Ecologies of dependence: Reframing creator sensemaking through power,language and place

Abstract

This commentary extends Jaramillo-Dent and Latzer's framework of enchanted and disenchanted creator sensemaking by arguing for a thicker ecological account of creator cultures. It proposes that ecology should be understood as a system of interdependent relationships that produces unequal power relationships through which visibility, income, recognition and vulnerability are distributed. It further argues that language and place of belonging are not contextual variables but structural forces that shape creator power, monetization, intimacy and mobility. Finally, it situates creator belief systems within longer histories of media production, showing how platform labour inherits genres, aspirations and exclusions from older cultural industries. Enchantment and disenchantment, therefore, should be understood less as opposing modes of creator sensemaking than as intertwined responses to platform ecologies that demand constant participation while keeping the conditions of control unevenly distributed.

Exploring Content Creators’ Belief Systems within their Social Media Ecosystems offers a productive intervention into creator studies by examining how creators make sense of the platformed environments in which they work (Jaramillo-Dent and Latzer, 2026, this issue). Drawing on 30 creators in Switzerland and Spain, with between five thousand and four million followers, interviewed in Spanish, English and Swiss German, the article moves creator research beyond accounts of creators as rational entrepreneurs, strategic content producers or managers of parasocial relations. It proposes a conceptualization of a single social media ecosystem, a visual mapping method for locating creators’ objects of belief, and an analytical framework for studying enchanted and disenchanted sensemaking. Disenchanted sensemaking is associated with calculation, work, information production and parasocial management, while enchanted sensemaking includes unexplainability, vocation, creative transcendence, meaning and faith-like responses to opaque systems.

This commentary extends that framework by developing a thicker understanding of ecology. In the article, ecological approaches are described as processes that include more than one actor or aspect in the study of content creation. That formulation expands the field beyond single-platform or single-actor accounts. Ecology, however, also carries a stronger analytical charge. Ecologies are systems of interdependences that produce power relations between cultural workers. Creators working within media ecologies are continuously shaped by histories, place-based conditions, language markets and asymmetrical social relations (Mehta, 2023). There is a self-critical point embedded in this proposal. Ecology is an attractive concept because it can hold many relations together. A stronger ecological analysis should specify the dependencies under study, place the political economy of language and place of belonging at the centre rather than as background information, and consider the historical conditions that shape those relations. This emphasis can deepen the article's framework, although it should be applied with care across contexts.

Placing dependence at the centre of ecological analysis sharpens insight into the social and technological relations that drive the process of content creation. A creator may depend on a platform for visibility, on audiences for legitimacy, on brands for income, on agencies for brokerage, on peers for platform knowledge, and on language communities for cultural intimacy. Platforms also depend on creators for content, data, advertising inventory and audience retention, although the power to alter recommendation systems, monetization rules, interface design and moderation standards remains unevenly held. The relationship is reciprocal in activity and asymmetrical in control. Ecology, then, names the unequal relations through which visibility, income, recognition and vulnerability are distributed.

For the article's mapping method, this reframing would mean asking creators to map relations of dependence alongside relations of proximity. The paper's visual mapping exercise already invites creators to locate themselves in relation to platforms, audiences, brands and other actors. A fuller ecological mapping could ask which actors can change the conditions of their work, which actors provide income, which actors provide recognition, which actors make them visible, which actors make them vulnerable, which actors they need, and which actors need them. Such questions would deepen the political dimension already present in the authors’ use of critical cartography and cognitive mapping.

The distinction between enchanted and disenchanted sensemaking gains depth when read through dependence. For instance, respondent Arturo's belief that he can control virality through projection is presented as an enchanted response to the uncertainty of viral circulation. From an ecological perspective, that belief responds to a dependency relation: creators depend on circulation systems whose criteria cannot be fully known. Projection, superstition or ritual then become methods for living with asymmetric uncertainty. The belief belongs to Arturo, yet the conditions that make such belief plausible are organized elsewhere, in the platform's opacity, the volatility of attention, and the creator's dependence on visibility.

Respondent Julia's case complicates the relation between work and vocation. The article describes Julia as a creator who has produced content for five years without monetizing it, while experiencing content creation as a creative outlet that generates intense flow and fulfilment. In the article's terms, Julia sits at the intersection of disenchantment and enchantment: content creation is labour without secure income, while also providing meaning, creative transcendence and attachment. An ecological reading asks how platforms benefit from this conjunction. The affective and existential dimensions of content creation sustain labour even when remuneration remains absent or uncertain. Creative fulfilment can coexist with value extraction. Vocation becomes part of the ecology of creator persistence.

Respondent Viviana's case brings the discussion to values, audience relations and belonging. The article describes her enchantment as a nostalgic orientation towards earlier social media cultures that she perceived as more human. Her full-time creator practice is shaped by a desire to align content creation with roots, values, authenticity and meaning rather than monetary growth alone. This case can be read alongside the article's tension between parasociality and meaning. Audience relations are mediated through metrics, demographics and engagement, while creators also seek forms of human connection that exceed measurable interaction. Ecologically, Viviana's belief system is shaped by changing platform cultures, shifts in audience expectation, pressures of monetization and the desire to remain anchored in a recognizable self.

