Post-COVID Work Culture: The Challenge of Anti-Work Ideology, Youth Empowerment, or Post-Work Advocacy?

The post-COVID era has signifi cantly reshaped workplace norms and expectati ons. Employees have redefi ned work culture by establishing the boundaries between professional and personal life and have reinterpreted workers’ goals (e.g., work-life balance), introducing new conceptualisations (quitting as a positive and beneficial experience for the Self), new identities (quitters as purpose-driven visionaries), and movements like the anti -work ideology, especially among young employees. In this context, their narratives highlight the tension between economic pressures, personal fulfilment, and societal values. Specifically, the anti -work movement has prompted a systemic change in how work is perceived and organised. It has gained prominence on social network platforms bringing forward figures who have reinvented themselves as gurus of this new ideology, sometimes blending anti -work activism, feminist empowerment, age discourses, and social justice. I apply a visual communication approach, combined with adapted concepts from Conversati on Analysis and CDA-oriented analysis to investi gate how anti -work messages construct and disseminate critiques of capitalist productivity discourses through visual, linguisti c, and thematic strategies across social media environments, by asking specifically how these multimodal representations articulate post-work advocacy as both critique of labour ideologies and a reconfiguration of youth empowerment within digitally mediated, aestheticised spaces of resistance.