Platform Precarity: surviving algorithmic insecurity in the gig economy

Alex J. Wood* and Vili Lehdonvirta**

*University of Birmingham; ** University of Oxford

Working paper for the ‘AI at Work: Automation, Algorithmic Management, and Employment

Law’ Online Workshop at the University of Sheffield, jointly hosted by the Sheffield Institute

for Commercial and Corporate Law (SICCL) and the Sheffield Political Economy Research

Institute (SPERI). 31st March 2021.

Suggested citation:

Wood A.J and Lehodonvirta V (2021) Platform Precarity: surviving algorithmic insecurity in

the gig economy. Working paper presented at AI at Work: Automation, Algorithmic

Management, and Employment Law’ Online Workshop at the University of Sheffield, jointly

hosted by the Sheffield Institute for Commercial and Corporate Law (SICCL) and the

Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI). 31st March.

Abstract

Digitalization and the use of algorithms have raised concerns regarding the future of work;

the gig economy being identified by some as particularly concerning. Yet academic research

is inconsistent as to whether this sector constitutes precarious work. We attempt to reconcile

contrasting existing accounts by developing a new model for gig economy precarity. In doing

so we draw on 81 interviews in addition to participant observations to highlight the role of

platform reputation in shaping experiences of traditional socio-economic insecurity. We also

demonstrate that gig economy platforms produce a novel form of insecurity, which we term,

1
‘algorithmic insecurity’. This relates to the vulnerability and fear that workers experience as a

result of working in an unstable and opaque environment in which platforms use customer-

generated ratings to score workers, and algorithms to amplify the consequences of those

scores. We also detail how workers respond to this capricious environment through unpaid

labor, digital communities, and individual resistance. The aim of this qualitative research is to

generate a model that can be tested quantitatively, as a first step towards this aim we draw on

European survey data to provide tentative support for the existence of algorithmic insecurity

beyond our interview participants.

Key words

Algorithms, gig economy, platform, precarious work, insecurity, resistance

Introduction

A major concern regarding the future of work is the potential for new digital technologies to

produce increasingly precarious working conditions. These fears are exemplified by so-called

‘platform work’ in the gig economy, which refers to the use of digital platforms by workers

to sell their labor (Vallas and Schor, 2020). The recent growth of these labor platforms is

argued by Dunn (2020) to constitute one of the new workplace arrangements that Kalleberg

(2009) sees as generating more precarious work and greater insecurity. Kalleberg (2018: 11)

further argues that precarious work is an increasingly important aspect of employment

relations, and one that has pervasive effects on ‘job and economic insecurity, the transition to

adulthood, family formation, and overall wellbeing.’

Precarious work can be defined as work that is ‘uncertain, unstable, and insecure and

in which employees bear the risks of work (as opposed to businesses or the government) and

receive limited social benefits and statutory protections’ (Kalleberg and Vallas, 2018: 1).

2
Recent sociological research has investigated previously unexplored dimensions of precarity,

such as insecure scheduling (Henly and Lambert, 2014; Lambert et al. 2014; Schneider and

Harknett, 2019; Storer, Schneider, and Harknett, 2020; Wood 2018; 2020). However,

research is inconsistent as to whether the gig economy should be considered precarious work.

For instance, Veen, Barratt, and Goods (2020: 389) state that the gig economy entails ‘ultra-

precarious and commodified digitally-enabled forms of labor’, and Tassinari and Maccarrone

(2020: 36) that it represents a ‘new frontier of precarious work.’ Standing (2016) sees the gig

economy as contributing to the rise of a new precariat class, and Griesbach, Reich, Elliot-

Negri et al. (2019: 1) argue that ‘the platform worker is in many ways the ideal-typical

member of the precariat, with few of the traditional rights or entitlements associated with

employment.’ In contrast, however, Vallas and Schor (2020) argue that such accounts of

precarity in the gig economy tend to be oversimplified due to heterogeneity of experience

being a defining feature of platform work (see also Howcroft and Bergvall-Kåreborn, 2018).

This heterogeneity of experiences and outcomes is supported by recent empirical studies:

while many platform workers struggle, a significant number earn well, and feel that they can

replace gigs with relative ease and under terms that suit them (Broughton, Gloster, Marvell et

al., 2018; Demirel, Nemkova, and Taylor, 2020; Dunn, 2020; Goods, Veen, Barratt, 2019;

Gray and Suri, 2019; Ravenelle, 2019; Schor, Attwood-Charles, Cansoy et al., 2020; Wood,

Graham, Lehonvirta et al., 2019a).

In this article, we ask whether platform work could be heterogeneous and yet also

precarious—whether even relatively well-off workers could be experiencing some form of

persistent uncertainty, instability, or insecurity, as many commentators imply. In particular,

we seek to understand the role of platform ranking and reputation systems (or algorithms) in

generating experiences of subjective insecurity. Our data consists of semi-structured

interviews with 35 remote gig economy workers in rich countries (North America and the

3
UK) and 35 in a poorer country (the Philippines), interviews with 11 freelancer community

advocates, and participant observation at 15 freelancer community meetups and events in San

Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Manila, and London.

While heterogeneity in experiences of precariousness has previously been remarked

upon, our study is the first to elucidate causal explanation. In particular, we develop a model

of precarity in which platform reputation mechanisms can be understood as transforming

employment, job, and income instability into sources of subjective security, while at the same

time producing a new source of insecurity that we term ‘algorithmic insecurity’. To

demonstrate that the experiences expressed by our interview participants are shared by many

online remote platform workers, we compare our qualitative findings to survey data collected

by the authors as part of a European survey of remote online platform workers (n=450).

Precarious work and the gig economy

The notion of precarious work originates from Bourdieu’s (1963) use of the term ‘précarité’

(precariousness) to contrast workers with permanent jobs to those with casual jobs (Alberti,

Bessa, Hardy et al., 2018). Contemporary researchers have tended to see precarity not as tied

to a single objective indicator (e.g. temporary or agency employment, or dependent self-

employment) but instead as a broader concept consisting of heightened insecurity across a

number of dimensions in both subjective and objective respects (Alberti et al., 2018;

Kalleberg, 2018). Precarious work, according Rubery, Grimshaw, Keizer et al. (2018), entails

such things as reduced job and income security (including during non-work periods); reduced

access to training, skills, and career progression; reduced access to employment rights and

voice mechanisms; and reduced ability to plan life beyond work due to lack of regular hours

and clear divisions between work and non-work time. Standing’s (1999) broad classification

of economic insecurity includes employment insecurity (risk of being dismissed or laid off,

4
or having hours reduced); job insecurity (risk of having the content of the job altered); work

insecurity (risk from a dangerous work environment); income insecurity (unstable,

unpredictable earnings); working-time insecurity (risk of having to work fragmented,

shortened, or irregular hours); and labor market insecurity (low probability of securing new

employment to replace job loss).1

More recent scholarship holds that precarity consists not only of objective risk and

instability, but also importantly of subjective experiences of insecurity (e.g. Alberti et al.,

2018; Kalleberg, 2018). That is, insecurity not only relates to employment or income loss, but

also to perceived threats to valued job features (Burchell, 2002; Gallie, Felstead, Green et al..

2016; Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt, 1984; Wood and Burchell, 2018). The two are related, in

that feelings of subjective insecurity can be generated by observing one’s objectively

insecure circumstances, though it does not necessarily reflect them precisely. Subjective

insecurity is important, because it is directly linked to many of the harmful consequences of

precarity, such as stress, ill health, and inability to plan for the future (Cheng and Chan, 2008;

Sverke , Hellgren, and Näswall, 2002). To a significant degree, then, precarious work can be

understood as work characterized by feelings of insecurity about the future. According to De

Witte (2005: 1), “What typifies this subjective conceptualization of job insecurity is that it

concerns insecurity about the future… [Workers] are ‘groping in the dark’ as far as their

future… is concerned.”

Platform precarity

Kalleberg and Vallas (2018) argue that four interlinked forces have given rise to precarious

work: deunionization, financialization, globalization, and digitalization. One manner in which

digitalization may generate insecurity is by enabling the recent growth of the gig economy, in

which ‘firms use digital platforms as their organizational structure, redefining workers as

5
independent contractors who can be made to assume risks previously handled by the firm’

(Kalleberg and Vallas, 2018: 5). A number of studies have investigated aspects of

socioeconomic insecurity in the gig economy, with particular focus being placed on income

insecurity (see, for example, Dunn, 2020; Demirel et al., 2020; Goods et al., 2019; Gregory,

2020; Josserand and Kaine, 2019; Ravenelle, 2019; Tassinari and Maccarrone, 2020; Schor et

al., 2020; Wood et al., 2019a). This income insecurity derives from the employment and job

instability that is inherent to the independent contractor status used by most platforms (Aloisi,

2016; Anwar and Graham, 2020; Graham, Hjorth, and Lehonvirta, 2017; D’Cruz and

Noronha, 2016; Tassinari and Maccarrone, 2020; Vallas and Schor, 2020; Wood et al. 2019a;

2019b) and the short-term nature of many gigs (Nemkova et al., 2019; Wood et al. 2019a;

2019b). Another source of income insecurity derives from the unilateral power of platforms

to increase the service fees charged to workers (Nemkova et al., 2019; Wood and

Lehdonvirta, 2019).

