2000word media work

Article

Digital work: Self-branding and social capital in the freelance knowledge economy

Alessandro Gandini Middlesex University, UK

Abstract Existing research shows that self-branding in the knowledge economy is a key promotional device for the pursuit of self-realization in a context that reifies entrepreneurialism as the main ideological stance. However, there is still reluctance to fully acknowledge the processes of sociality that constitute self-branding practice. While the relationship between branding and the affective dynamics of social production of value fostered by the diffusion of Web 2.0 is widely acknowledged in the literature, there still seems to be a lack of understanding of the extent to which self-branding relates to social relationships in the production of socialized value for individuals. The study of self- branding practices across digital freelance professions in the knowledge economy reveals how social media has come to represent a working tool that serves the curation of a professional image and the management of social relationships via the enactment of performative practices of sociality, which exist around a shared notion of reputation as value. Here, self-branding becomes an investment in social relationships with expected return for the acquisition of a reputation. This substantially equates self-branding with what social theory calls social capital, being instrumental to secure employment in the freelance-based labour market of the digital knowledge economy.

Keywords Digital media, digital work, freelance, knowledge work, reputation, self-branding, social capital

Introduction

The notions of personal and self-branding over the past few decades have become central concepts

in the knowledge economy, indicating those processes of marketization of the self for the

Corresponding author:

Alessandro Gandini, Department of Media, Middlesex University, The Burroughs, Hendon, London, NW4 4BT, UK.

Email: [email protected]

Marketing Theory 2016, Vol. 16(1) 123–141

ª The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permission:

sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1470593115607942

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empowerment and professional success of the individual. Existing marketing research acknowl-

edges that self-branding in the knowledge economy is a device for self-promotion for the pursuit of

self-realization in a context that reifies entrepreneurialism as the main ideological stance and

criticizes how this becomes as an explicit form of labour in post-Fordist capitalism (Hearn, 2008).

However, there still seems to be a reluctance to fully acknowledge the extent to which self-

branding relates to social relationships in the production of social value for individuals.

The relationship between branding and value is widely acknowledged in the literature. Brands

are commonly defined as cultural, ideological and sociological objects which do not only

mediate cultural meaning but operate as ideological referents that shape cultural rituals within

societal dynamics (Schroder, 2009). With the diffusion of Web 2.0 and an ever-more partici-

patory culture, branding got subsumed into a dynamic of social production of value relying

extensively on affect (Arvidsson, 2011). How this applies to personal branding remains, how-

ever, somewhat overlooked. In particular, current marketing research fails to fully acknowledge

the processes of sociality that constitute self-branding and how these construct value for

knowledge workers. While consumer research has seen a relatively recent narrative turn

acknowledging how identity is discursively produced in the form of an identity work that

accompanies current understandings of consumption (Parsons, 2010), and there is abundant

literature on consumer work, ‘prosumption’ and how the immaterial labour of consumers con-

tributes to the value of a market offering (Cova and Dalli, 2009; Dujarier, 2014), the idea of self-

branding as the construction of a public and social identity remains poorly understood in relation

to contemporary processes of socialization of value, and particularly to how this relates to the

marketization – and the management – of social relationships across professional contexts that

make intensive use of social networking sites.

This article aims to fill this gap by looking at social media usage for self-branding purposes

among freelance knowledge workers in two different European urban contexts, London and Milan.

Knowledge work today is converging towards a digital and freelance-based economy (Cappelli

and Keller, 2013) where social media has come to represent a working tool that serves the curation

of a professional image and the management of social relationships for purposes of professional

success and career progression. The study of self-branding practices in this context shows how

social media activity is made of what may be seen as performative practices of sociality that exist

around a shared notion of reputation as the cultural conception of value. Thus, is here argued, self-

branding becomes a form of ‘digital work’ as an investment in social relationships with an

expected return, which points at the acquisition of a reputation. This substantially equates self-

branding with what social theory calls ‘social capital’ (Granovetter, 1973, 1985; Lin, 1999,

2002) as to indicate the determinant element for successful job search and the production of

socialized value across the freelance-based labour market of the digital knowledge economy.

The approach adopted in this article aligns with those believing that social theory-informed

critiques of marketing processes have the potential to generate valuable advances in marketing

theory (Østergaard and Fitchett, 2012). Self-branding as here evidenced combines the curation of

an online branded persona with the strategic management of social relationships, pointing at the

acquisition of a reputational capital which may be mobilized and accessed by professionals

embedded within a network of personal contacts (Granovetter, 1973, 1985). Reputation represents

the form taken by social capital within digitalized environments, where social interaction most

often occurs at a distance and with a lesser extent of co-presence and proximity, being an

instrumental feature in securing employment in a freelance-based economy as it represents the

indigenous, cultural conception of value shared by participants in this labour market.

124 Marketing Theory 16(1)

The use of social media serves the aim of engineering the construction of a reputation through

the use of personal branding techniques. This enables new forms of managerially steered sociality

that are based upon the fact that digital technologies and social media allow reputation to become

tangible via a number of different – and more or less reliable – indicators, rendering it the most

important asset for the individual brand. I will henceforth conceptualize this socio-economic

context as a reputation economy (Hearn, 2010), as it is reputation that permits the allocation of

unequal informational resources in this individualized labour market by functioning as the inter-

mediary that transforms social relationships into value.

