Content by Kate Eichhorn

Author:Kate Eichhorn [Eichhorn, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2022-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

Content Capital

Content capital is not unlike other forms of capital to the extent that it influences one’s ability to engage in position-takings within a field, such as cultural production. Not unlike cultural capital, for example, it is a type of largely intangible asset that influences one’s social mobility. But this may be where the similarities between content capital and other types of capital (cultural, symbolic, or economic) begin and end. Unlike cultural capital, which people acquire only through their education, travel, and access to culture and cultural institutions or venues (e.g., galleries, museums, orchestral performances, etc.), content capital is more easily acquired. You can, after all, acquire a great deal of content capital without paying for an expensive education at a private boarding school, purchasing season tickets to the opera, or spending thousands of dollars on plane tickets to visit foreign locations around the world. One builds up one’s content capital simply by hanging out online and, more precisely, by posting content that garners a response and, in turn, leads to more followers and more content. While economic capital isn’t always required to acquire cultural capital, it generally helps. But in the case of content capital, lack of economic capital isn’t a barrier. After all, you don’t have to pay to get on a platform to start generating and sharing content.

To appreciate how content capital works, consider the very different experiences that a fourteen-year-old girl living with her working-class parents in a small town in the US Midwest might have in attempting to acquire cultural versus content capital. Restricted by her location (a rural area in the Midwest) and economic condition (working class), the teenager would most likely struggle to gain access to cultural capital. The teenager in question wouldn’t be able to easily attend an art opening or a live opera or orchestral performance, enroll in conservatory music lessons, study Latin, or experience foreign travel. In fact, she may not even realize that doing such things could be a gateway to acquiring the cultural capital needed to, let’s say, increase her chances of gaining a spot at Yale or Harvard and, more importantly, fitting in socially and succeeding at such institutions. In the age of content, however, the same teenager, despite her limited cultural and economic resources, can acquire considerable content capital—that is, assuming she has access to three things: a digital device, a stable Wi-Fi connection, and time (ideally lots of it). Given that these are things most adolescents growing up in developed countries do have, even for individuals from modest backgrounds, content capital is arguably available for the taking.

An extreme but not rare example can be found in the surprising breakthroughs made by teen social media influencers. Some twenty-first-century teen influencers hail from small towns and modest backgrounds and yet have thousands of online followers. Particularly surprising is the fact that their parents often have no idea their child has become an online celebrity. But as Max Levine, cofounder of MC Projects—one of the many agencies that

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