Income insecurity can lead to platform workers working anti-social hours and at short

notice, in response to customer demands (Shevchuk, Strebkov, and Davis, 2018; Wood et al.,

2019a). This can lead to flexibility being experienced as insecurity (Tassinari and

Maccarrone, 2020). The current COVID-19 crisis has made clear that income insecurity

leaves many gig workers with little choice but to accept risky working conditions in order to

continue to earn a living (Fairwork, 2020). Even before COVID-19, Wood et al. (2019a)

found that many online remote platform workers experience pain as a result of their work,

and Berger, Frey, Levin et al. (2018) found that Uber drivers experience elevated levels of

anxiety. Meanwhile both Gregory (2020) and Tassinari and Maccarrone (2020) highlight the

risks borne by delivery workers as a result of platforms not providing sick pay or injury

insurance. These processes that generate subjective insecurity in the gig economy are

depicted in Figure 1.

6
Figure 1. How objective instability and uncertainty leads to subjective insecurity in the gig

economy.

Platform reputation and heterogeneous outcomes

Many accounts of platform precarity have been criticized for treating platform workers as

homogeneous actors, and for not being sensitive to the wide diversity of experiences and

outcomes which are inherent to the gig economy (Vallas and Schor, 2020). Indeed, a number

of studies have examined how differences in platform worker characteristics lead to varying

experiences of insecurity. For example, dependence on platforms and worker attachment to

the work have been found to shape experiences of financial insecurity (Dunn, 2020; Goods et

al., 2019; Josserand and Kaine, 2019; Lei, 2021; Ravenelle, 2019; Schor et al., 2020) and

working-time insecurity (Lehdonvirta, 2018). Demirel et al. (2020) also argue that some

remote online platform workers experience income insecurity as a consequence of lacking

cultural capital in terms of their language and technical skills relative to more successful

workers.

However, the central mechanism generating heterogeneous outcomes in platform

work may, in fact, be the rating and reputation systems (Wood et al., 2019a). Indeed, Lei

(2021) highlights the role of ‘platform architectures’ in shaping grievances. Reputation

7
systems are central to the operation of most online marketplaces and labor platforms

(Gandini, 2016; 2019; Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin, 2020). Reputation as a mechanism

that orders social and economic life is of course not new. In communities and networks both

ancient and modern, reputation has helped to deter opportunism and promote cooperation by

enforcing a link between actions and consequences (Greif, 1989; Kobrak, 2013). Even before

platforms, self-employed contractors and freelancers have long relied on their reputations to

obtain work from clients (Antcliff, Saundry, and Stuart, 2007; Barley and Kunda, 2006a;

2006b; Storey, Salaman, and Platman, 2015). Contractors will use previous clients as

references as they make their sales pitches, and word-of-mouth about the quality of their

work also spreads within their networks. Unlike employees, contractors can’t rely on

uninterrupted affiliation with any one employer, and thus “the free professional’s well-being

rests partially on his or her reputation in a community” (Barley and Kunda, 2006a: 52).

Differences in reputation help to explain some of the considerable heterogeneity in pay,

income security, and working time security in many types of freelance or contract work. And

as a result, some freelancers may find themselves in precarious positions, while others enjoy

considerable security and job quality (Fraser and Gold, 2001; Gold and Mustafa, 2013;

Storey et al., 2005).

Conventionally, reputation is informal and embedded in interpersonal networks

(Granovetter, 1985; Raub and Weesie, 1990; Uzzi, 1996). As a consequence, informal norms

and network structure regulate the operation of the reputation mechanism. Contractors can

put in a good word to help their close contacts (Antcliff et al., 2007; Barley and Kunda,

2006b), while at the same time, reciprocal obligations and closed networks can restrict

opportunities for others (Antcliff et al., 2007). The spread of informal reputation can also be

conservative, in the sense that people are more likely to pass on information that confirms

existing beliefs and behaviors (Uzzi, 1996; 1997). Communities may ostracize outsiders,

8
while suppressing incriminating information about well-liked members. Such network

dynamics may help to stabilize distributional outcomes in contract work to some extent,

making it easier for winners to keep winning and losers to keep losing (Antcliff et al., 2007;

Uzzi, 1996). Another characteristic of informal reputation is that it does not scale very well:

as the size of the network grows, information transmission via word-of-mouth becomes

slower, until cooperation eventually peters out (Raub and Weesie, 1990). This constrains the

size of conventional freelancer networks.

Formal reputation systems, such as those developed by online labor platforms, are

designed to overcome some of the limitations of informal reputation as the basis for

cooperation (Diekmann et al., 2014; Gandini, 2016). Reputation information is collected from

previous interaction partners via a standardized process and stored in a central database.

Quantitative metrics derived from the reputation information are calculated automatically and

disseminated to potential new interaction partners cheaply and instantaneously via the

Internet. The platform may also use the metrics to help decide automatically which potential

interaction partners to present in the first place. As a result, the reputation system scales

better, and outcomes are not shaped as much by informal norms and network dynamics:

ratings submitted by previous clients may still be biased or wrong, but biases are not

generated or amplified as the information passes from person to person, nor is access to work

limited to cliques. Based in large part on such formal reputation systems, platform companies

have been able to create contract labor markets that are probably unprecedented in terms of

their speed, geographic spread, and openness (Lehdonvirta, Kässi, Hjorth et al. 2019).

Wood et al. (2019a) maintain that online remote workers with strong platform

reputations (resulting from a large number of positive ratings) experience sufficient labor

market security and income security to compensate for their lack of employment and job

security. In other words, they can easily replace clients and jobs with new ones without

9
experiencing a detrimental loss of income, and can refuse to work anti-social hours or at short

notice. Wood et al. (2019a) find that such workers may even be able to afford private health

insurance so as to reduce work insecurity. Likewise, Demirel al. (2020: 13) find that platform

reputation commands ‘its own symbolic capital and further enhanced and amplified the value

of other forms of cultural capital.’ At the same time, those with poor platform reputations

face even greater insecurity. This moderating effect of platform reputations on subjective

insecurity in platform work is depicted in Figure 2.

Figure 2. The moderating effect of platform reputation on subjective insecurity in

platform work.

The need for a revised model of platform precarity

However, the model of insecurity in platform work sketched above is unsatisfactory insofar

as it fails to explain studies that suggest that all platform workers, not just those with poor

reputations, experience subjective insecurity. Moreover, studies have begun to associate

feelings of insecurity not just with low platform reputation, but with the reputation system

itself (Gregory, 2020; Rosenblat and Stark, 2016; Shapiro, 2018; Sutherland, Jarrahi, Dunn et

al. 2020). For instance, Nemkova et al. (2019) find that online remote platform workers

10
experience a loss of meaning, disempowerment, and reduced control as a result of what they

perceive to be unfair and strict rating systems. A study by Sutherland et al. (2020) highlights

how remote online platform workers must learn how to interact with opaque and volatile

algorithms in order to achieve a good rating and develop a strong reputation. These

researchers document how workers must invest in ‘examining input and output from ratings

systems, monitoring one’s own ratings, asking questions on forums, and digging through

documentation. It further requires learning from mistakes and recovering from bad ratings’

(Sutherland et al., 2020: 470). One worker was even found to have canceled their contract

without pay so as to avoid a bad rating. While these studies provide valuable empirical

insights, they do not put forward a theoretical model of how the reputation system itself (as

opposed to just a low platform reputation) cause subjective insecurity. The aim of our study

is therefore to build theory on how formal reputation systems as such may be implicated in

processes of subjective insecurity.

Methods

Empirical approach and setting

Our empirical approach is similar to the broadly ethnographic approach of Fantasia (1988).

Although the ability to generalize to a population is constrained in small-N studies such as

ours, this approach is appropriate when researchers are wishing to generate theory and reveal

previously unknown, understudied or hidden social phenomena by answering questions of

how and why complex processes take place (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Our empirical setting

is that of the online remote platform work in the gig economy. Broadly understood, the gig

economy is constituted by platform workers using a range of online platforms to sell their

labor in four main industries: driving (ride-hailing), delivery, domestic, and digital. Driving

and delivery are highly visible forms of platform work which are carried out on platforms

11
such as Uber and Deliveroo (Rosenblat, 2018; Cant, 2019). Less visible domestic services,

which involve cleaning, maintenance, and care work in private residences, are carried out by

workers on platforms such as Helping, Handy, and TaskRabbit (Ticona and Mateescu, 2018).

Digital work (aka crowdwork, remote gig work, online freelancing), involves the provision of

both macro and micro remote digital services such as data entry, design, marketing,

translation, transcription, and programming (Gerber and Krzywdzinski, 2019), carried out on

platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk, Upwork, and Fiverr. This segment of the gig

economy is fast growing (Kässi and Lehdonvirta, 2018) and relatively unresearched

compared with more visible platform work in the local gig economy, such as ridehailing or

food delivery. As many remote gig economy platforms operate a global workforce, it is

important to capture experiences of workers from both richer and poorer countries, and we

ensured representation from both.

Data collection

Our study included 70 interviews with remote gig workers and 11 interviews with non-

platform worker activists and advocates. These interviews were conducted as part of a wider

project that aimed to examine the social, organizational, and policy implications of standard

employment being increasingly supplemented and substituted by temporary gig work

mediated by online platforms. A particularly focus of the project was on the role of

organization in supporting workers in surviving gig work, and we, therefore, sought to

generate a purposive sample from which we could generalize to theory regarding why

workers formed collectives (Bryman, 2008). Our sampling frame was for this reason limited

to platform workers in the remote gig economy who had engaged in some kind of collective

action, organization, or community. It was, therefore, appropriate for the project to collect

data from workers across multiple platforms.