Across these cases, enchanted and disenchanted modes rarely appear as separate orientations. The article (Jaramillo-Dent and Latzer, 2026, this issue) already links creator belief systems to algorithmic hierarchies, platform economics, network effects, invisible labour flows and attention economies. It also notes that enchanted sensemaking emerges because creators struggle to understand the workings and politics of algorithmic systems. However, from the earlier discussion, it is equally possible to consider how metrics can become objects of faith. Upload schedules can become rituals. Analytics dashboards can produce empirical knowledge and affective anxiety. Consistency can function as professional discipline and as a hopeful attachment to future breakthrough. A creator may calculate the best time to post and still describe success as luck, destiny or alignment. Therefore, a richer version of the article's framework might therefore treat enchantment and disenchantment as co-present practices that intensify under conditions of dependency. The creator calculates because the system gives some signals. The creator believes because the system withholds others.

Language and place of belonging sharpen this argument further. The article acknowledges that creator ecosystems include common, context-related and domain-specific actors, and that its European creator contexts may have limits when applied elsewhere. This acknowledgement creates an opening for placing language and geography closer to the centre of the framework. Language and place of belonging are a form of social capital that shape the power relations on social media. Bourdieu argues that language cannot be reduced to communication because it is a socially authorized performance of power (Bourdieu, 1977). As he puts it, ‘language is not only an instrument of communication or even of knowledge, but also an instrument of power’, and one speaks not simply ‘to be understood’ but ‘to be believed, obeyed, respected, distinguished’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 648). A creator producing in Swiss German, Spanish, English, Hindi, Tamil, Arabic or Dutch occupies different cultural and commercial possibilities. Some languages carry larger advertising markets. Some languages produce stronger community attachment. Some languages travel across diasporas (Athique, 2014). These differences affect income, visibility and professional mobility. They also shape belief systems. A creator's faith in authenticity, community or vocation is mediated by the language through which audiences recognize them. Place of belonging equally shapes credibility, cultural legitimacy, audience attachment and the kinds of markets creators can enter (Meng, 2026). The visual maps of creator ecosystems that Jaramillo-Dent and Latzer (2026, this issue) propose should therefore include language and place as structural elements rather than background variables. A creator's map could ask which language produces intimacy, which language produces income, which language produces scale, and which language produces institutional recognition. For multilingual creators, the map could function as a site for exploring content distribution across languages, platforms and audience segments. Such mapping would clarify how language shapes monetization, visibility and recognition.

This also changes how disenchanted and enchanted sensemaking might be read. A creator's belief in authenticity may be tied to language use. A creator's sense of vocation may be tied to representing a place or community that mainstream media has marginalized. A creator's superstition about virality may be shaped by the uneven visibility of non-dominant languages. A creator's data-driven strategy may involve deciding when to use English for scale and when to use a local language for loyalty. Enchantment and disenchantment therefore unfold through linguistic and place-based conditions.

Jaramillo-Dent and Latzer's (2026) mapping exercise begins from a single social media ecosystem as a manageable methodological unit. Cross-institutional creator cultures, however, suggest that creators may map their work across platforms, portals, live performance, streaming, advertising and legacy media from the outset (Bidav, 2025; Simon, 2024). For such creators, YouTube, Instagram, Duoyin or TikTok may be one node in a larger pathway connecting social media, streaming portals, film, television, brand work, intermediaries and live performance.

Historical continuity also belongs in the ecological frame. A creator's belief system is then continuously shaped by historical and relational understanding of ecology through interdependent relations among creators, platforms (YouTube), portals (Netflix), intermediaries, and film and broadcasting sectors. Social media creators inherit genres, prestige hierarchies, labour practices and professional aspirations from older media industries. Stand-up comedians draw from live performance, broadcasting, and digitally distributed services such as YouTube and Netflix (Lynch and Nwankwọ, 2025). Beauty creators draw from fashion magazines, celebrity culture, cosmetics industries and local grooming practices (Checcaglini, 2023). Platforms reorganize these histories while depending on them for content forms, audience expectations and professional legitimacy.

Jaramillo-Dent and Latzer's (2026, this issue) model could accommodate this temporal dimension by adding questions about inherited production cultures. When creators map platforms and audiences, they could also be asked which older media industries shape their sense of success, which institutions they want to enter, which genres they inherit, which intermediaries broker access, and which histories of exclusion remain active. This would connect the article's interest in belief systems to the longer production cultures that shape creator aspiration. It would also clarify why creators often imagine platform visibility as a route elsewhere, rather than as an end in itself.

Jaramillo-Dent and Latzer's (2026, this issue) work gives creator studies a valuable vocabulary for examining the affective, existential and speculative dimensions of platform labour. Its concepts of enchantment and disenchantment capture how creators inhabit uncertainty through calculation, hope, ritual, vocation and meaning. Extending this insight ecologically means asking how belief is formed through dependence, language, place and inherited production cultures. Creators make sense of platforms through the conditions that make platforms consequential: income, visibility, recognition, community, mobility and survival. Enchantment and disenchantment therefore name more than subjective orientations. They name the ways creators live with unequal systems that invite participation while withholding control.