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

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.