However, while undertaking an iterative coding process that also informed further data

12
collection (see below) an unexpected theme organically emerged related to why workers

formed communities. The theme emerged from our interview data and surrounded the

insecurity experienced as a result of platform rating and reputation systems. It is this organic

theme that we investigate in this article and seek to relate to the widely commented upon

precarity and heterogeneity of gig work. The validity of our sample is attested to by the

theoretical saturation reached by our core themes and evidenced below. Additionally, as a

first step towards testing our theories quantitatively we designed two survey questions which

were included in a survey of European online remote platform workers (Cedefop, 2020).

These questions were:

1) I could easily switch to another platform without negatively impacting my income.

2) I worry about clients giving me unfair feedback which impacts on my future income.

In this article we analyze only our qualitative data and use the above survey items to

demonstrate that the novel form of socioeconomic insecurity that we identify may be

common beyond our interview informants – analyses of the above quantitative data can be

found in Wood, Martindale and Lehdonvirta et al. (2020).

Recruitment

In total, we interviewed six workers in San Francisco, nine in Los Angeles, five in New

York, seven in London and 34 in Manila, as well as nine workers located in other cities.

These interview participants were recruited following four paths. The first path entailed

identifying and contacting workers who had participated in an act of voice. This resulted in

thirty-five initial informants and involved searching for them on Google and LinkedIn so as

to contact them via email or LinkedIn messenger. For a minority of workers (seven) it was

not possible to locate alternative communication channels so they were contacted via the

creation of a job on the platform—as there was no other way to make contact. However, for

13
these seven workers, it was stressed that the request was not for them to undertake a job but

instead an opportunity to engage in voluntary research and the job contract was not enacted.

The second recruitment path entailed snowballing several participants from other

informants. The logic of doing so was that we were interested in collective organization and

if the first informant knew the second informant well enough to connect us, then some kind

of network relationship existed between them. It was deemed important to gain insight from

worker leaders and key nodes in these networks, therefore, the third path-way involved the

recruitment of leaders and organizers of freelancer communities both online and physical.

This led to the recruitment of a dozen informants. The fourth recruitment pathway was from

attending virtual and physical community events and meetups (with permission of the

organizer) and this led to the recruitment of a dozen further informants. Finally, we carried

out follow up interviews with two workers in Manila who had indicated they were part of

worker networks during our previous research in the Philippines. Previous research has

highlighted that remote gig workers are most likely to engage in collective organization and

support collective action when this work is an important source of income to them (Wood et

al., 2018). Therefore, our sampling is biased towards successful workers rather than those

struggling to get work, making the experiences of insecurity that we uncover particularly

surprising. For logistical reasons we wanted to narrow down our fieldwork to urban locations

in which there appeared to be many workers voicing grievances (see Wood and Lehdonvirta

(2019) for a full account). With logistics taken into account, our final choice of fieldwork

locations were San Francisco Bay (SF), Los Angeles (LA), and New York City (NYC) in the

US, as well as London, UK, and Manila, Philippines.

Interviews were conducted at local coworking spaces, cafes and similar sites. Each

worker had their travel costs reimbursed and, as a token of appreciation, were offered the

equivalent of a $15 gift voucher, except in the Philippines where this was not possible and the

14
informants instead received a cash equivalent. Interviews followed a semi-structured

protocol, and on average lasted approximately 90 minutes, and were audio recorded.

In addition to the worker informants, we also interviewed freelancer community

activists and advocates (n=11). These informants included labor movement activists and

officials engaged in organizing and representing workers in platform economy (n=5),

advocates of the platform cooperative movement (n=4) and leaders of a freelancer online

community (n=1) and self-employed professional association (n=1), some located outside the

five fieldwork zones.

Worker characteristics US/UK The Philippines

Average age 35 34
Female 43% 49%
Higher education 89% 89%
qualification
Median platform rate $40 $8
Three most common Advertising, marketing, and Virtual assistance and
services search engine optimisation customer service (11);
(11); Design, 3D rendering Advertising, marketing, and
and modelling (10); Writing search engine optimisation
and editing (6) (11); Design and animation
(6)
Table.1 Worker characteristics

Participant Observation

To gain a deeper understanding of the nature of gig worker community and the bonds

between workers it was deemed important to gain experiential knowledge of worker

organization. Therefore, a number of events and meetups attended by remote gig workers

were observed. These included four co-working days for freelancers held at co-working

spaces and organized by freelancers themselves (LA, Oakland CA, London x 2), three

meetups for freelancers or digital nomads (Manila, San Francisco and Freemont CA), three

events organized by a freelancer union (LA and New York City x 2) and a platform coop

15
conference. An online meetup of freelancers in the Philippines was also attended, via video

conferencing, while the first author was carrying out fieldwork in Manila. In each case, the

permission of the organizer was obtained beforehand. The participation of the researcher was,

when possible, announced at the beginning of the event and/or individually as the researcher

spoke with the attendees.

Analysis

Analyzing our data as separate country cases would risk ‘Galton’s problem’ (Silver, 2003:

29) as workers in each case would not in reality be independent but in fact linked relationally

by operating in the same platform ecology. Treating workers in different countries as

independent cases would, therefore, leave the role of the platform in connecting these

workers underexamined when in reality the relations and competition between workers in

different countries is key for understanding the phenomenon in question. Online remote

platform work can, therefore, be understood as a ‘case’ of work in the gig economy, that is a

theoretical construct that represents the unit of analysis (Burawoy, 2009). The data in the

form of transcribed interview recordings and field notes were coded, following Vaughan’s

(1992) theory elaboration approach. In the initial coding rounds, the first author coded

transcripts line by line, paying particular attention to mentions of experiences of insecurity or

the mechanisms of precarity highlighted above with new codes developed out of an iterative

process and informing subsequent data collection so as to ensure theoretical saturation.

NVivo enabled systematic theoretical coding to be undertaken and hundreds of initial codes

to be generated. Focused coding was then employed to highlight the most common and

revealing initial codes and to merge appropriate initial codes into new higher-level codes, as

suggested by Charmaz (2006). For example, the higher order code ‘algorithmic insecurity’

16
was comprised of 53 initial codes.

Findings

Platform reputation

Our interview informants highlighted that online remote platform work could be an important

source of income. Many workers felt reliant, to varying degrees, on a particular platform or

that they could not easily switch platforms without negatively impacting their income.

Difficulty in switching platform arises from the fact that they only became a reliable source

of income when a strong platform-specific reputation had been developed. Platform

reputation being essential for gaining job offers meant that worker experiences of labor

market and income security were causally dependent upon it, as previous research suggests.

For instance, Casey (UX design agency; LA), who has become a very successful freelancer,

explained how challenging it was initially to get work when lacking a strong platform

reputation with which to overcome competition on platforms that were marked by an

oversupply of cheaper labor:

Until you’ve, like, really established your profile on platforms like GigOnline you’re
not going to get consistent work. So… that was definitely a struggle for me the first
year… I was barely making any money through GigOnline but now, you know [I am].
Got to start from… somewhere, because there’s a lot of people on there; a lot of the off-
shore people who are going to be competing on price.

Likewise, Ria (customer support, virtual assistance; Manila) explained:

What are the chances that the client will go through your entire profile?... It’s more of a
visual impact. If they [clients] see that your scores are only like this [low], then they
will just move on to the next profile… They will not even bother to read through your
comments.

For this reason, the informants saw any score other than five out of five as a bad rating that

would have a detrimental effect on their ability to access future work. As Holly (digital

marketing; LA) explained:

17
 Somebody who maybe gave a 4.2 out of 5 stars and that’s bad… that’s not really that
bad but people look on [and] they want you to have 90% or above [on your job success
score].

Algorithmic amplification

So far, the findings suggest that platform reputation moderates outcomes as suggested by

previous literature and theory: workers with good ratings from previous clients experience

more security, while workers with poor ratings experience insecurity. However, this was not

the only way in which the reputation system was implicated in workers’ experiences of

subjective insecurity. Platforms used the ratings submitted by clients as an input in to

algorithms that ranked workers’ profiles in search results and recommended workers’ profiles

to clients. Because of the sheer number of workers, clients would likely only view the

profiles and job applications of those ranked near the top. As Gabe (digital marketing;

Manila) explained:

Their algorithm is trying to… filter out the ugly, not-so-good applications and then
show you the best of the best. The problem is… if you’re not top-rated, let’s just say
that your application will only be viewed… for every ten, you would only be reviewed
once or sometimes not even.

Brett (copywriting; LA) felt that this meant that platform rating had a much bigger impact

than traditional references, recommendations or referrals in freelance work:

In the standard world where that person [giving a rating] would be a reference… with a
platform it becomes amplified way, way more.

On some platforms, algorithms also classified some workers as being particularly high

quality or trustworthy, recognizing them with labels such as “Rising star” and “Top rated”.

This was a source of considerable frustration and created a sense of injustice for workers such

as Gabe who perceived their true achievements to be greater than suggested by their

algorithmically determined platform profile:

[Clients] put so much weight on being top-rated, it trumps… the capabilities and skills
of the people who are not in the top-rated program.

