From Academia to Algorithms: Digital Cultural Capital of Public Intellectuals in the Age of Platformization

Abstract

Scholars traditionally hold influential positions due to their cultural capital, derived from academic degrees, scholarly publications, and professional credentials. However, the rise of digital platforms has disrupted this hierarchy, placing scholars into new roles as online public intellectuals who engage in political advocacy and mobilize knowledge through public discourse. This transformation calls attention to how public intellectuals’ visibility and influence have become entangled with platform logics, leading to a reconsideration of “digital cultural capital”. Drawing theoretical insights from critical platform studies, celebrity studies, and marketing research, this article conceptually addresses three questions: (1) how traditional cultural capital transforms digitally; (2) how public intellectuals accumulate digital cultural capital; and (3) what are the risks of knowledge mobilization on platforms? This article proposes that traditional academic credentials are no longer sufficient to maintain public intellectuals’ influence, whereas visibility metrics—such as views, likes, shares, and follower counts—emerge as a digital form of “cultural capital from below”. Public intellectuals, thus, must engage in “code-switching” to navigate platform-mediated knowledge mobilization. Nevertheless, the populist tendencies embedded in cultural capital from below and the platform algorithms that enable it risk marginalizing less visible knowledge forms. Eventually, this article calls for future empirical research on how digital cultural capital and code-switching operate across geopolitical contexts, particularly within marginalized communities shaped by distinct platform logics and populist dynamics.

1. Introduction

Scholars have traditionally been seen as knowledge producers and communicators possessing cultural capital due to academic training, degrees, publications, and university affiliations. However, digital platforms challenge this perception. As Dyer-Witheford ([1999] 2005, pp. 487–89) notes that contemporary capitalism absorbs academics’ intellectual productivity, creating a collective intelligence known as “mass intellectuality”, we should be more critical when discussing scholars’ roles in digital knowledge mobilization.

This article discusses scholars from various fields who promote political agendas through digital platforms, framing them as public intellectuals. They manage their own social media or appear via other influencers’ accounts. The sociology of ideas has a long history of studying public intellectuals (Mills 1958; Lamont 2010; Gross 2002). Nowadays, the definition expands to include journalists, artists, filmmakers, and more. Focusing only on academics here does not devalue other professions. Rather, this article attempts to answer how scholars mobilize knowledge in the age of platformization and link it to cultural capital, distinguishing their digital personas from academic personas. It does not argue that platforms inevitably lead scholars toward political activism, but rather that some public intellectuals strategically leverage their institutional legitimacy and digital visibility to engage in political advocacy.

Social media, acting as “curators of public discourse” (Gillespie 2010, p. 347), increases dynamic interactions that affect public debates and activism. Thus arises the question: how can traditional cultural capital—degrees, positions, publications—convert into digital capital within platform logics? Notably, academics’ participation in public discussions does not always yield positive outcomes. Drawing on Foucault (2019), Kompatsiaris (2019, pp. 153–56) warns us that scholars might lack “parrhesia”—the ability to speak the truth courageously, to assume risk, and to embody truthfulness. Similarly, Edward Said (1996, pp. 86–87) also critiques scholars becoming functionaries of governments or corporations and losing moral insight. Today, the situation is even more complicated than in Said’s days if we consider the pressures put on academic freedom, especially in authoritarian contexts. Thus emerges a central tension: what are the risks of knowledge mobilization on platforms?

Another type of public intellectual—scholars disseminating scientific knowledge—is equally important. During COVID-19, scientists like Eric Topol and Trisha Greenhalgh used platforms such as Twitter to communicate public health policies. Traditional channels like conferences and journals cannot quickly address public needs, necessitating digital alternatives (Lafrenière et al. 2013). Effective dissemination, thus, needs actionable open-access material and social media engagement (Chan et al. 2020). Academic capital must, therefore, be supplemented by digital cultural capital strategies, enhancing visibility and accessibility. Meanwhile, they navigate misinformation and intentional ignorance, or “agnotology” (Mansur et al. 2021). Hence, balancing parrhesia and visibility to counter misinformation becomes a critical task for public intellectuals.

Public intellectuals may pursue idealistic goals but also face economic incentives as influencers. Top-ranking influencers earn 85% revenue from advertising (Thayne 2012, p. 1). Jordan Peterson, for instance, earned over USD 80,000 monthly through fan donations (Weiss 2018). However, revenue alone cannot explain their focus on visibility metrics. The paradox explored here is that scholars pursue visibility not primarily for money but because metrics constitute a form of digital cultural capital. In this regard, they become “digital knowledge workers”. Universities do not always encourage scholars’ public engagement (Khoo 2017; Inger and Thomson 2017), yet increasingly view researchers as “quasi-entrepreneurs” (Enders 2005). However, Giroux (2010) argues that commodification and the market erode public spheres and critical intellectualism by turning faculty into inexpensive labor subordinated to market logics.

This article theoretically examines how traditional and emerging cultural capital intersect and transform under platform governance, supported by illustrative examples. Readers are invited to rethink: (1) how traditional cultural capital transforms digitally; (2) how public intellectuals accumulate digital cultural capital; and (3) what are the risks of knowledge mobilization on platforms? Rather than empirical analysis, this article conceptually reexamines cultural capital, drawing from critical platform studies, celebrity studies, marketing, public intellectualism theory, and knowledge mobilization.

