Cultural Capital and Digital Platforms

Dear Colleagues,

Digital platforms dominate modern life; one of the areas where they are most influential and prominent is in the creation and dissemination of cultural capital. Cultural capital is a term first defined by the sociologist Pierre Bourdeau in the 1970s. It has been widely used within this discipline as an explanation for how power in societies is transferred and maintained. Moreover, Bourdeau identified three types of cultural capital:

1. Objective—cultural goods, such as books, films, music and art, which confer social status and convey to others where one is located in the social hierarchy.
2. Embodied—the language, knowledge, skills, behaviors and preferences internalized by an individual, which can be derived from one’s family and social class, as well as from media consumption.
3. Institutionalized—the qualifications and educational credentials that are recognized and validated by a society.

Digital platforms, such as Google, Meta, TikTok, Alibaba and Spotify, have had a huge impact on all three types of cultural capital, both at the producer and the consumer level.

Those who produced objective cultural capital in the past in traditional cultural industries have had to transform their operations to fit within the algorithmic and marketing structures of digital platforms. Furthermore, those who consume objective cultural capital have found that the lines separating traditional hierarchies of “high” and “popular” cultural capital have blurred to the point where they often cease to have a meaning as demarcations of social status.

The nature of embodied cultural capital has also changed to include a more diverse array of languages, behaviors and preferences that are often decoupled from the familial, class and national norms that shaped them in the past. While some celebrate the increased diversity and accessibility of cultural capital made possible by digital platforms, others argue that both cultural capital and civil discourse have been debased by this transformation.

Institutional aspects of cultural capital have also been transformed, as what is marketable in a platform environment sometimes bears little resemblance to the professional qualifications that individuals have invested years of their lives to obtain. The creative labor market is therefore becoming increasingly contingent, where precarity is the norm and monetization often relies on algorithmic decisions beyond the creators’ control rather than on the quality or extent of professional credentials.

This Special Issue invites contributions from across the social sciences disciplines—including economics, education, cultural studies, media and information studies, sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science and public policy—that examine the many ways in which cultural capital is articulated and transformed through digital platforms. Both empirical and theoretical contributions are welcome, as are multidisciplinary collaborations that address implications for people, policies, practice and future trends.

Prof. Sharon Jeannotte
Guest Editor

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• digital platforms
• cultural capital
• cultural production
• cultural consumption
• cultural policy
• media content
• creative labor markets
• educational credentials