[Air-l] report about the working conditions of webdesigners

[geert lovink]

Network Notebooks is a series of publications on recent new media 
theory. INC proudly presents:

---Network Notebooks nr.1---

Technobohemians or the new Cybertariat?
New media work in Amsterdam a decade after the web
by Rosalind Gill

About the publication
Accounts of new media working draw heavily on two polarised 
stereotypes, veering between techno-utopianism on the one hand, and a 
vision of web-workers as the new ‘precariat’, victims of neoliberal 
economic policies and moves to flexibilisation and insecurity on the 
other. Heralded from both perspectives as representing the brave new 
world of work what is striking is the absence of research on new media 
workers own experiences, particularly in a European context. This 
report goes beyond the contemporary myths of new media work, to explore 
how people working in the field experience the pleasures, pressures and 
challenges of working on the web. Illustrated throughout with 
quotations from interviews, this research examines the different career 
biographies emerging for content-producers in web-based industries, 
questions the relevance of existing education and training, and 
highlights the different ways in which people manage and negotiate 
freelancing, job insecurity, and keeping up to date in a fast-moving 
field where software and expectations change rapidly.

The research is based on 35 interviews carried out in Amsterdam in 
2005, and contextually draws upon a further 60 interviews with web 
designers in London and Brighton. The interviews were carried out by 
Danielle van Diemen and Rosalind Gill.

About the author
Rosalind Gill is a teacher and researcher based at the London School of 
Economics and Political Science. She is author of The Gender-Technology 
Relation (with Keith Grint) and her new book Gender and the Media has 
just been published by Polity press. She carried out research on new 
media working for the European Commission in 2000 and published some of 
the results relating to new inequalities in this field in an 
influential article entitled ‘Cool, creative and egalitarian?’ She is 
currently preparing a book about women and the web, and completing 
analysis of 180 interviews with web designers in London, Brighton and 
L.A.

Colophon
First publication in the series ‘Network Notebooks’, published by the 
Institute of Network Cultures, Hogeschool van Amsterdam.

For more information please visit: 
www.networkcultures.org/networknotebooks.

A pdf is also freely available at 
http://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/17.pdf.

Interviews: Rosalind Gill and Danielle van Diemen
Copy editing: Ned Rossiter
Design: Léon&Loes, Rotterdam http://www.leon-loes.nl
Network Notebooks editors: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer
Printing: Cito Repro, Amsterdam
Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam

If you want to order printed copies please contact:
Institute of Network Cultures
HvA Interactieve media
Weesperzijde 190
1097 DZ Amsterdam
The Netherlands
www.networkcultures.org
info(at)networkcultures.org
t: +31 (0)20 5951863 f: +31 (0)20 5951840

This publication is licensed under the Creative Commons 
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Netherlands License. 
To view a copy of this license, visit 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/.

ISBN/EAN: 978-90-78146-02-5