Existing scholarship has introduced concepts like celebrity capital, emotional capital, and solidarity capital (see Section 3). However, platform studies and celebrity studies rarely discuss public intellectuals’ shifting roles. Framing them as “academic micro-celebrities” (Morrison 2018) allows us to analyze their practices through influencer studies, showing potential consequences similar to influencers in other domains. This article attempts to fill this gap by reconceptualizing how academic cultural capital transfers and transforms via social media platforms.

Ultimately, I propose that degrees, publications, and citations alone cannot sustain public intellectual influence. They must practice “code-switching” (Gumperz and Hymes 1972; DiMaggio 1982), mastering vernacular language to connect with broader audiences. Additionally, visibility metrics form “cultural capital from below”, a form of recognition not granted by academic institutions but earned through affective engagement, peer interaction, and public validation (Beel and Wallace 2020). This bottom-up capital emerges from horizontal networks and everyday publics, rather than top-down accreditation, making it especially relevant in platformized spaces where audience responsiveness outweighs credentialed authority. It thus redistributes symbolic power, enabling scholars to gain influence through resonance and relationality rather than institutional endorsement, ultimately disrupting elitist hierarchies of knowledge production. However, this dynamic also opens knowledge mobilization to the risks of populism, where platform algorithms may reward oversimplification, sensationalism, or conformity to dominant affective trends, thereby reproducing new exclusions.

Given this article’s interdisciplinary theoretical engagement,

Table 1. Key concepts and their relevance to this study.

Concept	Definition/Source	Relevance to the Study
Cultural Capital	Forms of capital (embodied, objectified, institutionalized) that confer social advantage	Provides the foundational framework for understanding traditional scholarly authority and its institutional bases.
Digital Cultural Capital	Technological and platform-based competencies and visibility metrics that confer influence	Explains how cultural capital is restructured online through engagement metrics like views, likes, and shares.
Cultural Capital from Below	Bottom-up recognition and legitimacy derived from community engagement and peer interaction	Highlights how digital recognition can bypass institutional validation, but also how it remains shaped by platform logics.
Celebrity/Influencer Capital	Symbolic power gained through media visibility, convertibility across domains	Shows how public intellectuals adopt tactics from influencer culture to cultivate public attention and legitimacy.
Code-Switching	The practice of shifting language or presentation styles across contexts	Describes the communicative flexibility scholars must adopt to navigate different publics and platforms.
Platform Logics	The algorithmic, metric-driven, and affect-oriented structures of digital platforms	Frames how visibility and influence are conditioned by platform-specific affordances, such as recommendation algorithms and engagement incentives.
Public Intellectuals	Scholars and thinkers who engage broader publics beyond academia	Discuss the central subject of the article—figures who must now navigate visibility economies to maintain authority and relevance.
Knowledge Mobilization	The process of translating and circulating knowledge beyond academic institutions	Underscores how scholars engage in outreach to impact public discourse, especially through platformized media.

offers a brief summary of key concepts and their relevance to this study. These terms are drawn from ongoing academic debates across multiple fields, and their definitions remain contested. The table only clarifies how each term is employed within the scope of this article, with further elaboration provided in subsequent sections.

The following sections first revisit Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory to situate scholarly visibility within celebrity culture and influencer dynamics. Then, I examine visibility metrics as digital cultural capital, emphasizing code-switching’s role in translating knowledge across platforms. Next, I analyze how relational and performative practices shape cultural capital from below through emotional engagement and vernacular legitimacy. Lastly, I highlight populist tendencies in this capital, illustrating how platform logics and algorithmic filtering may unintentionally produce a new form of exclusion in knowledge mobilization despite its bottom-up recognition promises.

2. Cultural Capital in the Age of Platformization

Pierre Bourdieu is undoubtedly the most influential theorist on cultural capital. However, the intellectual origins of this idea can be traced back to Max Weber. Weber argued that elite groups construct distinct social identities through shared cultural traits, tastes, and lifestyles (DiMaggio 1982, pp. 189–90). Building upon this, Bourdieu developed his concept of cultural capital, which has since become a theoretical reference point in sociology, education, and other fields.

Bourdieu (1986) identified three forms of cultural capital: embodied, objectified, and institutionalized. Embodied cultural capital refers to dispositions of mind and body acquired through cultivation and socialization; objectified cultural capital is manifested as tangible cultural objects such as books, artworks, and musical instruments; institutionalized cultural capital is exemplified by academic credentials and degrees conferred through formal education, which certify and legitimise specific social identities (Bourdieu 1986, pp. 17–21). Among these, institutionalized cultural capital is perhaps the most relevant to this article. Bourdieu asserts that academic degrees not only demonstrate technical proficiency but also signify distinct social status, differentiating holders from other groups (Lareau and Weininger 2003, p. 581). Higher education credentials, particularly, are viewed as prerequisites for attaining influential and lucrative economic positions (DiMaggio and Mohr 1985). These insights provide a basis to understand why institutionalized cultural capital—long taken for granted as the foundation of scholarly authority—is now being challenged by platform logics, which privilege attention and accessibility over credentialed expertise. While institutionalized cultural capital may not be as vital as before, public intellectuals still perform their embodied capital, maintaining a digital persona suitable for online knowledge mobilization (Bar-El 2023). Those manners, speaking styles, and narrative styles result from academic training and are embodied in their performance.

