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ABSTRACT
This article examines imaginaries of platform entrepreneurship in film industries in Ghana. To understand how these imaginaries are spatially shaped and locally defined, we carried out in-depth qualitative research with fifty filmmakers in four regions of Ghana. Digital and platform technologies have long been optimistically celebrated as a way for marginalized creative entrepreneurs, particularly in Africa, to break into global markets and reach unprecedented levels of business success. However, far from being universally adopted by African creative entrepreneurs, these global techno-optimistic imaginaries are continually reworked, contested and subverted in practice. In this article, we show how Ghanaian filmmakers mobilized, deployed and resisted imaginaries of platform entrepreneurship in their efforts to make sense of their situated entrepreneurial practices and to imagine the future of their creative businesses. We found that rather than naïvely adhering to techno-optimist imaginaries, through their practices, Ghanaian filmmaking entrepreneurs challenged the power geometry of the current platform ecosystem dominated by major Silicon Valley players. We contribute empirically rich data on how filmmaking entrepreneurs use and imagine platform technologies, as is necessary when African digital entrepreneurs are surrounded by hype but inadequate data. We also contribute to the literature about how individual platforms and platform types have unique affordances and how these affordances are shaped by the location and socio-economic position of the entrepreneur.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Notes on contributors
Robin Steedman
Robin Steedman is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Creative and Cultural Industries in Africa at Copenhagen Business School. She is interested in global creative and cultural industries, and in questions of diversity and inequality in media production, distribution and viewership. Her work has been published in journals such as Poetics, Information, Communication & Society, Big Data & Society and Environment and Planning A. Her first book, Creative Hustling: Women Making and Distributing Films from Nairobi, is forthcoming from The MIT Press.
Ana Alacovska
Ana Alacovska is Associate Professor of the Sociology of Culture at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. Her research has been supported by a range of prestigious research grants awarded by the Danish Research Fund, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, DANIDA, H2020 and others. Her current research agenda is driven by a commitment to the empirical and theoretical critique of established notions of precarity, hope and care in creative labor, as practised locally in the creative industries in Africa (most notably Ghana) as well as globally on digital gig work platforms. Her work has found a home in journals such as Sociology, The Sociological Review, Work, Employment and Society, European Journal of Cultural Studies and others.
Thilde Langevang
Thilde Langevang is Associate Professor of entrepreneurship and development studies at Copenhagen Business School. Her research interests focus on entrepreneurship, livelihoods and creative industries in Africa, with a particular focus on young people and women. She is the coordinator of the international, interdisciplinary and collaborative research project Advancing Creative Industries for Development in Ghana, which is funded by Danida. Her work has been published in journals such as Economic Geography, Environment and Planning A, Environment & Urbanization, Geoforum, International Development Planning Review, International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship and Business and Society.
Rashida Resario
Rashida Resario is a lecturer of Drama and Theater Studies at the School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana. She has a research interest in the interaction of cultures through performance, dramaturgy of playwrights, creative industries, mediated performance and gender in performance. Her Ph.D. research focused on the micro and macro intercultural activities of the Ghana Dance Ensemble. She recently completed a research project on ‘Fat-shaming and/or Claiming in Contemporary Ghana,’ which was funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. She is currently a co-principal investigator in a collaborative project: Advancing Creative Industries for Development in Ghana, funded by DANIDA. She is also working on an Andrew Mellon-funded project in collaboration with the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Ghana, which examines the dynamics of the telenovela phenomenon in Ghana. Her recent works have been accepted for publication in journals such as Media, Culture and Society and Journal of Contemporary African Studies.