Self-branding and the rise of a freelance economy

The notion of personal or self-branding became popular in the late 1990s evolving out of self-help

and self-improvement methods that could be managed for corporate success (Peters, 1999). This

was originally conceived as a process of self-packaging of identity substantially delinked from

skills, motivations and interests and centred on the crafting of a unique and authentic image to be

sold on the labour market (Fisher-Roffer, 2000; Lair et al., 2005; Peters, 1999). Self-branding got

rapidly involved in the dialectic between production and consumption over the Internet (Moor,

2003), quickly converging towards a broader dimension that markets the branding of reflexivity

skills for the purpose of creating a brand promise (McNally and Speak, 2002; Wee and Brooks,

2010).

This article builds upon this premise to embrace Hearn’s critical approach of the branded self

(2008, 2010, 2011) that considers the reflexive project of the self a distinct form of labour under

post-Fordist capitalism (Hearn, 2008). Hearn sustains that when promotionalism, intended as the

winning of attention or emotion, comes to be the dominant mode of communication over the past

few decades (Wernick, 1991), the construction of a branded persona becomes necessary practice in

contemporary marketing regimes and represents a distinct kind of labour that involves an out-

wardly directed process of self-construction (Hearn, 2008). This, she argues, is particularly central

in the context of the knowledge economy, which fully embodies the ethos of post-Fordist capit-

alism by reifying an ideological representation of entrepreneurship in a socio-economic dynamic

where social relationships are central to value production. This brings to what she calls the

‘socialized worker’, drawing from the lexicon of the Italian Autonomist Marxists, as the product of

the reflexive project of the self as a process of immaterial labour heavily reliant on the valorization

of subjectivity (Hearn, 2011).

This nonetheless suggests two still unexplored implications. In a broader perspective, the

marketing literature acknowledges the relationship between branding and value in the form of

a social production of value relying extensively on affect, where value is not so much

produced through proprietary resources and via commodity exchange; rather, it unfolds from

the periphery and boundaries of organizational practice, where surplus can increasingly be

found in non-measurable intangible assets among which branding remains central (Arvidsson,

2011). However, despite a significant body of critical media research examining online

practices of affectivity and celebrity construction through networked and affective publics

(Boyd, 2006, 2011; Papacharissi, 2015; Marwick, 2013; Marwick and Boyd, 2011), the extent

to which social media, where the self is the device around which not just individual but

social activity revolves for a variety of purposes that mix play and work (Hogan, 2010; Uski

and Lampinen, 2014), intervenes in contemporary practices of professional self-branding still

remains overlooked.

Gandini 125

A second perspective concerns what self-branding practice is, for a knowledge industry that

converges towards a digital and freelance-based economy based on a socialized worker; a worker

for whom, centrally, value consists in the marketing of an entrepreneurial ethos (Bandinelli and

Arvidsson, 2012) in a context where social relationships historically represent the main sources for

the procurement of employment opportunities (Grugulis and Stoyanova, 2011, 2012; Lee 2011).

The combination of these aspects determines that, in studying the relationship between branding

and socially produced value at the level of the individual, we should no longer limit self-branding

to a simple device for self-realization but also see it as strategic work pointing at the acquisition of

economic return via the management of social relationships – which is actually what social theory

calls social capital (Granovetter, 1973, 1985; Lin, 1999, 2002).

The reason of this claim resides in the fact that the digital knowledge economy is now con-

stituted of various forms of online interaction that enable new practices of sociality based on

publicity and affect, which intermediate branding and value via a shared notion of reputation. This

idea is based upon Wittel’s (2001) notion of the diffusion of a network sociality that indicates the

proliferation of non-communitarian modalities of network interaction over the Internet that are

peculiar to urban post-industrial milieus, where networking stands out as the main social practice

of value production. Self-branding in the digital knowledge economy does exactly this, by

enabling new practices of sociality that do not remain limited to the branding of the self but act as

marketing work that combines networking with the management of social relationships. This

renders self-branding contiguous to the definition of social capital brought along by Lin (1999,

2002) as an investment in social relationships with an expected return, in a context where job

search heavily relies on networks of contacts as outlined in the classic study of strong and weak ties

by Granovetter (1973, 1985).

The equating of self-branding practice to the construction of social capital is ever more central

for the understanding of self-marketing in the contemporary digital knowledge economy. Beals

(2008), echoing the pioneering essay by Malone and Laubacher (1998), shows how marketing

oneself is essential in a context increasingly made up of ‘businesses of one’ and an entrepreneu-

rially oriented, growingly freelance workforce professionally active online. Alternatives to the

archetypal model of full-time regular employment now seem to be prevalent and wide-ranging in

the knowledge economy, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. A recent survey

conducted by the Freelancers Union in partnership with Elance-oDesk, a major digital marketplace

for contractors and freelancers worldwide, shows how 53 million Americans were generating some

or their entire income earned in 2013 from freelancing, making up 34% of the entire American

workforce. The report argues that ‘the way we work is changing’ and ‘gone are the days of the

traditional 9-to-5. We’re entering a new era of work – project-based, independent, exciting,

potentially risky, and rich with opportunities’ (Horowitz and Rosati, 2014). A typology of free-

lance professions is drawn here, distinguishing between: (a) independent contractors, meaning

traditional freelancers; (b) ‘moonlighters’, meaning professionals with a day job doing freelance

work in the evening or spare time; (c) ‘diversified workers’, who are professionals with multiple

sources of income earned from a mix of freelance and dependent, often part time, work; (d)

temporary workers, who are individuals with a single employer, contract or job with a temporary

status, employed as freelancers and (e) freelance business owners, who are self-employed entre-

preneurs with one to five employees who consider themselves as freelance professionals (Horowitz

and Rosati, 2014).