Bourdieu (1986, p. 24) maintains that all forms of capital are ultimately related to economic capital. Hence, one of the characteristics of cultural capital lies in its potential convertibility into economic capital, facilitating monopolization of scarce resources (Lareau and Weininger 2003, p. 587). In educational systems, the hereditary transmission of cultural capital ensures the reproduction and continuity of social structures (Bourdieu 1986, p. 17). This observation is essential to my later interrogation of whether the production and consumption of knowledge online reinforces rather than subverts existing inequalities. If digital forms of capital are linked to pre-existing resources, the democratization of information and knowledge may be an illusion.

Scholarships in celebrity studies often regard “fame” as a form of social capital (Abidin 2018; Carrillat and Ilicic 2019; Yesiloglu 2020). However, this narrow focus on fame is not sufficient to capture the “influences” they have. Their influences depend not only on social networks (social capital) but also on the composition and deployment of cultural capital. While the convertibility of cultural capital remains important, it is crucial to acknowledge that not all forms of cultural capital accumulated on digital platforms can be transformed into economic or other forms of capital. Hence, influences should not be interpreted—as marketing research often does—merely as a tool for influencing consumers’ purchasing behaviors. Rather, this article considers how influences reflect the shifting nature of knowledge authority in the attention economy.

Educational research often interprets Bourdieu’s idea narrowly as related to the appreciation of “highbrow culture” (Lareau and Weininger 2003). However, Bourdieu’s definition of cultural capital is indeed broader, not explicitly distinguishing it from general skills or abilities. Therefore, the research scope of cultural capital theory should not be restricted to particular tastes or cultural practices, and thus, should not overlook technical skills acquired in school settings. This opens space to interpret digital communication skills, such as video-editing, meme-making, live-streaming, and podcasting, as forms of cultural capital, especially when they help scholars reach the public.

In media studies, with the adoption of digital technologies, scholars have proposed the concept of “digital cultural capital” (Paino and Renzulli 2013; Gómez 2021; Ren et al. 2022; Pitzalis and Porcu 2024). The concept encompasses not merely technical proficiency with digital tools, but also an understanding of social norms, etiquette, and strategies associated with the use of digital technology. The ways in which scholars present themselves and build influence on social media rely on this digital cultural capital, internalized through habitus (Ollier-Malaterre et al. 2019).

From a cultural geography perspective, Beel and Wallace (2020) have proposed the concept of “cultural capital from below”. Unlike traditional top-down cultural capital transmitted through family or education, this bottom-up cultural capital emerges organically from communities, often consciously resisting mainstream cultural hegemony. Furthermore, this form of cultural capital emphasizes the externalization of knowledge, involving how different technologies mobilize knowledge and shape its flow. This formulation is valuable for analyzing scholars who build their influences through community-based knowledge mobilization, independent of academic institutions, exemplified by scholars working with civil organizations.

In addition to Bourdieu’s ideas, this section has discussed how the concept of cultural capital is adopted and adapted in celebrity studies, educational studies, media studies, and cultural geography, expanding the scope to include digital and bottom-up formations. The next section will build on this foundation by examining how celebrity and influencer cultures intersect with scholarly visibility, further reshaping the dynamics of capital accumulation online.

3. Celebrity Capital: A Re-Organization

Scholars have coined various terms to describe influential figures on social media platforms, including “micro-celebrity” (Marwick 2015) and “opinion leader” (Park 2013; Weeks et al. 2017). Micro-celebrities leverage follower bases to convert visibility into economic capital (Abidin 2015). Though public intellectuals may not prioritize monetization, they are sometimes described as “academic micro-celebrities” (Morrison 2018), engaging in follower cultivation, personal branding, and the strategic use of visibility. While “celebrity” traditionally implies a focus on personal life (Turner 2004), “influencer” refers to individuals who shape audience behaviors, including political and social attitudes (Quintana Ramos and Cownie 2020). The influencer concept, rooted in business studies, includes “micro-influencers” who cultivate intimate and highly engaged communities and “macro-influencers” who command extensive reach suitable for larger-scale marketing initiatives (Kaur and Siddhey 2024, p. 5). This distinction is significant for understanding the stratification of digital influence; where some scholars may have small, deeply engaged academic or activist audiences, while others like Yuval Noah Harari and Steven Pinker achieve global macro-influencer status across disciplines.

Further distinctions clarify their communicative strategies: “informers” offer domain-specific expertise; “entertainers” produce enjoyable content; “infotainers” combine both, packaging knowledge through affective and accessible presentations (Cornwell and Katz 2020). Contemporary public intellectuals increasingly perform as infotainers, balancing accuracy with engagement. These strategies intersect with influencer marketing roles, such as “salesmen” and “idea planters” who persuade or provoke reflection, using techniques like consistency, authority, and social proof (Brown and Hayes 2008). These techniques are also observed in scholarly outreach, for example, threading ideas over time or using institutional affiliations to establish credibility.