18
One major platform also calculated a “Job success” percentage score for each worker, which

was prominently displayed in search results, and in fact the average reputation rating (out of

five) was not displayed at all unless a client clicked through to the worker’s profile. The job

success score was consequently seen as influencing workers’ ability to obtain work. As Luke

(web design; Bristol UK), explained:

[The job success percentage is] what people use to guide who they hire… when I was
100%, I was getting loads of job invites… I had to turn a lot of them down. And then
when it’s 94%, it dropped significantly. So, I was getting maybe fifteen job invites a
week, and it drops to, like, two job invites a week.

Matthew (voice actor; Liverpool, UK) echoed the sentiment:

What’s special in GigOnline [is that] the job success score is like the be-all and end-all
and, you know, if you dip below ninety percent, then it would be really hard to recover
from [that].

As a result of these mechanisms, reputation ratings not only had the potential to cast a

harmful shadow over workers’ future ability to make a living, but they could also, essentially,

render the worker invisible on the platform. Due to the way in which algorithms appeared to

prioritize recent reviews, receiving a single low rating could effectively eclipse numerous

positive ones. This created feelings of frustration and hopelessness, as Gabe explained:

it’s run by an algorithm, it’s wrong ‘cause people like me who are almost top-rated are
not given the chance… my application or my cover letter is not seen [by the client]…
Clients are looking for job success score of ninety percent and above.

Capricious clients

Thus far, we have seen that platform reputations moderated outcomes by influencing clients’

decisions, but also by being used by platforms as an input for algorithms, which greatly

magnified the impact that individual ratings could have on the worker’s labor market and

income security. This becomes especially problematic when we realize that client feedback

could, in the workers’ eyes, often be mistaken, capricious, or even malicious. As Brad

(management consulting, programming, graphic design; LA), explained:

19
 As a freelancer you have no control over how you’re being rated… I got literally
screwed by a customer. It was outta line… and it affected my ability to make money.
Because It dropped me on the ass… it took like two months for me to get the stuff
cleared off [during which I lost a] couple thousand dollars.

Likewise, Jean (Ecommerce, website consulting, design; LA), explained that:

He gave me one out of five.... I didn’t get a job for three months, four months. It really
impacted on my life… really it was tough.

Andrea (writing, marketing; Manila) detailed the shock, hurt and surprise of receiving a bad
rating:

It really did impact my score… and I wasn’t expecting anything like that because I’ve
been working with them for quite some time, so it was out of the blue. It was really just
devastating. I was surprised. There was no clue, there was no hint, they didn’t say
anything [like] that I’m, you know, messing up the work… [The rating went down to]
probably around seventy-something [or] eighty-something from a hundred…. Problem
is, since … the competition is high it’s not easy to land a gig if you fall under, well, if
your percentage is low, then you might be suspended from using the site.

Clients were said to have handed out bad ratings even when workers had followed their

instructions:

Sometimes… I feel that it’s not fair … ‘I did what you asked for’ or sometimes the
client will… give you unclear or unspecific instructions or there was also a client that…
gave me this set of instructions and then I followed it by the letter and then after that I
went and submitted the work [and he said] ‘it’s not what I expected from you, it’s not
what I imagined from you’ but this is what you asked me to do.
(Joy, writing; Manila)

Other clients were deemed impossible to sway and would give a negative rating no matter

what the worker did. For example, Casey explained her experience with one client:

He wrote a bad review… “Casey was very… professional… she was doing so many
iterations [for free] but she wouldn’t have had to do so many iterations had her work
been solid quality.” But, just one of those people who just it didn’t matter, like,
whatever I delivered he just wasn’t going to be happy.

Moreover, some clients seemed unaware of how damaging a negative rating would be for

workers and thus gave frivolous and disproportionately bad ratings for what workers

considered to be minor indiscretions. As Ria explained:

20
 I do see clients who specifically leave low feedback just for petty things. So I think
that’s… one of the examples where they do not realize that it could actually kill the
[worker’s] entire profile.

In particular, Laura (digital marketing; SF) highlighted that not all customers realized the

significance of sub-5-star ratings in a social environment where receiving 5-stars was the

norm:

It’s strange in GigOnline, it seems like five is the default. Like everyone gives everyone
five unless they’re unhappy with the work… Some people don’t realize that and…
might think, “Hey four to five is good! I’ll give someone four stars! And that… seems
pretty good to me.” But actually, at GigOnline, four out of five is pretty bad.

Luke even highlighted an experience in which the client felt they were doing him a favor by

giving him a lower rating as this would seem more authentic:

I was doing a job for someone and then they gave me a 4.7 rating, and I thought for
sure it was gonna be a 5 star-rating. When I asked them about it, like, “Oh. I gave you a
4.7 ‘cause it might appear fake otherwise.” And so that, I was really annoyed at.

Furthermore, George (UX; SF) highlighted that part of the inherent unpredictability in

customer rating behavior was that platforms empowered clients to effectively discipline their

workforce, despite often having limited previous experience with managing workers or

projects:

[I had a] concern about getting bad ratings because I was mostly getting hired by
academics who desperately needed stats help. And… they’re not experienced with
hiring freelancers, [or] with how to manage someone, or with how to set expectations
so those led to some other situations [where]… I did everything that I thought was
conceivably reasonable and they were unhappy.

Tim (3D Rendering; LA) also felt that part of the instability was due to inexperienced clients

being empowered to arbitrarily sanction workers:

It [the bad rating] was generally because they didn’t know anything about what I do,
what the 3D industry is about, and they kind of expected me to school them along the
way, and I’m not in the business of schooling you... So, we had a conflict of what my
responsibilities were and what his responsibilities were, so I got a bad, like, a three out
of five rating in that regard.

As Casey put it:

21
 It’s a lot of power for the actual client, I think. Probably a little too much.

Workers had a reciprocal ability to rate clients, which could in theory force

opportunistic or otherwise low-quality clients out of the market. But in practice, workers did

not feel that they could sanction bad clients. This was due to a bad rating being far more

damaging for a worker and the prospect of repeat transactions more important. As Jean

explained:

Most freelancers would give five-star reviews to the client even when they suck.
Because you, you don’t know what is going to happen when you do that... It’s really
hard for me… to really write correctly the client’s [rating] and I’m pretty sure most
people are the same. Right now, I’m dealing with a client in Denmark, and… in my
head, it was like “I’m going to rate him two”. But I have no choice. Do I want to be
honest? It’s probably going to be four [stars].

Likewise, Janine (game and graphic design; Manila) explained that given the greater

importance of platform reputation for workers it was not worth the risk of giving a client a

negative rating:

Sometimes the client is really a douche… [but] if I give him a bad feedback… he
would give me a bad feedback too, so it would be a negative… in my account. Even
with clients that I’ve found to be difficult, I always try to leave the positives and not
negatives because it backfires on you, I just think well you know, it doesn’t matter to
me whether they have good or bad feedback but it matters to me if I get bad feedback.

Algorithmic opacity

As we have seen, one-off encounters with bad clients could be amplified by algorithms so as

to compromise workers’ otherwise strong labor market security, a risk which workers felt

unable to counter. Workers’ ability to manage this risk was further constrained by the opaque

nature of the algorithms. Platform algorithms—their exact inputs, the relative weights given

to different inputs, and other operational details—are usually not disclosed by platform

companies (Kellogg et al., 2020; Lee, Kusbit, Metsky et al., 2015; Lehdonvirta, 2018). Even

the term ‘algorithm’ is a somewhat simplified label applied by scholars to unknown

information processing systems that may comprise technical as well as human elements. One

22
frequently cited reason for the opaqueness around these systems is that it is necessary to

prevent attempts by users to game and manipulate the results. In some cases, a thorough

account might also be so complex as to be effectively unintelligible. In any event, we found

that this so-called algorithmic opacity made it hard for workers to predict when a crisis could

erupt for them. For example, Laura described the following experience:

Suddenly [my score] went down to 94%. I had no idea why… When I was 100% I was
getting loads of job invites and then when it’s 94% it dropped significantly. I was
getting maybe fifteen job invites a week, and [then] it drops to, like, two job invites a
week.

Brad had found that, even without taking on new jobs, his rating was unstable. This was a

disconcerting experience that made it impossible for him to judge how he was performing:

It’s really frustrating… my marks go down [even though]… I haven’t been doing
anything!... Why am I taken out of your top 10 position[s]? I haven’t done anything!
You know, that’s insane!... Customers have up to two years to come back and ding
you…You have no way of deciding if you’re doing a good job or a bad job because
number one, they won’t even tell you what you’re being dinged for or who’s dinging
ya’… [They] put a blindfold on me, spin me around and then tell me to shoot bullseye.

Casey and Matthew summed up the lack of algorithmic transparency as follows:

They’re not very transparent on what goes into that formula. But certainly, if you’ve
got a bad job success score you’re not gonna get as much. And so part of me, I kind of
looked at that and said, well crap I can’t depend on that… But there’s no one to
complain to, there’s no one to… They’re doing it however their algorithm is.

I don’t know how the algorithm works. They’re very secretive about how the job
success scores play in… I think that’s a bit unfair because people don’t really know
then how to manage their reputation.

