In this week’s reading, it mainly addressed the borderland between formal and informal media work. It highlights the disadvantage of informal media work, for instance, it can be very insecure, overload and low pay. This is especially common in freelancer and some other media workers who are at the bottom of food chain. The flexibility and exploitation exist at the same time, sometimes the boundaries between these two elements can be very leaky. Based on the experience of an old freelancer named Muise, he suggests that ‘give nothing for free, and discipline yourself to making some system- any system- work for you’ It is very common for media companies to hire professional media workers. In comparison, non-professional workers become contributors. There are no minimum payment standard for them. This low-pay model of freelance writing industry has caused criticism.

According to Toby Miller, labour is the power of all, it produces media and then culture and then humanity. The common and typical labour issue in media industry is unpredictable and insecure aspects of work. The ground-level workers suffer even more. Firm culture workers are not as good as they look like, they are not ‘stars’, rich or successful. In fact, they work for their company to get the basic payment. Sometimes they don’t get credit for their contribution. In the end, we can see a range of ideas developing, conflicting and connecting. Both of inevitability and contingency exist in the capitalist knowledge economies world. So take the chances, there is a liberation for flexibility and informal employment after all.

Reference: Ramon Lobato and Julian Thomas, 2015, ‘Work’ in The Informal Media Economy, Polity Press, Cambridge UK, ch.3.