Published as the first in the series Network Notebooks, from the Institute of Network Cultures, Hogeschool van Amsterdam, this article is based on research intended to look into the experiences of people of the Netherlands who work in the field of new media. The author's 34 semi-structured interviews sampled a range of employment situations - from stable employment contracts to freelance to small media company directorships.
The range of occupational titles includes: programmer, designer, artist, project manager, and content creator. A wide range of media-related occupations is revealed by the fact that participant descriptions of their roles hardly overlapped. Movement between roles and job status seemed to be the norm, as well.
According to the author, the interviewees expressed a passion for the field. From the executive summary: "This goes beyond individual projects, and frequently relates to the broader development of the Web and Web culture as a whole. Six broad features of new media work were highlighted to account for the love it engenders. These related to the opportunities it offered for autonomy and entrepreneurship, the playful and pleasurable nature of the work, the chances it offered to innovate, its potential as a medium for communication, its opportunities for community and political activism, and the ‘coolness’ of the industry."
Income was not cited as a motivator; and, as the research indicates, just over a third of employees were earning above the national average. A disparity was found in earnings; managers and programmers earned more than those in content creation or artistic design. Also, disparities were found based on contractual status: freelancers and company owners earned, overall, substantially less than those on stable contracts. The same disparity is reflected in access to benefits, insurance, and pension schemes.
As stated in the research, a more marked disparity exists in the number of hours worked: contractual workers tend to work 35 - 40 hours per week, while freelancers and owners work 55 - 80 hours per week, with the average being 65 hours. For some, this work schedule has been adopted as cultural. The research raised concerns over "‘work-life balance’... and about the sustainability... of intense – sometimes bulimic – working patterns." It cited the fact that few interviewees have children, though they are in the age cohort of peers who have started families, and few feel able to do so while remaining in the field due to work and financial pressures. In fact, the author states, "It was striking to note that many participants found it difficult to imagine their future in new media. The insecurity and precariousness of the work contributed to making the future unthinkable. Despite this, the enthusiasm for new media was palpable and undiminished."
Though those interviewed had a high level of education, the research indicates that few felt their education prepared them for working in the field in the way that learning on the job had prepared them. In fact, as stated here, the rapid pace of development in the field causes "significant pressure related to ‘keeping up’."
According to the author, because of movement between different kinds of employment, usually found through informal networks, there is a "kind of ‘compulsory sociality’ in which networking was the norm, and people could lose out by dint of not having the right contacts. ...The informality of the field raises questions about fairness and equality, particularly in relation to gender, age, ethnicity and disability - given the documented tendencies for people to hire ‘in their own image’. Questions also need to be raised about how successful informal networking is as a way of distributing work opportunities."
The research indicates that there is a strong belief among interviewees in the egalitarian nature of the field of new media, though under-representation of older people and women was nominally recognised. "The youth-domination of the field was explained in terms of its relative newness. To account for the relative lack of women, a social-technical divide was often invoked, in which men were presented as naturally technologically skilled and women as good communicators. The ‘laddish’ culture of some new media workplaces might also explain the unequal representation of women." However,"[t]he racial homogeneity of the field was not noted by many respondents... The key concern in the research has been to capture the diversity of different experiences within new media, and inequalities relating to gender, age and race/ethnicity..."
Four key changes are cited related to the evolving nature of new media as a field: increasing professionalisation, greater specialisation, decreasing utopianism, and more commercialism.
