Implications of social media use among self-employed workers during the pandemic
The case of photographers and video makers in Brazil
Keywords:
Social media platforms, Platform economy, Self-employed workers, Political subjectivity, Covid-19Abstract
In this article, we examine implications of social media usage among workers who have been drastically affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The research focuses on photographers and video makers whose earnings came mainly from the private and corporate events segment in Brazil. Our analysis compares ethnographic data gathered during the pandemic (2020-2021) to those from an earlier research cycle (2015–2018). This article assesses the impacts suffered by workers in the face of the Sars-CoV-2 crises, analyses changes in professional social media usage, and inquires whether the pandemic produced shifts in workers’ political subjectivity. Fieldwork revealed that, in response to the acute crisis, workers focused on individual efforts to overcome economic struggles, devoting substantial resources to building their brands through digital media platforms. During this process, workers saw professional success or failure as an individual responsibility and expressed political values tied to strands of neoliberal thinking – a phenomenon that seems related to the intensive usage of social media platforms.
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