An important contributor to algorithmic opacity was that platform companies

frequently changed the way their systems worked. Like many Silicon Valley companies, their

systems were in ‘permanent beta’, meaning that they were constantly being tested, refined,

and reinvented, to meet company goals, fix emerging problems, adapt to changing

circumstances, and keep up with the competition. The practical consequence of this for

workers was that even as they began to develop an intuition for how algorithms worked and

23
how to navigate them to mitigate risk, this knowledge could suddenly and unexpectedly

become outdated:

So, I think GigOnline… changed their rating system again very recently… So, before,
it was just the five-star ranking. That was great, I liked that one. But then they did these
things called “The success rating”, which… deducted your percentage if nobody sent
you a rating… I don’t know if they still do that, but that was really bad.
(Casey - UX design agency; LA)

I’m not sure if they have changed that. So, I cannot dispute anything anymore.
They’re barring certain users who are not landing jobs… So, that’s another, another
update, I think it was just recent. A few months ago.
(Gabe digital marketing; Manila)

A novel ‘algorithmic’ insecurity

As a consequence of these interlinked factors—platform reputation, algorithmic

amplification, capricious clients, weak remedies, and algorithmic opacity—workers

experienced continuous worry about the future of their ability to access work, ask for decent

pay, and maintain reasonable working conditions. We term this subjective feeling

‘algorithmic insecurity’.

We’ll always have that worry… it will happen again for sure, as, for as long as I
continue working, there will be clients who would, who would behave like that.
(Marizze – admin and customer support, research; Manila)

I’ve been working on this [platform] for almost five years and… I have put myself, my
time in this agency to build a reputation profile as a freelancer, so I don’t want to waste
this, this for single mistakes… I always worry about that.
(Andray – lead generation, customer service; Manila)

The star rating and those reviews. You’re worried about that because that’s what people
look at when they’re thinking about hiring you. I have to get this good star rating and I
have to get this good feedback because I need my name to be at the top of this pile
when there’s a hundred people bidding on this one thing.
(Brett – copywriting; LA)

Other workers described the fear and stress they experienced as a result:

24
 This review system is really scary… the power [it gives to customers].
(Jean – Ecommerce, website consulting, design; LA)

I always fear of getting, you know, one star or something, for, for my feedback…. or
else I wouldn’t get a, a new client.
Danielle (virtual assistance, Manila)

I remember being like oh gosh I need a good one [rating]… if you get too many [bad
ratings] in a row, you’re gonna be booted off the platform… so it is pretty stressful.
(Casey – UX design agency; LA)

Importantly, algorithmic insecurity was experienced also by many interviewees who

had themselves never received a bad rating as of yet. As Matthew explained:

I’ve seen some people on the GigOnline forums say that... like overnight their job
success went from like ninety-three percent to seventy-eight percent, and now they’re
not getting any jobs. I’ve thought in the past, if that was to happen to me, that would be
really bad. I don’t know what I would do.

Justin (virtual assistance; Manila) likewise worried despite having been successful so far:

This is why I really try my very best not to get a negative feedback but… it’s really a
consideration, really, it also worries me that you know [a] certain client may give me a
negative feedback because that’s gonna affect my stats right?

Chris (digital marketing; SF) was very concerned:

If you get bad reviews… from what I see or hear if you get bad reviews that’s kind of
it.

Worker responses to algorithmic insecurity

The previous section detailed a previously uncommented upon precarity faced by platform

workers related to the algorithmic amplification of platform reputation. It also documented

that this novel algorithmic insecurity persists even at moments when these workers

experience income and labor market stability. We now turn to exploring how workers

responded to this risky, uncertain, and unpredictable socioeconomic landscape.

Unpaid labor

For workers the most harmful response to platform precarity was to carry out free

supplementary work for clients. One reason that workers undertook unpaid work was in the

25
hope of gaining a higher rating. For example, George provided an illustrative account of the

common dilemma faced by workers: whether to risk the ire of clients by asking for more

money when requested to do additional work than was agreed at the start of a project:

I had to think like well do I ask them for more money and are they giving me basically
a new project or will that make them too angry.

Likewise, Luke explained that angering clients by refusing to work for free risked being

sanctioned with a bad rating:

[Clients] often deviate from [the agreement]… I felt like I had to go along with what
they wanted… as [if I didn’t] they’d give me a bad review.

Afril (graphic design; Manila) was explicit that it was the power that algorithmic insecurity

placed in the hands of clients that leads to unpaid labor:

They [clients] keep asking [for revisions] and the problem is the power is in their hand.
They have the money, they can rate you, they can complain about you, and freelancer
doesn’t have any support.

Arwind (game design and illustration; Manila) stated that his strategy for dealing with

algorithmic insecurity was to give clients the option to either forgo paying him or rate him

with 5-stars:

“If you don’t like the project, then don’t pay me.” Always tell [clients] that… and then
“if you love it, then always give me five star[s]”.

In a similar vein Jaydee (graphic design, Manila) offered to keep redoing the work until the
client was completely happy, no matter how much extra work this meant undertaking for
free:

When they are not satisfied with my work, I always offer [to] re-do [it]… until they
get satisfied.

Likewise, Thomas (programming; London) explained how, fearing that a client would give

him a bad rating, he accepted a payment that was half of what was originally agreed:

Even if I had to lose money, or just have extra work to just I don’t know, provide more
services, I would even… I would probably choose to do that just to protect my… score
and my ranking.

26
Algorithmic insecurity also led to unpaid labor when workers sensed that the client was

dissatisfied with their work. Given the importance of platform reputation, it was widely felt it

was better to lose some income in the short-term in order to safeguard one’s long-term ability

to make a living. As Brett explained:

I refunded a very good of chunk— it was probably like 30% to 40% of that flat rate. I
refunded it back to him because I just wanted that good rating and I wanted the good
feedback. Which was like frustrating… I ended up refunding I think a hundred
[dollars]... Just to get that good rating.

Joy had a similar situation:

I refunded the money… Quite a lot of money [$70-$80] but I would rather lose that

instead of losing future clients, that will be more loss for me.

This could equate to quite large sums of money, especially in the Philippines where the

relative value of a project was often higher. This is evidenced in the case of Marizze who

refunded approximately $300 to a client to avoid a rating even though it was above four:

He gave me, like, less than five stars, four-point something. I felt really bad… what I
did was I refunded him… I refunded about five to six months… wasn’t really looking
at the amount [of money] anymore it was more, like, my [platform] reputation.

Managing the client

Another manner in which algorithmic insecurity induced workers to undertake additional

unpaid labor was through the need to emotionally manage clients. Undertaking ‘emotional

labor’ (Hochschild, 1983) towards their clients was thought to reduce the threat clients posed

to platform reputation, as forging a social bond with a client could create an obligation that

the client reciprocate the worker’s friendliness with a five-star rating – even when the work

was below quality. As Arwind explained with reference to the idiom of ‘rapport’:

It’s [also] more of a rapport thing, how you handle yourself. I mean even if you did not
do a good job but… if you establish this rapport with the client… then that client will
somehow think twice before giving you [a bad rating].

27
Camille (copy writing; Manila) also highlighted that rapport could be an effective block to

clients giving negating ratings:

It’s more of a rapport thing, how you handle yourself. I mean even if you did not do a
good job, but you know, if you establish this rapport with the client then that client will
somehow think twice before giving you [a bad rating].

Likewise, Danielle explained this emotional management was an important and potentially

arduous task:

I really have to work on it and work with the clients so that they won’t give me a bad
feedback.

An additional strategy workers adopted to protect their platform reputation was to filter out

those clients perceived as more likely to give bad ratings. As the quotes below illustrate, the

interview informants sought to avoid jobs where the client lacked a history paying workers

and providing good ratings or were disrespectful in how they communicated job invites:

I already have a filtering [system]… I have a ‘qualification’… in what job or the client I
should apply to. For example… [a] good paying history with other employees.
(William – search engine optimization; Manila)

I can see your feedback and your rating [of workers] and I can get turned off if I see
something [I don’t like].
(Camille – copy writing; Manila)

You learn to weed them out. It’s all how people talk. Are they, are they respectful, you
know? Here’s a guy who’s trying to get somebody to work for him, and he’s already
telling you off, so, is that the kind of person you want to work for? I doubt it.
(Tim – 3D rendering; LA)

Communities of coping

Effective as some of the strategies discussed above were, they had to be first learned by

workers. An important theme of the interviews was how workers instead looked to online

communities for advice, help, and encouragement. As Jean explained:

Freelancers help each other, not, not really GigOnline, because GigOnline have their
own mind-set for their business.

28
Korczynski (2003) highlights that service workers form informal ‘communities of coping’ in

order to deal with the suffering they face as a result of irate and abusive customers. The pain

caused by such customer interactions is heightened by the fact that most workers have pro-

customer attitudes, experiencing pleasure and satisfaction from helping customers. Moreover,

Korczynski (2003) highlights that service workers are often blocked by organizational

disciplinary mechanisms, such as client ratings in this case, from defending themselves

against client abuse and thus cope through establishing communal rituals emphasizing the

pleasures of the work and the sharing of negative experiences. In our interviews and

observations it emerged that forums and social media communities provided crucial sources

of emotional support by enabling workers to share both negative and positive experiences. As

Julie (writing; LA) explained:

People ask… “I’ve got this client who sucks?”… a lot of it is on Facebook groups… we
talk about bad clients… The Facebook groups that thrive are the ones that allow you to
just bitch… Like “Oh I’m writing for this client too… what's it like working for them,
do you like it?”

This ‘bitching’ not only had a palliative effect, it also helped inform worker’s client screening

processes. The following quotes illustrate this practice clearly:

On our community… they can post evidence… like if you have spent a lot of hours
working on this project and then you did not get paid at all…. Or if they’re [the client
is] really rude. So it can be like, “Beware” for other freelancers…“If you ever
encounter this client, don’t apply anymore,” or “don’t engage,” or you know, “don’t
continue with the work”… We have different threads in the community, that we call the
‘rant thread’ where you can rant all you want. And there’s also [the] ‘good vibes’
thread. For example, when a client just keeps you, keeps telling you good stuff that
motivates you, like, “Hey! Good work! I really appreciate… what you’ve done.” They
can post that to boost the morale of other freelancers.
(May – customer support and virtual assistance; Manila)

A lot of people use those forums like to check “Oh I got contacted by this client… has
anybody worked for this client?”… I will definitely trust what other translators are
saying more so than reviews online because when you post something online, your
name is attached to it so you feel like if you say something bad about your client, they
don’t wanna use you again. So I tend to trust the people in my groups better… than
things I read online.
(Gabrielle – medical translation; London)

29
These online communities could also act to encourage resistance to unpaid labor. For

example, George explained how he was emboldened by his interactions with other workers to

demand payment for his work:

My colleagues gave me some very reassuring firm advice… “Fuck you, pay me or I’m
not working for you.” Which is something that everyone needs to be reassured about.
That’s something where I think community support is helpful ‘cause it’s easy to start
feeling desperate especially when you’re new… [Otherwise] probably I would’ve done
some unpaid work for them.

Likewise, Julie highlighted the online communities were crucial for the avoidance of unpaid

labor:

Community is the key, you know. Because without a community you don’t know how to
support each other. And if you don’t support each other, you can easily get like cheated.

Discussion

The gig economy has frequently been associated with precarious work, but recent research

has increasingly highlighted the heterogeneity of experience in this sector, with some workers

being more secure and others more precarious. In this study we examined the ways in which

a platform’s formal reputation system is itself implicated in workers’ experiences of

insecurity. We documented how a number of interlinked factors—platform reputation,

algorithmic amplification, capricious clients, weak remedies, and algorithmic opacity—cause

workers to experience continuous worry about their ability to access work, ask for decent

pay, and maintain reasonable working conditions. We term this subjective feeling

‘algorithmic insecurity’. Our findings provide support for a revised model of precarity in the

gig economy (see Figure 3). In this model, platform reputation produces varying levels of

labor market security, as suggested by previous research. In addition, the platform reputation

system, including importantly its algorithmic parts, is also implicated in producing direct

subjective feelings of insecurity. We term these feelings ‘algorithmic insecurity’.

30
Figure 3. Revised model of insecurity in platform work: platform reputation influences level

of labor market security but also produces algorithmic insecurity.

That reputation moderates outcomes in contract work is not new or unique to

platforms—conventional freelancers and contractors are also to varying extents dependent on

their reputations for labor market security (Antcliff et al., 2007; Barley and Kunda, 2006a;

2006b; Storey et al., 2005). However, the formal reputation systems of platforms function

differently from the informal reputation of industry networks. Whereas industry reputation is

regulated informally by social norms and interpersonal networks, platform reputation is

regulated formally by the platform company’s regime of software code and organizational

practice, while platform clients’ feedback-giving behavior is largely unregulated. Thus where

industry reputation tends towards preserving status quo, platform reputation systems can be

extremely volatile, algorithmically amplifying the consequences of capricious client

behavior. And where industry norms and networks change slowly, the platform reputation

system can be unilaterally upended by the platform company, leaving workers racing to

understand the new rules. This results in even presently secure platform workers feeling that

the ground under their feet is permanently unstable, a feeling which we term algorithmic

insecurity.

31
 That algorithmic insecurity is felt not only by some of our interview informants is

supported by evidence from a recent survey of European online remote platform workers

(Cedefop, 2020), to which we helped to design questions. The survey found that more than

half of the respondents could not switch platforms without substantial loss of income, and

that 62 percent worried about clients giving them unfair feedback that would impact on their

future income (Wood et al., 2020).

Previous gig economy research has highlighted job, income, and working hours

instability and uncertainty along with risks to health and safety as pertinent experiences in

this sector (Dunn, 2020; Demirel et al., 2020; Goods et al., 2019; Gregory, 2020; Josserand

and Kaine, 2019; Nemkova et al., 2019; Ravenelle, 2019; Schor et al., 2020; Tassinari and

Maccarrone, 2020; Wood et al., 2019a; Wood and Lehdonvirta, 2019). The findings of

Wood et al. (2019a) suggest that these traditional sources of socioeconomic insecurity are

moderated by platform reputation. This is because platform reputation acts as an important

source of symbolic power in the gig economy (Demirel et al., 2020; Wood et al., 2019a). This

source of symbolic power may become increasingly important in the wider economy as the

digital scoring and ranking of individuals by businesses is adopted more broadly (Fourcade

and Healy, 2017).

The findings presented above demonstrate the role of platform reputation in

transforming platform work into a viable source of income and how a strong reputation can

reduce traditional sources of socioeconomic insecurity in the gig economy. However, in line

with the findings of Rosenblat and Stark (2016) Shapiro (2018), and Sutherland et al. (2020),

we find that platforms also generate a new source of precarity. We go beyond previous

studies by providing an in-depth account of what we term ‘algorithmic insecurity.’ This

algorithmic insecurity relates to the vulnerability and fear that workers experience as a result

of working in an unstable and opaque environment in which platforms use customer-

32
generated ratings to score workers, and algorithms to amplify the consequences of those

scores. Workers experienced constant worry that a single negative feedback could impact the

continued viability of their platform work. For platform workers, this risk to their future

ability to make a living on a particular platform relates closely to De Witte’s (2005)

definition of subjective job insecurity as being the experience of ‘groping in the dark’

regarding one’s future within an organization. This finding adds weight to Lei’s (2021)

contention that platform architectures produce regularities in worker experiences.

Importantly Kalleberg (2018) argues that the moderating effect of workers’ power

means that dimensions of precarious work tend to generally be positively interrelated.

However, our findings demonstrate that platform reputation is both a source of worker power

and precarity, algorithmic insecurity can be negatively related to traditional sources of

insecurity. Therefore, in the gig economy even those workers who escape traditional sources

of socioeconomic insecurity by virtue of their strong platform reputations are still likely to

experience significant insecurity. This insecurity results from the process by which platforms

use customer-generated ratings to score and rank workers and constitutes a new type of

precarity.

If platform workers do experience a new form of insecurity in the form of the formal

reputation system itself, it raises the question of how they navigate, manage and survive this

novel precarity. In their smaller-scale study of remote platform work Sutherland et al. (2020)

find a case in which a worker canceled a contract without pay so as to avoid receiving a bad

rating. Our findings presented above highlight this troubling response might be widespread in

the gig economy. A major theme of our interviews was how this novel form of insecurity led

workers towards undertaking free labor or accepting non-payment for their services. Workers

both undercharged clients out of fear of receiving a negative rating and canceled contracts

with clients they suspected of being dissatisfied while still providing the work for free.

33
Workers were also compelled by this insecurity to undertake the unpaid emotional labor of

managing client emotions, building rapport, and creating social bonds and obligations so as to

reduce the likelihood of receiving a negative rating. The undertaking of unpaid emotional

labor as a means of reducing the threat of bad ratings is a response that has also be observed

among Uber drivers (Rosenblat and Stark, 2016) and even platform lawyers (Yeo, 2020). Our

findings also highlight the importance of learning how to successfully filter out clients who

exhibited a proclivity for negative ratings, poor communication, or unrealistic expectations.

The learning of these filtering skills may constitute part of what Sutherland et al. (2020) term

‘gig literacies’, that is the capabilities that platform workers must develop and apply in order

to successfully undertake this type of work.

In addition to individual responses, Sutherland et al. (2020) highlight that workers

also consulted other workers via forums about how best to manage their platform reputations.

Several other studies have also found that platform workers engage in digital communication

in search of help and support in dealing with customers (Anwar and Graham, 2020; Aslam

and Woodcock, 2019; Maffie, 2020, Wood et al., 2018; Wood et al. 2019b; Lehdonvirta,

2016). Our finding suggest that digital ‘communities of coping’ (Korczynski, 2003) act as

important spaces in which workers can provide each other with moral and practical support in

the face of the pain and hurt caused by algorithmic insecurity and for informing filtering

practices. We also find these communities are important for informing individual worker

resistance in terms of refusing to accept unpaid labor. Indeed Korczynski (2003) suggests that

such informal communities of coping may inform acts of direct resistance and enable the

formation of labor unions, resulting in what Pero (2020) terms ‘communities of struggle’.

That our unit of analysis spans the US, the UK and the Philippines raises the potential

for our sample to be affected by confounding institutional and contextual differences.