Celebrity studies help us contextualize the symbolic power of visibility. Rojek (2001) classifies celebrity as ascribed, achieved, or attributed; scholars typically fall under the achieved category through intellectual accomplishments. Brooks et al. (2021) describe a process of “influencer celebrification”, where visibility leads to celebrity capital. They identify generative practices (e.g., attention labor), collaborative practices (e.g., audience portability), and evaluative practices (e.g., engagement analytics) in the process of celebrification. van Krieken (2012) and Williamson (2016) frame celebrity as surplus value extracted from attention, linking it to capitalist systems that reward commodified self-expression and reinforce gendered and hierarchical norms (Hopkins and Louw 2019).

Driessens (2013a) defines “celebrity capital” as symbolic power gained through media visibility, which can be converted into other forms of capital. While symbolic capital is often field-specific (Driessens 2013b), social media traits like intimacy and authenticity may enable its cross-field transfer (Chen and Liebler 2023). This helps explain figures like Jordan Peterson, whose professional authority in psychology has been extended into broader political discourse. The academic application of celebrity capital highlights its ambivalence. As Braun (2011) and Farrell (2019) note, visibility may enhance symbolic power, but also expose scholars to credibility loss. For instance, Slavoj Žižek’s shift toward mass media led to his position as a “sacrificial intellectual” (Bar-El 2023), suggesting that academic authority is not always preserved when entering the celebrity economy. Related concepts such as “reputation capital” (Hunter et al. 2009), “emotional capital” (Farrell 2019), “political capital” (Arthurs and Shaw 2016), and “media meta-capital” (Couldry 2003) further elaborate how symbolic power operates in digital visibility. Due to the length of this article, they could not be detailed here, but they all point to the layered nature of influence in platform environments.

4. Visibility Metrics as Digital Cultural Capital: The Ability of Code-Switching

Having discussed the concept of cultural capital and celebrity capital, this section focuses on visibility metrics—quantifiable indicators like likes, views, shares, and follower counts—as a distinct form of digital cultural capital. These metrics represent more than technical data; they signal symbolic recognition, influence, and legitimacy in the platformized public sphere. According to Bourdieu’s theory, cultural capital is typically an internalized capacity, such as artistic appreciation, which may not directly translate into economic capital but is closely associated with economic and symbolic hierarchies. Similarly, visibility metrics operate symbolically: they are accumulated, displayed, and interpreted as indicators of worth, functioning like citations or impact factors in academia. However, digital cultural capital transforms the meaning of “institutionalized”. Traditionally, institutionalization referred to recognition by established bodies like universities. Today, it is increasingly shaped by the intangible authority of platforms, where visibility metrics serve as new forms of credentials.

Within the attention economy, attention itself becomes a tradable asset (Davenport and Beck 2001). As Goldhaber (2006) argues, the value of content is now contingent on its ability to capture and sustain attention. On social media platforms, friends, followers, and subscribers have similarly become tradable resources (Poell et al. 2021). A “like” carries specific social significance; it conveys approval from users, enhancing content credibility and persuasiveness (Seo et al. 2019), whereas higher number of likes generates “social proof”, increasing content reliability (de Vries et al. 2012; Lee et al. 2011). This can be further amplified by the “herd effect”, as many users follow the majority’s behaviour without in-depth consideration (Mattke et al. 2020). Brighenti (2010) hence concludes that visibility can have three effects: recognition, secrecy, and spectacle, each influencing knowledge mobilization. This shift means that the success of scholarly communication increasingly hinges not on accuracy or expertise, but on aesthetic, emotional, and algorithmic resonance. In this regard, “metric logic” (Aldous et al. 2019), describing how platform metrics intertwine with creative production, is evident in the success of online micro-celebrities (Leban and Voyer 2020). Although these metrics are traditionally used to assess influencer marketing effectiveness (Kaur and Siddhey 2024), their influence extends beyond consumption habits. In academia, Twitter mentions and YouTube reach may provide junior scholars with job opportunities (Frost 2017).

Achieving these metrics increasingly requires intellectuals to package knowledge through emotionally and aesthetically appealing formats, often achieved via “code-switching” (Gumperz and Hymes 1972; DiMaggio 1982). Originating from sociology and anthropology, code-switching is the practice of adjusting one’s behavior, appearance, or language in response to shifting social contexts and interlocutors (Ulysse 2007, p. 126). For instance, a podcast program, “In-Betweenness” exemplifies how scholars in Sinophone contexts translate “hardcore” topics—such as diaspora, nationalism, or religious identity—into accessible content. These practices of translation are forms of code-switching that allow public intellectuals to convert their academic capital into digital cultural capital, embedded in visibility and engagement. The effectiveness of these practices lies not just in their content, but in their ability to align form and tone with platform norms and audience sensibilities.

Code-switching functions as both a tool of knowledge mobilization and a mechanism of capital accumulation. It allows public intellectuals to perform visibility in ways legible to algorithms and accessible to lay audiences. While not scholars or public intellectuals themselves, content creators like “Mingjai” (@mingjai14) in Hong Kong and “Cheap” (@cheapaoe) in Taiwan exemplified vernacular strategies. “Mingjai” uses map-based visuals to explain historical events (Figure 1), while “Cheap” draws comic-style narratives to engage audiences with political and social issues (Figure 2). Their success does not rely on institutional credentials but on their ability to distill complex topics into formats that invite engagement, interpretation, and sharing. These practices highlight how visual storytelling and affective resonance can bypass traditional academic gatekeeping, modeling tactics that public intellectuals may adopt to mobilize knowledge effectively. They represent cultural capital from below because legitimacy is conferred not by academic institutions but through community engagement, vernacular accessibility, and audience validation. This from-below orientation challenges elitist knowledge hierarchies and enables alternative pathways for intellectual authority in platformized environments.

