UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A productive researcher who focuses on social media, including influencer labor, will present a free public lecture about the challenges for those in the influencer economy during a visit to Penn State in early November.
Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor at Cornell University, will present “The Visibility Bind: Platform Labor, Precarity and Resistance in the Creator Economy” at 4 p.m. on Nov. 6 in 112 Walker Building.
While digital content creation is often celebrated for its flexibility, creative independence and promise of self-actualizing work, and platform companies — from Meta and YouTube to TikTok and Twitch — have fueled that boosterish vision of a “creator economy,” touting glittering rewards within a talent-based meritocracy, Duffy’s presentation will draw on more than 100 interviews with social media creators, influencers, talent intermediaries and platform representatives, to show many workers are trapped in a “visibility bind.”
Her talk will address a labor market where algorithms arbitrate success and failure as creators face the imminent threat of invisibility. In addition, they must navigate the risks of hypervisibility, including burnout, intensified scrutiny and targeted harassment.
Duffy is the author or co-author of three books, and her scholarship has appeared in such journals as Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, the International Journal of Communication, Critical Studies in Media Communication, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, Social Media + Society, and Information, Communication, and Society. In addition to her academic publishing, she has disseminated her research to a wider audience through essays in The Atlantic, Vox, Salon, Business Insider, Wired and Forbes, where she is a regular contributor.
Her areas of expertise include platforms and cultural production, gender and feminist media studies, influencer labor and the creator economy. She earned her bachelor's degree in advertising/public relations from Penn State in 2002, and both her master's degree and doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.
The annual Pockrass Memorial Lecture is named after the late Professor Robert M. Pockrass, a member of Penn State’s journalism faculty from 1948 to 1977. Pockrass, who specialized in public opinion and popular culture, served as the graduate officer and taught radio news writing for the School of Journalism, which later became the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications.