This article presents our analysis of the nature of informality of media freelancers and its implications to creative workers. Employing a series of 15 interviews, we offer an interpretive understanding through the subjective experience of the Indonesian media freelancers. Accordingly, we analyse the participants’ responses in four dimensions of informality: personal, professional, technological and social. This analysis brings up a discussion about the flexibility, challenges and opportunities of working as a media freelancer. Specifically, three themes emerged from our discussion: motivations of doing freelance, managing ‘uncertainty’ through creativity and self-management, and the importance of social–technological infrastructure. Considering the demographic bonus in Indonesia, we suggest a future research agenda towards the potentials of informality of media freelancers. This future direction would shed light on whether the informality, on the one hand, can lead to the casualization of work, or, on the other hand, can lead to the idea of flexibility and self-management of media freelancers.

本文介绍了我们对媒体自由职业者的非正式性质及其对创意工作者的影响的分析。通过一系列 15 次采访，我们通过印度尼西亚媒体自由职业者的主观体验提供解释性理解。因此，我们从非正式性的四个维度分析参与者的反应：个人、专业、技术和社会。该分析提出了关于作为媒体自由职业者工作的灵活性、挑战和机遇的讨论。具体而言，我们的讨论出现了三个主题：自由职业者的动机、通过创造力和自我管理来管理“不确定性”，以及社会技术基础设施的重要性。考虑到印度尼西亚的人口红利，我们针对媒体自由职业者的非正式性潜力提出了未来的研究议程。这个未来的方向将揭示非正式性是否会导致工作的随意化，或者另一方面会导致媒体自由职业者的灵活性和自我管理的想法。