In the United Kingdom, D’Arcy and Gardiner (2014) reveal a similar picture, with the number

of self-employed growing from 650,000 to 4,500,000 in the past 5 years. It is estimated that the

126 Marketing Theory 16(1)

freelance economy is worth £21 billion to the UK economy in added value (IPSE, 2011). At a

European level, data show how freelancing is efficiently resilient to the economic crisis as it

remained steady at around 15% of the overall employment figures despite the rise of unemploy-

ment rates (EEOR, 2010). Freelancing also seemingly emerges as a favourable option to live off in

crisis times, being sometimes a forced condition fostered by necessity or as a consequence of

downsizing (Lopez-Jimenez, 2013) but also increasingly often a strategic switch. The overall

tendency seems to be that of looking towards freelancing with increasing interest, as 45% of

European working citizens declare thinking positively of the idea of a freelance career (EEOR,

2010).

The rise of a freelance workforce is arguably the consequence of a long-term neo-liberal

push for project-based employment and budget shrinking that is incidentally justified by

the actual nature of the tasks requested in the job market, as work is essentially organized

around projects for which organizational arrangements and budgets vary from time to time

(Christopherson, 2002, 2008). Employment in the knowledge economy historically consists of

portfolio careers (Platman, 2004) where ‘you are as good as your last job’ (Blair, 2001), and a

successful job search depends upon the worker’s capacity to manage one’s own personal

networks of contacts. This is entertained via recursive networking practices for the acquisition

of social capital to keep the flow of work alive in an increasingly freelance-based environ-

ment, where relationships need to be constantly refreshed and maintained (Grugulis and

Stoyanova, 2011, 2012; Randle et al., 2015). Lee (2011) underlines how such practices also

enable exclusionary dynamics that favour individuals with high levels of cultural and social

capital over others. However, there is scarce acknowledgement on this side of the fact that

social capital actually consists in the construction of a branded persona. Professions in the

knowledge economy are connoted by an eminently entrepreneurial trait (Dex et al., 2000),

which represents an ideological stance that promotes the image of cultural professionals as

new economic pioneers (McRobbie, 2004).

This overall entrepreneurial ideology, however, conflicts with the actual working condi-

tions that permeate the knowledge and creative industries. Phenomena of low-paid or unpaid

labour (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2013) are frequently reported as epitomes of a context,

where the elements of passion and ‘coolness’ give meaning to jobs and often cover for long

hours of work, anxiety and stress, alienation and unfair pay (Arvidsson et al., 2010; Ross

2009). This stream of research is substantially based on ideas coming from the Autonomist

Marxist literature, as it sustains that the central element in this process is the valorization of

subjectivity, which configures a socialized dimension of labour that Gill and Pratt (2008)

define as a ‘social factory’.

These processes of socialized value production focused on identity and the self are propelled

even further by social media activity. Digital media has come to be used as a professional tool in a

managerial logic that is instrumentally pointed towards the curation of a professional image,

the cultivation of social relationships and the construction of a professional reputation, which

seems to be an increasingly determinant aspect for professional success and career progres-

sion in a fragmented and highly individualized labour market (Randle et al., 2015). The

junction of these instances detaches contemporary self-branding from the original corporate

notion of the late 1990s to embrace a networked and socialized perspective; one that seems to

be epitomized by freelance workers in the digital knowledge economy, who embody an

entrepreneurial ethos and transform this into value through socially produced networked

branding techniques.

Gandini 127

Research design and methods

The empirical research took place in the cities of London and Milan, both internationally

recognized hubs for the knowledge and creative economy (Musterd and Murie, 2010). It is

made up of N ¼ 80 interviews (38 in London, 42 in Milan) with a broad range of multiskilled

professionals including illustrators, communication designers, audiovisual producers, media

workers, digital consultants, and strategists, all working on a freelance basis in different

sectors of the knowledge and creative industries. The choice of London was determined by its

status as a city which was widely studied in the past decade, not only as the centre of the

media and creative industries in the United Kingdom (DCMS, 1998) but also as the hallmark

of the narrative, brought along in the early 2000s, which particularly incentivized entrepre-

neurial activity by culture professionals (McRobbie, 2002, 2004). Also, as previously

observed, a recent significant rise in freelancing can be witnessed in the British economy

(D’Arcy and Gardiner, 2014) thus providing a further element of interest for the purpose of

this work.

Alternatively, the choice of Milan represents an attempt to examine a context that is not

frequently studied at the international level, one which presents significant elements of

interest for the case in point. Milan, popularly known as the economic capital of Italy, is

paradigmatic for a country which presents a diffusion of self-employment and small and

medium enterprises (SMEs) that is largely above the European average, especially within

design and fashion, which are strongly at the heart of the Italian industrial structure (Barbieri,

1999; EEOR, 2010). Italian independent workers file under the name ‘partite IVA’, a term

that indicates both the tax code used to send invoices during self-employment and a regis-

tration code for self-employed status. The number of self-employed individuals in Italy is

significantly high (around 25%) if compared to the EU average (17%). This number com-

prises a variety of independent workers but also ‘bogus’ self-employment, for which figures

are still difficult to collect, hidden among the different types of atypical contracts in force in

the current labour market (EEOR, 2010; Ranci, 2012).

The logic of this research was to undertake a qualitative network analysis, using snowball

sampling to access and immerse into the professional social networks of the interviewees. Despite

being affected by known shortcomings, particularly a potential homophily bias – which was

limited, adopting what Stuart and Sorenson (2007) suggest, by establishing a bond of trust between

the researcher and the interviewee in order to know as much as possible of the dimensions along

which actors prefer to match with others in the networks considered – snowball sampling is fre-

quently used in social network analysis (Carrington et al., 2005), as it is particularly useful for the

study of social capital across highly relational environments and to also provide a certain degree of

randomness (Biernacki and Waldorf, 1981).