However, the literature review above highlights considerable similarities in worker

34
experiences of precarity across studies that span the US, Europe (including Russia),

Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa (see also: Lei, 2021). Conceptually,

this commonality can be understood as a result of two reinforcing processes. The first is that

the decommodification of labor in the gig economy has led these workers to be largely

‘normatively disembedded’ from laws, labor institutions and cultural norms which would

otherwise and shield workers from market competition (Wood et al., 2019b). The second is

that during the design phase technologies are imprinted with ‘scripts’ (Wajcman, 2006) that

constrain the possible uses that technology can be put to (Hutchby, 2001). While this should

not be understood as a form of technological determinism, being instead the result of political

struggle by different actors (Wajcman, 2006), it does mean that (in the context of normative

disembeddednes) commonalities in technological design tend to produce regularities in social

behavior. Regularities in experiences of insecurity and precarity are attested to by the level of

theoretical saturation that our model of insecurity attained, however, there was one important

difference between countries but not one that was across the rich/poor divide. In fact, workers

in the US shared similar concerns regarding access to adequate healthcare as workers in the

Philippines, however, this was not a major theme of the interviews with UK workers. This is

presumably a result of the existence of the National Health Service that provides universal

socialized healthcare regardless of income or employment status. Therefore, that the absolute

precarity of workers in the UK with regards to work insecurity was less than in the other two

countries should born in mind.

Conclusions

The model of precarity in the gig economy elucidated in this article helps reconcile the large

number of studies highlighting the precariousness of such work on the one hand, with the

increasing number of scholars on the other hand who insist that heterogeneity of experiences

35
and outcomes is an inherent feature of this work. The account presented here identifies the

central importance of the opaque digital scoring and ranking of workers via reputational

systems for both moderating traditional sources of insecurity (job, income, hours, health and

safety) and generating a new source of insecurity that we term algorithmic insecurity. This

novel insecurity pertains to the vulnerability and fear that workers experience as a result of

the unstable and opaque process by which platforms use customer-generated ratings to score

and rank workers. This source of insecurity in the gig economy has parallels to the insecurity

that Curchod et al. (2020) find eBay sellers experience in the wider digital economy. Indeed,

the use of reputational systems is common across online marketplaces (Kellogg et al., 2020),

and the use of algorithms by businesses to digitally score and rank individuals is an

increasingly powerful logic in the wider economy (Fourcade and Healy, 2017). They may

also be a means of enabling the on-demand utilization of labor (Wood, 2020).

Despite the fact that we were also able to offer some tentative quantitative support for

aspects of our model (Wood et al., 2020), further quantitative research is needed to confirm

the existence of algorithmic insecurity in the gig economy, and, in particular, whether it

constitutes a general phenomenon of platform work or is specific to the remote gig economy.

Further quantitative research is also needed to investigate similarities between this insecurity

in the gig economy and that among users of online market places such as eBay. Finally, the

article highlights the need for future research to investigate the potential of such insecurity to

develop and spread in the traditional economy as businesses increasingly adopt digital

scoring and ranking practices. The identification of this novel form of algorithmic insecurity

highlights the need for researchers, civil society, and policymakers to understand the

expanding application of data-driven systems to economic and state practices (Dencik, Hintz,

Redden et al., 2019). Moreover, this article highlights that it is possible for perceived

36
injustices stemming from these data-driven systems to form the basis of digital communities

of coping and inform resistance, as suggested by Korczynski (2003).

NOTES

1. Standing (1999) also includes representation insecurity and skill reproduction

insecurity. Representation insecurity refers to where the employer can impose change

in the labor process and refuse to negotiate with effective trade unions and other

institutions protecting workers’ collective interests. However, in line with Kalleberg

(2011; 2018), we see representation as relating to worker collective power and thus as

an antecedent of precarity rather than a dimension of socioeconomic insecurity. Skill

reproduction insecurity refers to opportunities to gain and retain skills through access

to education and training being impeded. However, there is little extant research to

suggest that this source of insecurity exists at the same level as the other six sources,

and the inability to reproduce one’s skills might also better be thought of as an

antecedent to these other forms of insecurity.

ACKNOWLEGMENTS

We would like to thank David Sutcliffe and Lina Dencik for their detailed comments on

earlier drafts of this paper. The paper has also benefited from comments by audiences

members at the seminars, workshops and conferences that the findings have been presented,

these venues include ILPC 2019; SASE 2019; Birmingham University; Aston University and

Scuola Normale Superiore..

37
REFERENCES

Alberti, Gabriella, Ioulia Bessa, Kate Hardy, Vera Trappmann, and Charles Umney. 2018.

“In, Against and Beyond Precarity: Work in Insecure Times.” Work, Employment and

Society 32(3):447–457.

Aloisi, Antonio. 2016. “‘Commoditized Workers - The Rise of On-Demand Work, a Case

Study Research on a Set of Online Platforms and Apps.” Comparative Labor Law &

Policy Journal, 37:653-690.

Antcliff, Valerie, Richard Saundry, and Mark Stuart. 2007. “Networks and social capital in

the UK television industry: The weakness of weak ties.” Human Relations 60(2):371–

393.

Anwar, Mohammad A., and Graham Mark. 2020. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place:

Freedom, Flexibility, Precarity and Vulnerability in the Gig Economy in

Africa.” Competition and Change. Epub ahead of print

https://doi.org/10.1177/1024529420914473.

Aslam, Yaseen, and Jamie Woodcock. 2020. “A History of Uber Organizing in the UK.”

South Atlantic Quarterly 119(2):412–421.

Barley, Stephen . R., and Gideon Kunda. 2006a. “Contracting: A New Form of Professional

Practice.” Academy of Management Perspectives 20(1):45–66.

Barley, Stephen R., and Gideon Kunda, G. (2006b). Gurus, hired guns, and warm bodies:

Itinerant experts in a knowledge economy. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.

Berger, Thor, Carol B. Frey, Guy Levin, and Santosh. R. Danda, .2019. “Uber Happy? Work

and Wellbeing in the ‘Gig Economy’”. Economic Policy 34(99):429–477

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1963. Travail et travailleurs en Algerie. Paris: Mouton & Co.

38
Broughton, Andrea, Rosie Gloster, Rosa Marvell, Martha Green, Jamal Langely and Alex

Martin. 2018. The Experiences of Individuals in the Gig Economy. London: Department

for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Bryman, Alan. 2008. Social Research Methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Burawoy, Michael. 2009. The Extended Case Method: Four Countries, Four Decades, Four

Great Transformations and One Theoretical Tradition. Berkeley: University of

California Press.

Burchell, Brendan J. 2002. “The prevalence and redistribution of job security and work

intensification.” In Job Insecurity and Work Intensification, edited by B.J. Burchell, D.

Ladipo, and F. Wilkinson London: Routledge. 61-76.

Cant, Callum. 2019. Riding for Deliveroo: Resistance in the New Economy. Cambridge:

Polity.

Charmaz, Kathy. 2006. Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through

Qualitative Analysis. London: SAGE.

Cedefop (2020). Developing and matching skills in the online platform economy: findings on

new forms of digital work and learning from Cedefop’s CrowdLearn study.

Luxembourg: Publications Office. Cedefop reference series; No 116.

Cheng, Grand H.L., and Darius K.S. Chan. 2008. “Who Suffers More from Job Insecurity? A

Meta‐Analytic Review.” Applied Psychology 57(2):272-303.

D’Cruz, Premilla, and Ernesto Noronha. 2016. “Positives outweighing negatives: the

experiences of Indian crowdsourced workers.” Work Organisation, Labour &

Globalisation 10(1):44–63.

Curchod, Corentin, Gerardo Patriotta, Laurie Cohen, and Nicolas Neysen. 2020. “Working

for an Algorithm: Power Asymmetries and Agency in Online Work Settings.”

Administrative Science Quarterly 65(3):644-676.

39
Demirel, Pelin, Ekaterina Nemkova. and Rebecca Taylor .2020. “Reproducing Global

Inequalities in the Online Labour Market: Valuing Capital in the Design Field.” Work,

Employment and Society Epub ahead of print

https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017020942447.

Dencik, Lina, Arne Hintz, Joanna Redden, and Emiliano Treré. 2019. “Exploring Data

Justice: Conceptions, Applications and Directions” Information, Communication &

Society 22(7):873-881.

Diekmann, Andreas, Ben Jann, Wojtek Przepiorka, and Stefan Wehrli. 2014. “Reputation

Formation and the Evolution of Cooperation in Anonymous Online Markets.”

American Sociological Review 79(1):65–85.

Dunn, Michael. 2020. “Making gigs work: digital platforms, job quality and worker

motivations.” New Technology, Work and Employment Epub ahead of print

https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12167

Fairwork. 2020. The Gig Economy and Covid-19: Fairwork Report on Platform Policies.

Oxford: University of Oxford.

Fantasia, Rick. 1988. Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action, and Contemporary

American Workers. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Fourcade, Marion, and Healy Kieran. 2017. “Seeing like a market.” Socio-Economic Review

15(1):9-29.

Fraser, Janet, and Michael Gold. 2001. “Portfolio Workers': Autonomy and Control amongst

Freelance Translators.” Work, Employment and Society 15(4): 679-697.

Gallie, Duncan, Alan Felstead, Francis Green, and Hande Inanc. 2017. “The hidden face of

job insecurity.” Work, Employment and Society 31(1):36-53.

Gandini, Alessandro. 2016. The Reputation Economy. Understanding Knowledge Work in

Digital Society. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

40
Gandini, Alessandro. 2019. “Labour process theory and the gig economy.” Human Relations

72(6):1039-1056.

