Straight from the Source? Media Framing of Creative Crowd Labor and Resultant Ethical Concerns

Kim Bartel Sheehan () and Matthew Pittman
Additional contact information
Kim Bartel Sheehan: University of Oregon
Matthew Pittman: University of Oregon

Journal of Business Ethics, 2019, vol. 154, issue 2, No 16, 575-585

Abstract: Abstract Increasing numbers of marketers are turning to the crowd—members of the public engaged with brands via the Internet—to develop marketing and advertising campaigns. Some marketers use social media to connect directly with customers, while others use crowdsourcing agencies to harness the power of crowd labor. As more members of the public become aware of creative crowdsourcing, they look to the media to understand more about it. As a result, it is important to examine how the media currently frame creative crowdsourcing to the public, particularly when numerous ethical issues about crowdsourcing have been identified (e.g. work is devalued as crowdworkers earn little money and no benefits for their work). This study examines media coverage of creative crowdsourcing to examine how benefits and challenges are presented. Informed by a framework developed by Swain (Understanding and communicating science: new agendas in communication, Routledge, London, pp 209–232, 2009), results indicate that most media coverage focuses solely on benefits to the industry: benefits to the ‘crowd’ are rarely discussed, yet drawbacks to the crowd are mentioned more frequently than drawbacks for the industry. This provides a skewed vision of what creative crowdsourcing is and may affect participation in the practice.

Keywords: Marketing; Crowdsourcing; Creative work; Advertising (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-017-3484-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:154:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-017-3484-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3484-8

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().