Anonymity was granted to participants in all phases of the research. Starting from five

informants who acted as gatekeepers, interviewees were required to provide names of their

own professional contacts; specifically, those whom the interviewee considered high ranking

in their professional domain as well as whom the interviewee would seek out for career

advice. The interview setting consented to deeply make sense of the qualitative dimension of

social networking in a freelance environment, pointing towards an understanding of the

cultural meanings of professional networks and contacts. The response rate and participation

acceptance were approximately 50% of the overall 163 people contacted for the purposes of

the research.

128 Marketing Theory 16(1)

Digital work: Self-branding as social capital

Yeah, I mean, I am a brand, you know . . . . (Digital strategist, 41, London, female)

The study involved 38 freelance, London-based professionals within the age range 28–60 with a

perfect gender balance (19 men and 19 women). Among them, 29 of 38 participants have a pro-

fessional Twitter account, 36 of 38 have a LinkedIn profile, 5 of whom have more than 500 con-

nections and 9 of 38 interviewees have a professional blog. In Milan, the sample is made of 42

freelancers within an age range 24–55, with 25 men and 17 women. Among them, 30 of 42 parti-

cipants have a Twitter account largely used for professional reasons, 38 of 42 have a LinkedIn

account, 12 of whom have more than 500 connections and 17 of 42 have a professional blog.

In the Milanese network, all interviewees apart from one are Italian. In London, there is a more

diverse mix of geographical origins, with 21 participants of British provenience and 17 participants

from other areas of Europe, the United States, Australia and China. Almost all interviewees in both

contexts attained an academic degree related to their working discipline, obtained in the fields of

design, arts, media and communication, and would be largely considered to have a middle-class

background, with some also having a history of entrepreneurship within the family. An average

gross annual income of £38,257 is reported in London, while in Milan income is reported at an

average €32,487. In both cases, these amounts are almost equally distributed between age groups

and genders but also still very much polarized, with a few earning considerably well and many

struggling at the lower end of the scale, often leaning on familial support or previous savings.

Nonetheless, although income is admittedly unstable for the majority of participants, economic

compensation does not seem to be a distinctive priority, rather a basic need, as they consider

irregular revenues somewhat normal:

Income kind of varies a lot . . . The really difficult thing, which I think a lot of freelancers find

themselves in, is how much to charge for your own time. What do I charge? I mean, I want to be

respected in the field, I think I’m a professional in the field . . . And you can get free jobs like a gate to

have other jobs in in the future. (Arts professional, 34, London, male)

The use of digital platforms for these professionals constitutes a widely diffused and almost

totalizing self-branding activity. The large majority of interviewees believe social media activity

is very important or important for their professional success, while only a minority considers social

media practice as scarcely useful or useless. Twitter and LinkedIn are the most utilized platforms,

while Facebook (though with some exceptions) is largely perceived as a private social network.

Frequency of usage varies significantly, from more than one posting of content a day to no less

than one posting a week. Overall, social media is approached, managed and utilized as a shop win-

dow that serves to find or be found, being visible on a 24/7 basis. Social media presence is instru-

mental for searchability and is detrimental for credibility when absent:

LinkedIn is like the professional Facebook, isn’t it? It’s Facebook for professional people. I think it’s

ok, I think it’s useful if you look for a full time job, and for looking for information about what people

do. That’s what I do, if I meet somebody I’ll look at their LinkedIn profile. People all the time contact

me on LinkedIn for work . . . People I’ve never met. (Copywriter, 53, London, male)

–

Social media is fundamental, not simply for direct advantages, I don’t generally get work directly

from Facebook or LinkedIn . . . But it’s true that if I have to meet someone, I will look at the social

Gandini 129

networks. Maybe we are meeting because someone recommended you, or I met you somewhere, but

social media is a portfolio and I want to know how you work. Through social media I look for

information and I use it as a shop window, also on my side. If I have to work with you and I can’t find

you, I won’t hire you. (Communication consultant, 24, Milan, male)

Among those who do not have an established social media presence, a minority in the sample,

there is a general understanding of the growing relevance of such instruments, paired up with a vague

concern for privacy issues. Essentially, those who do not use social media enact a strictly dualistic

separation between offline and online contacts – considered as separate environments. On the

contrary, those with an established social media presence adopt a strategic approach to digital

resources. For the majority of interviewees, there is no distinction between offline and online con-

tacts. A clear sense of continuity and interdependence emerges between the offline and the online

realms from a professional perspective, inasmuch as both lead into job opportunities and the fuelling

of word-of-mouth – which is the central aim, whatever the means through which this is pursued.

The self-branding activity perpetrated by freelancers is instrumentally pointed at the acquisition

of a reputation in the industry. This is done via a set of practices of sociality whereby the branding

of one’s professional identity and public image cannot but take place in a social realm, made of an

interdependent relationship between offline and online networking. The observation of the par-

ticipants’ professional activity evidences how these recurrent practices have an eminently per-

formative nature, as these essentially consist in a constant production of content that presupposes a

conception of the digital arena as a sort of performance space for the enactment of a branded

identity – aiming, ultimately, at social recognition. Their self is first and foremost public as it

represents a visible display of a juxtaposition of professional skills and personal taste, the rationale

of which echoes the work of a curator in an art gallery, or a visual merchandiser that chooses which

products best represent the brand. However, this public self is inevitably and decisively also a

social one, since this display also involves one’s connections and networks. The ultimate outcome

is the construction of a reputational capital, which leads to capitalization in terms of job oppor-

tunities and revenues across a network of social relationships. This is regularly pursued via the use

of common marketing techniques, such as storytelling, pointing at creating engagement with the

self-brand to fuel the construction of connections that can then function as a capital, which may be

mobilized or accessed when needed:

What the Web consents to do to a professional with something to tell, is that by simply writing what

you know you can reach a visibility and a popularity that is simply impossible otherwise. The blog is

useful for more in-depth discourses . . . it gives you the chance to express what you mean. Twitter is

more a copywriter kind of thing, whilst LinkedIn is more enclosed, too serious . . . Good for ‘‘suit and

tie’’ consultants. (Communication professional, 43, Milan, female)

The production of a coherent public and social self via what were defined as performative prac-

tices of sociality is a branding activity delinked from the establishing of communitarian relations,

conducted via a curatorial logic which points at authenticity. The management of the content

posted and the networking activity are perceived as two equally fundamental aspects in the market-

ability of a digital worker for the acquisition of a reputational capital. The activity within the online

sphere is performative since it is not just an act that communicates, as it is one that defines a social

identity that links into value. Therefore, it has to be frequent and recurrent, without significant

gaps, breaks or interruptions. This brings visibility and recognition and connects directly to offline

interaction. Below are a couple of examples of these practices in the words of a London-based

130 Marketing Theory 16(1)

designer and a Milanese copywriter, who reveal how visibility and socialization are bound together

in a socially oriented, self-branding activity:

I do use social media to sort of make people aware that you are there, you are working, you are active

( . . . ) Sometimes people see I’m at (X) by checking in on location, and then phone me to have lunch,

and I might get a job from that. (Designer, 43, London, male)

–

LinkedIn to me is very important as you can show how much you are into a sector, for instance,

someone who goes into my profile can see who I know. There you can find names that can make you

say ‘‘Oh, he’s really into this sector’’. And then, second step, maybe I go to some of my contacts ‘‘ . . .

So you know about this guy? Have you worked with him?’’. It’s all a big phonebook. If my contacts are

qualified, you can see that. (Copywriter, 48, Milan, male)

This curatorial nature of self-branding serves the construction of a productive network of con-

tacts both offline and online; that is, what leads to jobs and employment chances. In London, this is

almost compulsively reiterated as the ideological pursuit of two commonsensical statements: ‘it is

all about who you know’ and ‘you are as good as your last job’ (Blair, 2001), both of which are

mantras for freelance knowledge professionals. In Milan, conversely, there is often a recurrent dis-

course giving a negative connotation to these concepts, being associated to clientelism. Profes-

sional relations and social capital, especially in Milan, are regularly perceived as exclusionary

networks and lobbying, as the participation with non-professional informal networks allows parti-

cipants to access otherwise unavailable information and opportunities:

Non-professional networks matter a lot in the way you can get in touch with people, confidential

information, events, opportunities . . . (Journalist, 30, Milan, male)

Most participants in both contexts claim that, despite the centrality of this self-branding activity

in their work practice, skills and talent are actually what counts more, being related to their actual

job capacities. Yet, this study seems to show exactly the opposite, that is, a somewhat secondary

importance of human and cultural capital as significant elements for employability. Interviewees

in both samples possess the same broad sets of skills, and the large majority of interviewees have

an academic degree that is related to their professional environment. This confirms Christopher-

son’s (2008) argument of knowledge and creative workers possessing a multifunctional set of

skills that are substantially similar among their peer group. Also, there are no significant differ-

ences in terms of earnings among the different educational categories; in other words, it may be

said that having a degree does not automatically imply being better off in this labour market.

Participants implicitly seem to confirm this when they describe how CV circulation is substan-

tially useless, since the CV as traditionally conceived is generally discarded as something that

does not provide significantly rich information to potential clients in the industry. If what makes

a difference is one’s reputation, the education title and skills therefore seem to be merely entry

tickets, and one’s professional success appears to be ultimately related to the capacity to connect

self-branding practice to the construction of a reputational capital and the management of this

asset over the professional network:

[The] creative world works through personal relationships, and to a certain extent it has to do with your

CV. But the most of it is what job is this person doing here and now and what they would be interested

to do in the other job. In other sectors the whole CV matters. (Creative manager, 45, London, female)

Gandini 131

–

If you are a freelancer your education title does not matter much, whereas if you want to compete for

a permanent job it matters more. Some of my colleagues did not even finish university, and they can

easily live out of their freelance work. For firms, however, it matters, it is an old requisite for

recruitment. (Designer, 27, Milan, male)

The digital space functions for digital professionals as a milieu to support and fuel this self-

branding work and the circulation of word of mouth and recommendations subsume these infor-

mation networks both offline and online, with no distinction or difference. The importance of this

multiple dynamic of interaction is substantially taken for granted by most participants and trans-

lates into a shared recognition of reputation as value. The acquisition of a reputational capital is

perceived as directly linked to professional success:

Social media pays back in terms of awareness to people that you’re out there, [with] visibility, cred-

ibility and people having an understanding of what is it that you’re doing. People found me on the

Internet, looked at my profile on LinkedIn and then sort of feel the deal to phone me and ask to do

something. (Brand consultant, 40 London, male)

–

Using social media well means a lot. Many people find you through these tools, it’s an online and an

offline word-of-mouth but these two things are correlated and they reciprocally fuel each other. (Digital

consultant, 44, Milan, Male)

This connects to what seems to be the most problematic aspect that centrally pertains to these

scenes. Self-branding, as seen, is considered work by digital professionals but is largely an unre-

munerated part of their work. It is, nevertheless, mandatory practice in securing employment. In

various accounts in the literature, especially those directly making use of the Autonomist lexicon,

the notions of precarity and exploitation are often directly put in relation to such digital media

activity via the concept of free labour (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2013; Terranova, 2000). How-

ever, as noted in the first interview quoted in this article, free jobs appear to be gates towards other

employment. As a result, controversially, most participants do not perceive this practice of free

labour as exploitation – rather, as an ‘investment’:

