Digital platforms increasingly integrate financial transactions into social interactions, facilitating new ways of coming together and creating value. The PAY4PLAY project will develop a new theory of organizing at the intersection of the sociotechnical systems and socioeconomic relations that characterize public life in the platform society. The project focuses on creator communities, defined as primarily platform-based associations formed around media personas with (1) hierarchical structures, (2) monetized interactions, and (3) asymmetrical relationships. PAY4PLAY investigates creator communities from three angles: culture, infrastructure, and policy. Across each perspective, the project compares three types of creators (gamers, VTubers, and adult content creators) working in three languages (English, Spanish, and Japanese) to understand how factors such as occupational stigma, gender, technology, and geography shape opportunities for organizing. PAY4PLAY employs distinct methodological approaches and disciplinary toolkits drawn from media and communication, information science, and economic sociology, investigating culture with multi-sited ethnography, infrastructure with digital methods, and policy with controversy mapping and stakeholder interviews. Through an integrative analysis of these methods, this project will conceptualize creator communities on their own terms, mapping the value they provide to those involved and their broader influence. PAY4PLAY will thus offer the first large-scale comparison of the industry conditions of monetized content creation, develop a new theory of organizing and platform power, create methodological tools for future comparative research within the creator economy, and offer new policy recommendations for integrating creators into platform governance at the state and corporate levels.

PAY4PLAY will be recruiting three PhD students and a postdoctoral researcher in the coming months. Stay tuned for more details and please reach out if you’re interested in collaborating or learning more.

PAY4PLAY is supported by an all-star international advisory board:

• Arturo Arriagado, Associate Professor in the School of Communications and Journalism at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile

• Nancy Baym, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, United States

• David Craig, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Southern California, United States

• Patrick Galbraith, Associate Professor in the School of International Communication at Senshu University, Japan

• Thomas Poell, Professor of Data, Culture & Institutions at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands