Racism in the Platformized Cultural Industries: Precarity, Visibility, and Harassment in Canada

Abstract

Platform-dependent creative labor has been discussed widely in terms of the economic precarity inherent to the industry and the arbitrary ways in which algorithms structure and reinforce that precarity. I expand on these debates to articulate the role of systemic racism in structuring differential outcomes for racialized content creators by analyzing data from open-ended survey answers (N = 64), and semistructured interviews (N = 12) with racialized content creators in Canada to explore their perceptions of and experiences with platform-mediated racism. Their accounts indicate a shared understanding of how racism operates within the platformized cultural industries—be it through negative material outcomes, adverse experiences with platform algorithms, and/or through experiences of harassment. Drawing on theories of racial capitalism, institutional racism, and algorithmic bias, I provide an analysis that underscores how racism presents in multilateral, dynamic, and simultaneous ways, which compounds negative material and epistemic outcomes for racialized creators in Canada.