A comparable yet distinct case is Simon Shen, a Hong Kong political scientist who has maintained his scholarly output while actively cultivating a public presence on social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube, and Patreon. By launching the YouTube channel “Simon Global” in 2020, Shen adapted his pedagogical expertise into affective and accessible content tailored for broader Chinese-speaking publics. His videos span geopolitical commentary, cultural critique, and diasporic reflection. Shen’s influence arises from horizontal peer recognition, an audience-driven legitimacy characteristic of cultural capital from below. His success also reveals an acute attunement to platform logics: although he aspires to produce theoretically rich and long-term content, he acknowledged that commentary on breaking news drives more engagement under YouTube’s algorithmic regime. This strategic alignment with platform incentives—while maintaining a careful balance between political critique and depoliticized tone—illustrates the double bind facing public intellectuals: to remain visible, they must continuously negotiate between algorithmic demands and intellectual integrity. Shen’s case thus underscores the performative and precarious labor required to sustain digital cultural capital in politically sensitive and platformized environments.

However, such capital remains volatile. Unlike academic prestige, which is slow and cumulative, visibility is immediate and fluctuating. The performative logic of platforms encourages continuous content production (Huberman et al. 2009), while trust in scholarly authority erodes in favor of peer-driven credibility (Labinaz and Sbisà 2021). Thus, public intellectuals must continuously adapt their code-switching practices to maintain relevance and accumulate cultural capital in an environment shaped by algorithmic governance and popular sensibilities.

In short, visibility metrics have become a key form of digital cultural capital, whose acquisition depends on the performative ability to code-switch across platforms, audiences, and registers. By doing so, public intellectuals do not simply communicate ideas. Instead, they translate, repackage, and circulate them in ways that align with the logics of platform capitalism. This reconfiguration of cultural capital foregrounds not only what is said, but how it is said, and to whom.

5. Influences Behind Visibility: The Formation of Cultural Capital from Below

Metrics logic itself does not entirely negate alternative forms of recognition. Instead, it provides a new terrain in which “cultural capital from below” can emerge. Unlike institutionalized cultural capital that flows from credentialed authority and peer validation, this bottom-up form of capital is constituted through affective interaction, community validation, and relational visibility. When scholars share knowledge not for institutional prestige but to resonate with everyday users in accessible ways, they accumulate legitimacy through community participation. This constitutes a form of capital rooted in vernacular, horizontal networks rather than vertical accreditation—what Beel and Wallace (2020) conceptualize as “cultural capital from below”.

Brooks et al. (2021, p. 541) emphasize that measuring audience engagement does not yield comprehensive insights because the real value lies in understanding audience identities and behavioral patterns. However, there remains no universally agreed-upon standard for evaluating influences; debates continue over criteria such as the appropriate minimum number of followers or the necessary depth of audience engagement per post (Xiong et al. 2018; Kusumasondjaja and Tjiptono 2019; Yesiloglu 2020). Addressing these relational dynamics, Neumayer et al. (2021) propose “quasi-visibility” as an alternative concept, highlighting how visibility fluctuates according to technological and community-based contexts. Similarly, Abidin’s (2021) notion of “discoverability” emphasizes the relational capacity of content creators to engage specific communities through subtle affective interactions. Social media leadership and influencer status depend on interpersonal engagement that facilitates the ongoing accumulation of social capital (Marwick 2015; Lin et al. 2018). This unstable and informal system of recognition is precisely what enables cultural capital from below to take form. Recognition becomes context-dependent and often mediated by personal storytelling, accessibility, or even humor, rather than disciplinary authority.

Indeed, the attention economy is relational, relying on interpersonal connections and sustained emotional engagement (Stiegler 2012). Within affective relations, influencers shape audience sentiments rather than persuading them through rational arguments. Strong ties cultivated by influencers, characterized by emotional depth, are vital for sustained influence (Willson 2014). Through subtle emotional strategies like “sentiment seeding” (Abidin 2021, pp. 7–9), influencers gradually guide audiences toward desired beliefs or behaviors. In other words, sustaining interactivity through repeated interactions influences the application of knowledge. For instance, Facebook’s algorithm factors in the affinity between users, content popularity (weight), and recency (time decay) to prioritize content visibility (Bucher 2012, pp. 1167–68). Visibility, in this environment, is never neutral.

Some influencers even obscure their quantitative impact, focusing on personal narratives and qualitative anecdotes that resonate with followers (Abidin 2018, pp. 96–97). This engagement parallels what public intellectuals might do through storytelling or personal reflection. For example, on Jordan Peterson’s YouTube, the most viewed content is a short of 24 s, introducing a comedian, Matt Rife, who was canceled by his fans due to a domestic assault joke (JordanBPeterson 2023). The short recorded over 18M views. While it does not provide a rational argument, it conveys to Peterson’s audience that he supports Rife and urges them to rethink cancel culture. Also, among his top 10 most viewed videos as of March 2025, one of them is “Return Home”, which records 5.08M views, about him returning to Toronto after 18 months of medical treatment (JordanBPeterson 2020). These two examples show Peterson’s focus on personal narratives, putting equal emphasis on personal engagement with audiences—by disclosing his daily life—instead of only sharing knowledge in his fields or commenting on politics.