In my experience, it was always the case (of being noticed, nda) only because of someone who knew

me for things I had done in the past, as of word-of-mouth. So I would suggest everyone to do something

wonderful, for free, immediately. That’s the best investment. (Media professional/journalist, 36, Milan,

female)

This, I would argue, is an inevitable turnaround in the extent to which self-branding in the digi-

tal knowledge economy equates to the construction of social capital. The performance of a certain

amount of free and unpaid labour is perceived not just as a natural element in the freelance scene

but an eminently strategic and managerial device to start the loop of self-branding, visibility and

reputation construction across a network of social relations. If this, on the one hand, confirms the

strong link between self-branding and labour sustained by Hearn (2008), it also, more problema-

tically, delinks from a simple narrative of exploitation to put the word investment – in self-

branding, in social relations, in time and free work – at the core of the self-entrepreneurial ethos

defining freelancers, particularly in their start-up phase. Most of them, in terms of identity, are in

fact explicitly reluctant to self-define as workers but tend to prefer definitions connoting them as

132 Marketing Theory 16(1)

self-employed entrepreneurs who, in relation to free labour, invest into unpaid work for the stra-

tegic pursuit of social relations that lead into expected economic returns – which is, incidentally,

Nan Lin’s definition of social capital (1999, 2002).

This notion of free labour as investment is believed by participants to be extremely functional to

the acquisition of a reputation among one’s professional network of contacts. Acquiring a repu-

tation seems to be the most decisive stance, as reputation seems to be the form taken by social

capital across such a digitally mediated labour market where the possibility of meeting in person

and engaging into face-to-face interaction is strongly reduced. This fosters those networking

dynamics that are connected to employability, given that only the individual’s embeddedness in a

network of productive professional connections (Granovetter, 1973, 1985) and the capacity to

demonstrate such embeddedness via this digital work lead into job opportunities. Working for free

is part of this process, as one of the many practices used to pursue this aim:

I did some jobs for free because I think strategically it was a good idea to do. It was a strategic job. (Arts

consultant, 35, London, male)

–

At the beginning I worked a lot for free. It is difficult to show you can do something, without doing

it. Now you can publish your own work, you can demonstrate this capacity to all those who may be

interested. It’s like living a public portfolio. (Communication professional, 43, Milan, female)

This does not undermine the controversial nature of this conception of free labour as investment

– actually, the opposite. Some participants are well aware of the contradictory aspects of their

entrepreneurial ethos. However, even the most critical accounts claim that the entrepreneurial ele-

ment is primary, as this London-based videographer evidences:

People think that you will be paid by status, they say ‘‘I’m working in London’’, for free, and I say no,

you are a slave in London, let’s be honest. They’re not working in the strict sense. I’m not here to make

money, but I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t making money. If you have to work six months for free, better

you work six months for free for you and not for someone else, if you have ideas . . . This is the new

working class, you see what I mean? (Videographer, 38, London, male)

Another aspect that seems to be striking in this context is the uncommon nuance given to com-

petition for jobs. Self-branding is not simply performed for self-realization, or to stand out among

competitors, but explicitly points at collaboration, interaction and networking with contacts widely

recognized as influential by peers in the industry. The reason lies in a basic network process: the

digital and freelance knowledge economy is a small world. Competition seems to be found much

more between closed circles rather than within them in an individual dog-eat-dog dynamic, given

that ultimately there is no work without social connections. ‘Collaborative’ for freelancers outper-

forms ‘competitive’ since reputation is their most valuable asset, and jobs come from recommen-

dations, referrals and word of mouth. It is not strategically as rewarding in the long term to be

competitive and selfish, as it is to be collaborative and social:

Because it’s so competitive, it’s also down to your reputation, and the people you’ve worked with. The

circuit is so small: in design everyone knows each other, of course you have the top 10 per cent, the top

5 per cent, they all know each other. The people you’ve worked with form more established companies.

Your portfolio is the most important thing, getting your work seen, and your reputation as a person to

actually work with, are you a good person to work with? Aren’t you a good person to work with? You

Gandini 133

might be very good, but if you’re lacking social skills, it’s your problem. If you’re selfish it’s your

problem. Reputation spreads quite fast. (Graphic designer, 38, London, male)

These accounts show how the practices of presentation of the self within the online sphere for

digital freelancers in the knowledge economy are not merely for exhibition or representational

(Hogan, 2010); on the contrary, there is a performative and productive element that emerges out

of forms of sociality that directly connect them to socialized value production and the construction

of social capital. This has huge implications for an understanding of the branding of the individual

in the ever nearer relation to immaterial labour practices (Hearn, 2008). In the following section, I

will discuss these instances more closely.

Within a reputation economy

The study of self-branding and freelancing in the knowledge economy in London and Milan shows

a contradictory landscape with significant elements of novelty. In both London and Milan, self-

branding is pervasive and almost mandatory. There is a shared understanding of the curatorial

management of social media presence and social relationships for the purpose of a greater repu-

tation, as well as the awareness that this practice boosts employability as it is articulated in the form

of an investment in social relationships with expected return. This points directly at notions of

social capital for job search that are common in social theory. Such a process seems to be more

visible and acknowledged in London and less visible – but equally significant – in Milan. This

difference may be due to the fact that freelancing, although very diffused, is still somehow per-

ceived in Milan as a second best option, with networking and embeddedness often negatively

associated to clientelism. As suggested by an interviewee, freelancers in Milan are still often

perceived as ‘children of a lesser God’ (Journalist, 30, Milan, male).

