David Hesmondhalgh is among a range of academics who critically analyse the relationship between media work and the media industry. He wrote a book about this called ‘The Culture Industries’

‘the distinctive organisational form of the cultural industries has considerable implications for the conditions under which symbolic creativity is carried out’ The Culture Industries 

‘many more people seem to have wanted to work professionally in the cultural industries than have succeeded in do so. Few people make it, and surprisingly little attention has been paid in research to how people do so, and what stops others from getting on.’ 

‘creative work is now imagined only as a self-actualising pleasure, rather than a potentially arduous or problematic obligation undertaken through material necessity‘

He is taking about the theories of the self and identity in relation to aspirational ambitions and the realities of the creative economy. How it is romanticised vs the reality of the industry.