Narrative intimacy and authenticity are increasingly central to cultural recognition. When influence is built through personal disclosure and affective alignment rather than formal expertise, the resulting recognition functions as cultural capital that emerges “from below”. It is mediated by algorithmic affordances, yet grounded in horizontal audience engagement.

Why, then, is acquiring attention and exercising influence crucial for public intellectuals? First, political activism and knowledge mobilization strategies increasingly employ performative methods, leveraging “neural mirroring” to shape audience perception and influence behaviors through mimetic logic (Goldhaber 2006). Effective knowledge mobilization relies on strategic framing and audience-sensitive packaging. Failure to tailor content appropriately may lead to “knowledge disavowal” (Hutchinson and Huberman 1994, p. 32), in which insights are rejected or ignored. Factors such as source credibility, communication quality, and audience receptivity affect the success of knowledge mobilization (Joshi et al. 2007). However, linear, top-down mobilization often overlooks user agency and context, leading to poor adoption of innovations. Therefore, scholarly communication should adapt to the audience’s specific background to bridge discourse communities (Brachaniec et al. 2009; Kahn 2009). The circulation of knowledge no longer flows in one direction; instead, it is shaped through feedback, reception, and emotional attunement. This renders capital contingent, unstable, and yet potentially more democratic in scope.

Commercial influencers often adopt “calibrated amateurism” (Abidin 2018, pp. 91–92), performing authenticity to appear relatable rather than authoritative. Public intellectuals, on the contrary, position themselves as “professional outsiders” (West 2008, pp. 79–81), perceived as impartial and free agents who remain credible because they seem to stand outside institutional or partisan boundaries. This figure of the professional outsider is powerful but fragile, as its credibility hinges on balancing accessibility and expertise, proximity and detachment. In other words, public intellectuals perform both credibility and relatability, drawing cultural power not from institutional legitimacy but from the audience’s trust, formed through consistent and vernacular engagement. This hybrid role allows them to accumulate capital across multiple fields, albeit with constant negotiation.

Ultimately, true influence is reflected in cross-platform mobility. Marketing studies emphasize multi-platform presence to maximize returns, moving followers from free platforms like YouTube to monetized platforms like Patreon (Scolere 2019). Similarly, public intellectuals require this agility to demonstrate broad expertise. For example, Yuval Noah Harari transitioned from scholarship to public discourse by leveraging platforms, solidifying his authority across topics from history to politics. Similarly, Slavoj Žižek transformed from a Hegelian philosopher to a political commentator, and now symbolizes left-wing politics, gaining legitimacy to comment on social issues with a leftist authority (Bar-El 2023). Žižek’s and Harari’s success illustrates how public intellectuals must manage their brand across domains, cultivating recognition through books, talks, and digital content in ways that reflect and reinforce platform logics.

6. Populist Logics and the Selective Visibility of Digital Cultural Capital from Below

So far, we have discussed how visibility metrics and relational practices can produce a form of cultural capital from below. While this mode of recognition opens new possibilities for knowledge mobilization, it also introduces a different set of constraints shaped by populist dynamics and platform logics. These dynamics reflect a politics of visibility in which certain content, voices, and styles are amplified while others are systematically sidelined.

One of the key characteristics of cultural capital from below is its reliance on emotional resonance, authenticity, and perceived accessibility. It privileges charisma over expertise and popularity over deliberation. In this regard, cultural capital from below aligns with broader populist tendencies, where authority is legitimized through perceived proximity to “the people” rather than through elite knowledge systems. This alignment can lead to the marginalization of dissenting or intellectually challenging voices, not because they lack substance, but because they are less algorithmically favorable or affectively appealing. In such environments, visibility is governed by the logics of popularity. Content that reflects mainstream sentiments is more likely to be recommended, circulated, and monetized. Public intellectuals who echo dominant public opinions or offer entertaining and emotionally charged performances gain traction more easily than those who challenge prevailing assumptions. What emerges is thus not a neutral marketplace of ideas but a stratified field in which agreement with the public confers visibility, while disagreement incurs invisibility.

The “rich-get-richer” dynamics of attention economics further exacerbate this issue. Digital platforms usually reward already-visible figures, replicating the “Matthew effect” familiar in academic contexts (Walsh and Lehmann 2021). As a result, cultural capital from below does not guarantee inclusivity. Instead, it may amplify dominant voices, particularly when platform algorithms favor content that appeals to broad and mainstream tastes.

These dynamics are evident in racial and gender disparities in digital visibility. For example, YouTube’s recommendation systems have been shown to privilege white and conventionally attractive creators (Bishop 2019; Leban and Voyer 2020).

Table 2. Top individual educational YouTubers, data collected on 25 Mar 2025.

