BLURRING BOUNDARIES: LABOR, LEISURE, AND CULTURAL PRODUCTION IN DIGITAL VLOGGING
MAHIRA.E
Research Scholar,
Department of English Farook College (Autonomous), Kerala
Affiliated to University of Calicut
DR. UBAID. V. P. C
Assistant Professor,
Department of English Farook College (Autonomous), Kerala
Affiliated to University of Calicut
Abstract: The boundaries between labor and leisure, once considered distinct, have grown increasingly porous in the digital age. Activities that traditionally signified relaxation and pleasure, travel, cooking, and household tasks , are now repurposed as forms of work through digital platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. The significance of this study lies in demonstrating how personal passions, hobbies, sources of happiness and even everyday obligations are increasingly transformed into productive labor, creativity, generating visibility, income and economic values. Scholars have interrogated digital labor broadly, insufficient attention has been given to how everyday leisure practices are transformed into content economies.This paper examines how the digital economy commodifies leisure, producing new cultural configurations where enjoyment, creativity, and self-expression become tied to precarity, monetization, and algorithmic control. By foregrounding travel vlogs, cooking channels, and family vlogs as case studies, this article adopts a qualitative methodology grounded in platform capitalism, cultural studies, and emotional labor theory. The study also investigates the stability and permanence of digital content creation and vlogging through the lens of gigification and precarity. These forms of work are inherently task-based and project-oriented, with each video or post functioning as a separate “gig,” rather than a guaranteed or long-term employment. The study also examines the dual nature of the platform economy, its opportunities and exploitations, highlighting the persistence of Marxian labor exploitation in the digital era through processes of invisibilization and emotional labor. Data is analyzed through close reading of videos, engagement metrics,Algorithmic management, and comparison with analog precedents such as, cooking magazines and TV broadcasting, highlighting continuities and differences between analog and digital practices. Thus the study argues that the digital convergence of labor and leisure not only generates new economies of visibility and monetization but also marks a broader cultural shift in which everyday life itself becomes a site of production.
Keywords: labor, leisure, blurring boundaries, platform capitalism, digital and analogue, cultural production
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