The Internet has placed the tools of cultural production into the hands of cultural consumers to an unprecedented extent. Through processes which have been named ‘co-creation’, ‘prosumption’ and ‘playbour’ paid work had been transformed into unpaid work and new forms of value-generating activity have emerged. This Working Group brings together two very different fields of study in order to shed light on the processes by which new economic activities emerge. The first of these concerns the blurring of the boundaries between ‘work’, ‘consumption’ and ‘leisure’; the second concerns new forms of value creation. This Working Group brings together experts from the fields of political economy, communications studies, technology and economics to develop theoretical understandings of the porous borders between private creativity, leisure, creative work and entrepreneurship and explore methodologies for carrying out empirical research in this rapidly-changing field.
The leader of this Working Group is Eran Fisher who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication at the Open University of Israel. Email: eranfisher@gmail.com.