Channel Name	Rank	Subscribers	Views	Videos	Category	Origins or Ethnicity	Gender
आचार्य प्रशांत - Acharya Prashant (@ShriPrashant)	6th	56M	3.6B	13K	Philosophy	India	Male
Dhruv Rathee (@dhruvrathee)	18th	28M	4.1B	676	Politics	India	Male
Dr. Vivek Bindra: Motivational Speaker (@DrVivekBindra)	30th	21M	2B	2K	Business	India	Male
Pushkar Raj Thakur: Stock Market Educator (@PushkarRajThakur)	59th	14M	1.2B	1.9K	Business	India	Male
Doctor Mike (@doctormike)	62th	14M	4.3B	997	Medicine	U.S. (White)	Male
Dr. Eric Berg DC (@drericberg)	65th	13M	2.8B	5.5K	Medicine	U.S. (White)	Male
SONU SHARMA (@sonusharmaofficial)	70th	12M	1B	436	Business	India	Male

shows data collected from Social Blade, manually filtered to exclude institutional accounts such as academies, TV channels, and animation companies. Among the top 100 educational YouTubers, there are eight individual creators (Table 2). Most of them are either white or Indian men, with no women appearing on the list. Racially speaking, Indian creators are well-represented, being serious competitors of white men. However, speaking of gender representation, women remain excluded from the list of high-performing educational channels. Women, despite their presence in education, often gain visibility only in areas aligned with their traditional gender roles, such as children’s music or emotional care. Similarly, LGBTQ+ creators report facing algorithmic demonetization and harsher authenticity policing (Petre et al. 2019), which systematically undermines their capacity to accrue cultural capital on equal footing. This uneven distribution is not accidental. Rather, it reflects the populist orientation of platform logics, which favor easily consumable, affective, and non-controversial content. As Lynch (2018) observes, platforms tend to promote popular subgenres that appeal to dominant taste communities, while marginalizing politically or culturally critical content.

These developments are further intensified under the conditions of a post-factual society and a post-truth era, in which truth claims are subordinated to emotional appeal, repetition, and ideological alignment. In such a climate, the democratization of knowledge becomes paradoxical: while more individuals can participate in knowledge production, the content that circulates most widely is often that which confirms existing beliefs rather than challenges them. Cultural capital from below is thus filtered through post-factual logics that reward affective resonance over theoretical engagement and academic depth, enabling the reproduction of content hierarchies even in the absence of formal gatekeeping. Affective feedback loops within social media platforms further reinforce emotionally charged content through algorithmic amplification, privileging visibility over veracity (Boler and Davis 2018). Public intellectuals who diverge from populist sentiment or refuse to simplify their arguments face platform invisibility, regardless of their substantive contributions.

Thus, while cultural capital from below enables visibility through community engagement and affective ties, it is filtered through populist and algorithmic logics that reward conformity over critique. In response, public intellectuals often resort to code-switching to enhance their discoverability and audience receptivity. Originally a strategy of knowledge mobilization, code-switching now also operates as a tactical means of acquiring digital cultural capital from below. By aligning with the vernacular forms and aesthetic preferences favored by platforms and their users, intellectuals increase their chances of being amplified. However, in doing so, they risk flattening the complexity of their arguments into emotionally charged and easily consumable content. Under these conditions, code-switching becomes less about bridging discourse communities and more about navigating the populist terrain of visibility. What gets rewarded is not necessarily scholarly value but affective resonance, personality, and alignment with dominant platform cultures.

These tendencies are further illustrated by the “reuse” of digital content in politicized and reductive ways. For instance, an interview between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman was repackaged in East Asian digital spaces with populist titles like “The Best Right-Wing Psychologist vs. White Leftist Host/Haha, Trap You” (Godsteammate 2024). The interview itself contained no discussion of psychology, yet Peterson’s academic credentials were instrumentalized (“the best right-wing psychologist”) to lend legitimacy to anti-feminist discourse. This phenomenon reveals how cultural capital from below can be appropriated to serve populist agendas, where symbolic authority is decoupled from intellectual labor and reattached to partisan affect. Public intellectuals, in this climate, risk being reduced to branded personas—figures whose influence depends less on ideas than on visibility, repetition, and emotional familiarity. The line between knowledge and entertainment blurs, with scholars repackaged as infotainers or symbolic figures representing ideological camps (Arthurs and Shaw 2016; van de Ven and van Gemert 2020). While not inherently negative, this development limits the epistemic diversity of online discourse, as nuanced or unpopular viewpoints struggle to compete with content that “performs well” algorithmically.

Nonetheless, some counter-examples do exist. For example, two interview videos with Judith Butler produced by Big Think (@bigthink) have garnered over 1.5 million views on YouTube (bigthink 2011, 2023), while Japanese feminist sociologist Chizuko Ueno (@ueon_wan) has amassed over 150K followers on X (formerly Twitter). These visible audiences represent more than abstract numbers. Rather, they are reservoirs of attention that can be mobilized across platforms, generating public discourse, media coverage, or even political action. In Taiwan, content creators like Shasha (@shasha77) had an interview with communication scholar Ting-Yu Kang, which responded directly to criticism against feminism (shasha77 2024). This video garnered over 50K views within just four months. These cases show that cultural capital from below can also be mobilized for progressive ends.

In sum, while cultural capital from below opens space for alternative recognition and bottom-up knowledge mobilization, it also carries populist tendencies that may undermine the very ideals of diversity, complexity, and critical thinking. Its reliance on affective immediacy, popularity metrics, and performative authenticity makes it susceptible to exclusionary patterns along gendered, racial, and ideological lines. The challenge, then, is not to reject this form of capital, but to critically examine its conditions of production, its winners and losers, and the values it elevates on platformized public spheres.

