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Full-Text Articles in Sociology

Cooperativism In Cultural And Tech Sectors: Promises And Challenges, Greig De Peuter, Bianca C. Dreyer, Marisol Sandoval, Aleksandra Szaflarska Jan 2022

Cooperativism In Cultural And Tech Sectors: Promises And Challenges, Greig De Peuter, Bianca C. Dreyer, Marisol Sandoval, Aleksandra Szaflarska

Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This article reports on a survey of co-operatives in the cultural and technology sectors in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Creative industries are a growth area for new cooperativism, with more than a quarter of surveyed co-operatives in operation for less than five years. While the findings show that co-operation is a promising strategy for countering individualised experiences of work, for democratising workplaces, and for facilitating satisfying work in creative industries, they also reveal significant challenges which individual co-operatives and the wider co-operative movement must confront for cooperativism to have a sustainable and inclusive future in the …


Co-Operatives, Work, And The Digital Economy: A Knowledge Synthesis Report, Greig De Peuter, Gemma De Verteuil, Salome Machaka Jan 2022

Co-Operatives, Work, And The Digital Economy: A Knowledge Synthesis Report, Greig De Peuter, Gemma De Verteuil, Salome Machaka

Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This report surveys recent literature on co-operative approaches to improving work and livelihoods in the digital economy, specifically in the gig economy, the tech sector, and digital creative industries. It introduces concepts that update co-operative theory and practice for the digital age, including platform cooperativism, open cooperativism, distributed co-operative organizations, and Exit to Community. It outlines how the co-operative model has been adopted by and for self-employed workers, platform workers, technologists and communication professionals, and data subjects. While the report presents evidence of co-ops’ potential to improve working conditions and mitigate power asymmetries in the digital economy, it also addresses …


Queering Player Agency And Paratexts: An Analysis And Expansion Of Queerbaiting In Video Games, Jessica Kathryn Needham Aug 2018

Queering Player Agency And Paratexts: An Analysis And Expansion Of Queerbaiting In Video Games, Jessica Kathryn Needham

Cultural Analysis and Social Theory Major Research Papers

Queerbaiting refers to the way that consumers are lured in with a queer storyline only to have it taken away, collapse into tragic cliché, or fail to offer affirmative representation. Recent queerbaiting research has focused almost exclusively on television, leaving gaps in the ways queer representation is negotiated in other media forms. Using video games as a starting point, this Major Research Project seeks to fill in these research gaps by applying Eve Ng’s queerbaiting theory that situates queerbaiting at the intersection of contextuality and producer paratexts. Persona 4 and the Life is Strange series have been charged with queerbaiting …