associated with the wholesale data mining of consumer preferences that are being sold en masse to advertisers by major internet technology companies like Google and Facebook. Even fewer explore the paradox of YouTube talent partners, who eschew deals with Hollywood to avoid creative interference but tolerate Faustian deals with Google to profit from surveillance-based advertising.