Yet, the evidence here suggests also that the construction of a branded persona is not simply an

explicit form of labour (Hearn, 2008: 197) but a more complex set of social practices – that I have

labelled as performative practices of sociality – which entail the production and the display of a

public and social self across social network sites. These negotiations are necessary to establish

professionally as a freelancer to build reputation and status (Hearn 2008, 2010; Marwick, 2013). It

may be argued that self-branding practice directly links to processes of socialized value production

in the digital knowledge industries, as the social construction of a branded persona via identity

work (Schoneboom, 2011). I have called this process digital work since it sits in interdependent

relationship with networking as a value production device enacted through forms of sociality that

transform personal branding into the main regime of immaterial production.

Drawing again from Hearn (2010), I call the broader scenario where these networked branding

techniques exist a ‘reputation economy’ (Botsman, 2012; Hearn, 2010). The acquisition of

reputational capital appears in fact to be the main element for employability as reputation emerges

to be the cultural conception of value indigenously shared by operators within this professional

context. Hearn (2010) theorized the existence of a digital reputation economy that links self-

branding to reputation as an asset. This is clearly evidenced here inasmuch as reputation repre-

sents the element that connects the offline and online domains, rendering self-branding a process of

social capital construction managerially conceived that uses reputation to allocate unequal

resources. The employability of knowledge professionals in the digital age seems to be inextricably

bound to (and, to some extent, depend upon) the acquisition of a reputational capital across the

personal network of professional contacts. Reputation, once an intangible asset with unquantifiable

proxies and valuation, is now increasingly tangible, visible and to some extent also measurable via

134 Marketing Theory 16(1)

the activity of individual users on social media platforms. This measurability extends its effects

over the whole labour market.

As physical face-to-face interaction diminishes its importance and gets together with digital

interaction that is demonstrated by a lesser extent of co-presence and proximity, reputation seems

to be the form taken by social capital in the network sociality (Wittel, 2001), as the asset that

manages to secure a bond of trust by way of the mosaic of public information commonly available

around a branded individual (Marwick et al., 2010). The recognition of self-branding practice as

the process of construction of social capital is functional to the existence of a reputation economy,

as reputation often substitutes for face-to-face trust building. As Boyd and Ellison (2007) noted,

although exceptions exist, digitally mediated social relations largely support existing offline social

relations, to some extent mirroring the everyday networking experience, and producing some

different sort of social capital (Ellison et al., 2007) here identified in reputation – that becomes

algorithmically calculated by Online Reputation Systems that regulate interaction over digital

marketplaces such as Elance-oDesk and similar others. This poses consistent issues in terms of

reliability and the establishment of what may be seen as an algocratic culture of interaction towards

which we should maintain a critical reading. Despite some, such as Schaefer (2012), sustain that

these dynamics provide a democratization of social influence, there is enough on the other hand to

see a rather serious potential for distortion.

Digital freelance professionals are in fact induced into what seems to be a significant example

of emotional labour (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2008, 2013; Hochschild, 1979, 2001) as of par-

ticipating in a labour market where value is increasingly socialized and produced via network-

based arrangements that require a significant extent of subjectivity. Still, the relationship

between digital activity on social network sites and the affective dimensions of labour remains

problematic – and the issue of free labour demonstrates this clearly (Terranova, 2000). This,

ultimately, is a quite controversial aspect that emerges from this account. Is self-branding a form of

free labour? For the participants in this study, it is not so much free labour as exploitation as it is a

useful and potentially profitable form of investment – in social relationships, in time and free work

– strategically pursued for self-branding purposes. The notion of free labour as investment here

given renders a process of self-exploitation or false consciousness around the production of sub-

jectivity by freelancers – yet, it coherently goes hand in hand with a managerial concept of self-

branding as social capital. In fact, the distance between this concept and the positions of the

Autonomists, I would argue, is just as apparent; the justification of this statement lies in the broader

framework, where both the Autonomist readings of knowledge work and the present account on

self-branding intervene.

What I mean here is that, incidentally, the rise of self-branding actually occurred more or less

simultaneously with the proliferation of ideas of a rising ‘creative class’ (Florida, 2002) that

promised an age of economic prosperity and development through the valorization of individual

talent and entrepreneurial creativity. Arguably, it can now be witnessed how such a claim is a case

of an unfulfilled promise. Contemporary digital freelance professionals in the knowledge economy

are what remains of that idea, being the product of an entrepreneurial ethos combined with

extensive precarity, low-paid or unpaid jobs, devaluation of work and of free labour (Hesmond-

halgh and Baker, 2013). However, as argued by Brouillette (2014), actually Florida and the

Autonomists substantially agree on the fact that, over the past few decades, knowledge work has

become comparable to artists’ work. This is a positive innovation for Florida, who envisaged that

the fostering of entrepreneurship, talent, creativity and empowerment will bring the renewed

success of post-industrial capitalism – and it is obviously negative for the Autonomists, who

Gandini 135

highlight how the (arguably present) controversial aspects listed above are the symptoms of the

forthcoming demise of late capitalism.

Indeed, Brouillette argues, both accounts share the assumption that creativity and capital have

now merged in the production of symbolic content that is economically dominant – and that this is

an inescapable condition. The study of self-branding on social media by digital knowledge pro-

fessionals confirms the centrality of such immaterial and affective labour regimes but also shows

how these translates into performative practices of sociality, which convert identity work into

social production of value and reputational capital. In other words, it may be argued here that the

notions of free labour and investment are not purely oppositional but actually represent two sides

of the same thing – that is, the evolution of networked techniques of branding of the individual

pointing at social production of value across a network sociality, more or less enthusiastically

embraced.

