‘Freelancing’ as Spectacular Free Labour: A Case Study on Independent Digital Journalists in Romania

Using the case study approach (based on non-structured interviews, observations, thematic analysis of articles) and drawing on Debord’s notion of Spectacle, this chapter aims at investigating the activity of a ‘creative’ residence/hub for independent digital journalists/writers in Romania. This residence’s aim is to foster the production of journalistic/non-fictional content, outside the institutions that materialize ideology at the level of individual and society: mainstream media institutions or editorial houses. The case study ultimately illuminates the dialectical way in which freelancing journalists simultaneously disrupt and reproduce the Spectacle as it crystallizes in the journalism field. The members of this group are positioning themselves against the institutionalized materialization of ideology. Similarly to Situationist intellectuals, they try to create situations that by the force of critique undermine the Spectacle. However, they are confronted with the necessity to peripherally integrate themselves in the institutionalized system of ideology, because this peripheral integration is, for them, the only possibility they can conceive to continue to oppose institutional ideology. Nevertheless, by accepting, in various ways, the financial support of the institutions they criticize, these independent journalists contribute to the materialization of the Spectacle itself. By their activity, as apparently independent critics, they offer to the institutionalized system of ideology, an appearance of legitimacy.