Online advertising economics pushed foreign correspondence toward affluent young freelancers, worsening neocolonial dynamics

Evidence

The arrival of online advertising and the consequent decimation of newspapers meant that shrinking budgets were increasingly directed to the kinds of activities that generated lots of clicks online. Nuanced global journalism might draw in some readers, but it was simply less cost-efficient than the kind of opinion piece, aggregated blog, or listicle that someone could bang out from a desk. This meant that my field was increasingly dominated by the kinds of young people who would take the plunge and just move somewhere, hoping for things to work out. The work of foreign correspondence always had a tendency to reproduce neocolonial dynamics, but this made it worse, because it is only a certain kind of young person that can afford to move abroad on a lark. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 175

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general literature on journalism precarity and the gig-ification of reporting, e.g., coverage of the death of the foreign correspondent as an institution. — connects to: Internet ad economics collapsed the boundary between high and low taste within elite magazines — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 371; Neoliberalism reshapes cultural incentives by prioritizing extreme profit seeking; Authorial branding makes postcolonial writers visible only as exploitable market commodities — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 463 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Authorial branding makes postcolonial writers visible only as exploitable market commodities #corroborates (0.90) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 463
• Even anti-colonial activism via social media reinforces the corporate systems of settler colonialism #corroborates (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 22
• Data colonialism fuses economic and cognitive power in an order as durable as capitalism #corroborates (0.82) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 30
• Technology’s cultural effects are mediated by late capitalism not deterministically #qualifies (0.80) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 410
• Internet ad economics collapsed the boundary between high and low taste within elite magazines #expands (0.78) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 371
• Neoliberalism reshapes cultural incentives by prioritizing extreme profit seeking #qualifies (0.72)