Webtoon

Critical scholars have called for increased vigilance against the emergence of digital platforms as a new hegemonic constellation of 21st-century capitalism, as well as the neoliberal governance and labour exploitation that concomitantly intensify, despite the transformative benefits of platform technology for cultural production. This essay discusses these issues by using the platformization of the South Korean “Webtoon” business as a case study to raise issues about the possible negative impacts of platforms on creative labour and their market domination. But more crucially, it draws attention to the way platformization has changed this specific cultural business and shows that it does more than just facilitate exploitation. Instead, we concentrate our research on the redesign of the Webtoon production process and the opportunity it creates for creative labour.