The aesthetic curation of the self across social media arguably demonstrates the validity of the

critique to the valorization of subjectivity promoted by the Autonomists and particularly that

aspect of virtuosity related to work highlighted by Virno (2004). However, these dynamics might

now be read as the grammar of an unavoidable and compulsory work of reputation construction

based on new forms of sociality fostered by the digital intermediation. The metaphor of the

investment supports what McRobbie (2002, 2004) has described as the marriage between

counterculture and the financial economy realized through the narrative of self-realization.

Ultimately, as in the example of ‘changemakers’ brought forward by Bandinelli and Arvids-

son (2012), the entrepreneurial ethos of digital workers seems to be just another symptom of the

real subsumption of the neo-liberal entrepreneurial rationale that manifests its surprising survival

(Crouch, 2011) within those new models of work that should declare its aftermath – and which

actually produce phenomena of compulsory sociality that are typical of neo-liberalism (Gregg,

2011). Critical accounts of free labour, precarity and neo-liberalism today probably need to

acknowledge this compulsory aspect more comprehensively to build a critique that does not end

within individual issues, such as precarious income or free labour, but peculiarly stresses the

invisibility and the taken for grantedness of those in the mindset of workers, which is due to an

entrepreneurial ethos that self-realizes via a rhetoric of compulsory and inevitably positive

innovation.

Conclusion: The socialization of the enterprise

Freelancers today are commonly assumed to be among the new economic protagonists at the

forefront of the developments in knowledge work in the 21st century. This article has proposed an

exploration of the role of the social in the study of the networked branding practices of the self as

these are enacted by this specific segment of the professional sphere, which has seemingly

internalized the characteristics of the market to perform a digital work of identity production that

extends also offline in a continuum. These practices seem to be no longer mere promotional

devices perpetrated for self-realization or to outperform competitors as in the early days of cor-

porate self-branding but present an eminently social element. The productive identity work for the

creation of a professional self in the digital economy cannot but be a social process embedded in a

web of ties where collaboration mingles with competition and cooperation in a unique domain. For

such reasons, it may be argued this process outlines what seems to be a ‘socialization of the

enterprise’, rather than a social factory (Gill and Pratt, 2008), meaning the transformation of an

entire labour market in an entrepreneurial, venture scene (Neff, 2012).

136 Marketing Theory 16(1)

If a freelance economy is arguably rising, as sustained already in the late 1990s (Malone and

Laubacher, 1998), to become the central employment regime in a post-crisis knowledge industry

moving from mass production to production by the masses (Rifkin, 2014), yet any enthusiasm

regarding this is probably premature, given the number of critical implications such transformation

brings – some of those also witnessed here. Actually, a freelance economy centred on the net-

worked branding of the individual via performative forms of sociality, despite the emphasis on

collaboration, remains an essentially neo-liberal one. There seems to be no demise of neo-

liberalism when its own assumptions – entrepreneurialism, individualism and flexibility – are

also the flagships of today’s sharing economy, which presupposes a new era of collaboration and

impact in a start-up ecology (Botsman and Rogers, 2011).

The evidence presented here shows how the significance of knowledge work today departs from

notions of skills and human capital in favour of forms of production based on the marketization of

different sorts of intangible assets – but leaves unquestioned the importance of class background.

Although this scenario is arguably the outcome of a long-term process of casualization and pre-

carisation of middle-class corporate full-time employment, the issue of class was not directly at the

centre of this work. We know how important class origins are to get jobs and access to those weak

ties that constitute the core of Granovetter’s work (1973, 1985) and the preoccupations around

clientelism encountered in the Milanese context still partially reflect this instance. However, the

assumption of a broad middle-class background does not sufficiently explain whether any class

difference may apply to determine a discrepancy in the processes of reputation construction. It

would be interesting to see future sociological and marketing research questioning the acquisition

of reputational capital from a class perspective; not only to see if class and reputation as here

defined are somewhat related but also to enquire about the extent to which the fragmentation of the

middle class might eventually find a way to a potential recomposition.

In this sense, recent accounts of different sorts (Mosco and McKercher, 2009; Standing, 2011)

have sustained the potential rise of a new social class around precarity and freelance work.

Although fascinating, at present these accounts fail to recognize how much digital freelancers are

particularly reluctant, broadly speaking, to be associated with precarity. Despite often struggling

with their income, freelancers are more inclined to see themselves as entrepreneurs and creatives,

innovators and ‘changemakers’ – rather than a precarious, freelance working class that opposes

capitalism and its latest advancements. The rise of freelancers actually represents one among these

advancements. It seems difficult, although perhaps desirable, to see these singularities coalesce

around a critical stance in the near future. The construction of an entrepreneurial subjectivity and

its translation into a market subject that completely embodies the logic of venture labour and

individualization of risk permeating the first wave of Internet start-ups (Neff, 2012), transforming

exploitation in investment and false consciousness in self-branding, is a success that perhaps even

the most audacious supporter of neo-liberalism could not almost dare to dream.

Acknowledgements

My deepest thanks go to Adam Arvidsson, James Fitchett and James Graham for their support at

different stages in the writing process. I am also particularly grateful to the three anonymous

reviewers, who offered helpful suggestions and advice in the various revisions of this paper.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,

and/or publication of this article.

Gandini 137

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this

article.

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Alessandro Gandini is a lecturer in the Media Department, Middlesex University, London, and is research

active at the Centre for Digital Ethnography, University of Milan. His research interests include the transfor-

mations of work in digital society, the intermediation of digital technologies within the processes of value

production and distribution and the research approaches to study digital environments and interaction.

Address: Middlesex University, Media Department, The Burroughs, Hendon, London, NW4 4BT, UK.

[email: [email protected]]

Gandini 141

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