7. Conclusions: Directions of Future Research

This article has examined how public intellectuals navigate the shifting terrain of cultural capital in the age of platformization. Through visibility metrics and relational practices such as code-switching, scholars today engage in a new form of cultural labor that both mobilizes knowledge and accrues symbolic value. These performances of visibility reflect what I have called cultural capital from below—a bottom-up form of recognition rooted not in institutional credentialing but in affective resonance, audience intimacy, and algorithmic amplification. However, while this capital promises openness and inclusivity, it also operates within populist logics that reward emotional appeal over epistemic depth, and conformity over critique.

Revisiting the three guiding questions, we can now see that traditional academic capital—based on peer-reviewed outputs, disciplinary mastery, and institutional affiliation—no longer guarantees visibility or public legitimacy. Instead, public intellectuals must code-switch across registers, translating complex knowledge into accessible, affectively charged, and aesthetically resonant formats. In doing so, they do not simply mobilize knowledge; they repackage it for circulation within a platform economy that privileges popularity, emotional clarity, and immediacy. This is both enabling and constraining: while code-switching opens pathways for public engagement and community dialogue, it also risks flattening critical content into content that merely performs well. Moreover, while cultural capital from below provides alternative forms of legitimacy, it is far from equitable. Even within seemingly open digital spaces, patterns of exclusion persist across gender and race. Populist tendencies embedded in platform governance and user behavior reproduce inequalities, limiting which voices gain visibility and whose knowledge is valued. Code-switching, in this light, is not just a strategy for access, but a survival tactic for navigating these asymmetries. It reveals the performative labor demanded of intellectuals, not only to be understood, but to be heard at all.

While this article has approached these issues conceptually, there remains a pressing need for empirical research that investigates how public intellectuals actually experience and negotiate these dynamics in practice. Particularly valuable would be qualitative studies involving interviews with public intellectuals and their viewers, which can uncover the subtleties of platform labor, affective tensions, and algorithmic navigation that are often invisible in surface-level analysis. These struggles are rarely made explicit in content alone; they emerge in behind-the-scenes choices, compromises, and negotiations. Complementing interviews with critical discourse analysis of their platform appearances could further reveal how knowledge is mediated, branded, and politicized under algorithmic pressures.

To build on this framework, future research should explore how digital cultural capital is negotiated across different geopolitical and cultural contexts. Examining scholars in the Global South or within marginalized communities—where platform logics, state censorship, and audience expectations differ—will allow for more contextually situated insights. This forward-looking agenda can strengthen the comparative dimension of public intellectual studies and deepen our understanding of how academic and scientific influence is shaped beyond Western-centric cases. Eventually, comparative research across geopolitical contexts is necessary to test and refine the conceptual frameworks developed in this article. How does code-switching operate across linguistic ecologies? What forms of cultural capital from below emerge under different platform ecologies and media infrastructures? Such cross-contextual work would allow us to move beyond anecdotal examples and toward a broader theorization of digital knowledge mobilization.

Theoretically, it would also be fruitful to situate this inquiry within ongoing discussions around the “knowledge commons” (Chan and Mounier 2019; Ramakrishnan et al. 2021) and “scholar-activism” (Ramasubramanian and Sousa 2021; Bashiri 2024). The former emphasizes shared and non-proprietary forms of intellectual labor, while the latter highlights scholars’ engagement in social movements and political advocacy. Both concepts open up normative questions about what public scholarship should aim for: not just visibility or impact, but collective agency, epistemic justice, and community co-authorship. UNESCO (2023) advocates understanding knowledge as a public good, echoing a broader call to democratize knowledge beyond elite or market-driven frameworks. Shifting from top-down models toward bottom-up knowledge mobilization is essential. Public intellectuals should serve as “linking agents” (Hutchinson and Huberman 1994, p. 27) to bridge academia and public communities. This shift recognizes the agency of diverse communities to generate and share knowledge, moving beyond passive consumption to co-creation. Connecting digital cultural capital to these frameworks may provide a richer vocabulary for imagining alternatives to individualistic, metric-driven forms of public intellectualism.

Reversing the inequalities in digital knowledge mobilization thus requires rethinking existing approaches. The debate over open access and open science may provide insight: what are the implications of considering online knowledge mobilization as a practice of open access and open science? Open access, defined as making publicly funded research free and reusable for public benefit, aligns with broader justice goals by democratizing knowledge (Kember 2024). In this regard, sharing knowledge online could be considered a practice of open access. However, platform governance often undermines this ideal, while universities fail to understand community-specific knowledge requirements, perpetuating an academic-community disconnection. These structural issues show that reform cannot be achieved by individuals alone; change is needed at the level of institutions, platforms, and policy. Therefore, this article encourages further practical research: how could different parties facilitate knowledge mobilization in a just and equal way? For example, in Canada, are the “cultural policies rooted in the ‘analogue’ past” (Jeannotte 2022) able to be adapted in the age of platformization, and how could they be in dialogue with other policies about knowledge mobilization?

Ultimately, fostering equity in knowledge mobilization requires more than visibility metrics. It demands interpersonal engagement, critical reflexivity, and cross-platform, cross-context mobility. Addressing inequalities also means reconsidering the populist tendencies fostered by social media platforms (Dyer-Witheford 2020). To reverse platform-driven inequalities, we must envision alternative mobilization modes that integrate open science, knowledge commons, scholar-activism, and bottom-up community engagement.