Skip to main content
Log in

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

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Business Ethics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

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.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kim Bartel Sheehan.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Sheehan, K.B., Pittman, M. Straight from the Source? Media Framing of Creative Crowd Labor and Resultant Ethical Concerns. J Bus Ethics 154, 575–585 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3484-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3484-8

Keywords

Navigation