PhD Student
Elif Birced is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at Boston University. She is driven to understand the impact of digital technologies on the future of work and study global platforms as an economic, cultural, and labor sociologist. Using interviews and ethnography, she is interested more specifically in how social media platforms are reshaping work with a focus on cultural producers in countries beyond the Global North.
Her dissertation, funded by the American Sociological Association’s Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant and two competitive Boston University fellowships, examines transformations in labor control with the rise of the platform economy. As a case of platform work, she focuses on YouTubers, a group of professional and semi-professional creators that exceeds 2 million people worldwide. Using content creation on YouTube in Turkey as a case, the dissertation examines how content creators navigate control over their labor process when they are governed by multiple companies (e.g., social media platforms and brands) rather than by a single company’s in-person or algorithmic management. Her research involved interviewing 60 creator economy actors and ethnographically observing brand practices as an intern at a talent management and influencer marketing agency.
Elif further studies how platforms reshape labor control and cultural production in her other research. In a co-authored paper with Ashley Mears and Thao Nguyen, they investigate how viral content creators and sex workers in the US resist platform governance by engaging in strategic rule-breaking. In another co-authored paper with Ashley Mears, they examine how increasing impact of social media platforms on the field of magicians affect their profession and existing status hierarchies.
She presented her research at various academic meetings in the US, Canada, and Europe, including American Sociological Association (ASA), Society for Advancement of Socioeconomics (SASE), International Communication Association (ICA), WORK2023, among others. She is also a 2023 Medici Summer School Fellow and has served as graduate student coordinator of Precarity Lab between 2020-2024.
Elif holds a B.S. in Economics from Middle East Technical University, Turkey and an M.A. in Cultural Studies from Sabanci University, Turkey.
She is on the job market in the 2024-2025 academic year.