Granovetter, Mark. 1985. “Economic action and social structure: The problem of

embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology 91(3):63–68.

Gerber, Christina, and Martin Krzywdzinkski. 2019 “Brave New Digital Work? New Forms

of Performance Control in Crowdwork.” Pp. 121-143 in Work and Labor in the

Digital Age. Research in the Sociology of Work, vol. 33., edited by S.P. Vallas and A.

Kovalainen. Bingley (UK): Emerald.

Glaser, Barny G., and Anselm L. Strauss . 1967. The discovery of grounded theory: strategies

for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine Publishing.

Gold, Michael, and Mona Mustafa. 2013. "Work always wins’: client colonisation, time

management and the anxieties of connected freelancers." New Technology Work and

Employment 28(3):197-211.

Goods, Caleb, Alex Veen, Tom Barratt. 2019. “‘Is your gig any good?’ Analysing job quality

in the Australian platform-based food-delivery sector.” Journal of Industrial

Relations 61(4): 502-527.

Graham, Mark, Isis Hjorth, and Vili Lehdonvirta. 2017. “Digital labour and development:

impacts of global digital labour platforms and the gig economy on worker

livelihoods.” Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 23(2):135–162.

Gray, Mary L. and Siddharth Suri (2019) Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from

Building a New Global Underclass. Boston: Houghton Miffin Harcourt.

Greenhalgh, Leonard, and Zehava Rosenblatt. 1984. “Job Insecurity: Toward Conceptual

Clarity.” Academy of Management Review 9(3):438-448.

Gregory, Karen. 2020. “’My life is more valuable than this’: Understanding Risk Among On-

Demand Food Couriers in Edinburgh." Work, Employment and Society Epub ahead of

41
 print https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017020969593.

Greif, Avner. 1989. “Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade: Evidence on the Maghribi

Traders.” The Journal of Economic History 49(4):857–882.

Griesbach, Kathleen, Adam Reich, Luke Elliott-Negri, and Ruth Milkman. 2019.

“Algorithmic Control in Platform Food Delivery Work. Socius: Sociological

Research for a Dynamic World 5 -15.

Henly, Julia R., and Susan J. Lambert. 2014. “Unpredictable Work Timing in Retail Jobs:

Implications for Employee Work-Life Conflict.” ILR Review 67:986–1016.

Hochschild, Arlie R. 1983. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Howcroft, Deborah, and Birgitta Bergvall-Kåreborn. 2019 “A Typology of Crowdwork

Platforms.” Work, Employment and Society, 33(1): 21-38.

Hutchby, Ian. 2001. Conversation and Technology: From the telephone to the internet.

Cambridge: Polity.

Josserand, Emmanuel, and Sarah Kaine. 2019. “Different directions or the same route? The

varied identities of ride-share drivers.” Journal of Industrial Relations 61(4):549–573.

Lambert, Susan, Peter J. Fugiel, and Julia R. Henly. 2014. Schedule Unpredictability among

Early Career Workers in the US Labor Market: A National Snapshot. Research Brief.

University of Chicago: Employment Instability, Family Well-being, and Social Policy

Network.

Lee, Min K., Daniel Kusbit, Evan Metsky, and Laura Dabbish (2015) “Working with

machines: the impact of algorithmic, data-driven management on human workers”.

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM SIGCHI Conference, Seoul, South Korea, 18–23

April. New York: ACM Press, 1603–1612.

42
Lehdonvirta, Vili. 2018. “Flexibility in the Gig Economy: Managing Time on Three Online

Piecework Platforms.” New Technology, Work and Employment 33 (1) 13-29.

Lehdonvirta, Vili, Otto Kässi, Isis Hjorth, Helena Barnard, and Mark Graham. 2019. “The

Global Platform Economy: A New Offshoring Institution Enabling Emerging-Economy

Microproviders”. Journal of Management 45(2): 567-599.

Lei Ya-Wen. 2021. “Delivering Solidarity: Platform Architecture and Collective Contention

in China’s Platform Economy.” American Sociological Review EPub ahead of Print

https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122420979980.

Maffie, Michael D. 2020. “The Role of Digital Communities in Organizing Gig Workers.”

Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society (59)(1):123-149.

Nemkova, Ekaterina, Pelin Demirel, and Linda Baines. 2019. “In search of meaningful work

on digital freelancing platforms: the case of design professionals.” New Technology,

Work and Employment 34(3):226-243.

Orlikowski, Wana J. and Scott SV .2014. What Happens When Evaluation Goes Online?
Exploring Apparatuses of Valuation in the Travel Sector. Organization Science
25(3):868-891.
Pero, Davide. 2020. “Indie Unions, Organizing and Labour Renewal: Learning from

Precarious Migrant Workers.” Work, Employment and Society 34(5):900-918.

Kalleberg, Arne L. 2009. “Precarious work, insecure workers: Employment relations in

transition.” American Sociological Review 74(1):1–22.

Kalleberg Arne L. 2011. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious

Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s–2000s. New York: Russell Sage.

Kalleberg Arne L. 2018. Precarious Lives: Job Insecurity and Well-Being in Rich

Democracies. Cambridge: Polity.

Kalleberg Arne L., and Steven P. Vallas. 2018. “Probing precarious work: Theory, research,

and politics.” Research in the Sociology of Work 31(1):1-30.

43
Kässi, Otto, and Vili Lehdonvirta. 2018. “Online labour index: Measuring the online gig

economy for policy and research.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change,

137:241–248.

Kellogg, Katherine C., Melissa Valentine and Angele Christin. 2020. “Algorithms at Work:

The New Contested Terrain of Control.” Academy of Management Annals 14(1):366-

410.

Kobrak, Christoher. 2013. “The Concept of Reputation in Business History.” Business

History Review 87(4):763-786.

Korczynski, Marek. 2003. “Communities of Coping: Collective Emotional Labour in Service

Work.” Organization 10(1):55-79.

Raub, Werner, and Jeron Weesie. (1990). “Reputation and Efficiency in Social Interactions:

An Example of Network Effects.” American Journal of Sociology 96(3):626–654.

Ravenelle, Alexandrea. 2019. Hustle and gig: Struggling and surviving in the sharing

economy. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Rosenblat, Alex (2018) Uberland How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Rosenblat, Alex, and Lee Stark (2016) “Algorithmic labor and information asymmetries: a

case study of Uber’s drivers.” International Journal of Communication 10:3758–3784.

Rubery, Jill, Damian Grimshaw, Arjan Keizer, Matthew Johnson. 2018. “Challenges and

Contradictions in the ‘Normalising’ of Precarious Work.” Work, Employment and

Society 32(3):509-537.

Schor Juliet B., William Attwood-Charles, Mehmet Cansoy, Isak Legdegaard and Robert

Wengronowitz. 2020. “Dependence and precarity in the platform economy.” Theory

and Society 49:833-861.

44
Schneider, Daniel, and Kristen Harknett. 2019. “Consequences of Routine Work-Schedule

Instability for Worker Health and Well-Being.” American Sociological Review

84(1):82–114.

Shapiro, Aaron. 2018. “Between autonomy and control: strategies of arbitrage in the ‘on-

demand’” economy. New Media and Society 20(8):2954-2971.

Shevchuk Andrey, Denis Strebkov, and Shannon Davis. 2018. “The Autonomy Paradox:

How Night Work Undermines Subjective Well-Being of Internet-Based Freelancers.

ILR Review 72(1): 75-100.

Silver, Beverly J. 2003. Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since

1870. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Standing, Guy. 1999. Global Labour Flexibility: Seeking Distributive Justice. Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan.

Standing, Guy. 2016. The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does

Not Pay. London: Biteback Publishing.

Storer, Adam, Daniel Schneider, and Kristen Harknett. 2020. “What Explains Racial/Ethnic

Inequality in Job Quality in the Service Sector?” American Sociological Review 85(4):

537-572.

Storey, John, Graeme Salaman, and Kerry Platman. (2005). “Living with enterprise in an

enterprise economy: freelance and contract workers in the media.” Human Relations,

58(8):1033–54.

Sutherland Will, Mohammed H. Jarrahi, Michael Dunn, and Sarah B. Nelson. 2020. “Work

Precarity and Gig Literacies in Online Freelancing.” Work, Employment and Society

34(3):457-475.

45
Sverke, Magnus, Johnny Hellgren, Katharina Näswall. 2002. “No security: A meta-analysis

and review of job insecurity and its consequences.” Journal of Occupational Health

Psychology 7(3):242-264.

Tassinari, Arianna, and Vincenzo Maccarrone. 2020. “Riders on the Storm: Workplace

Solidarity among Gig Economy Couriers in Italy and the UK.” Work, Employment and

Society, 34(1):35-54.

Ticona, Julia, and Alexandra Mateescu. (2018). “Trusted strangers: Carework platforms’

cultural entrepreneurship in the on-demand economy.” New Media and Society

20(11):4384-4404.

Uzzi, Brian. 1996. “The Sources and Consequences of Embeddedness for the Economic

Performance of Organizations: The Network Effect.” American Sociological Review

61(4):674-698.

Uzzi, Brian. 1997. Social Structure and Competition in Interfirm Networks: The Paradox of

Embeddedness. Administrative Science Quarterly 42(1):35-67.

Vaughan, Diane. 1992. “Theory Elaboration: The Heuristics of Case Analysis.” In What Is a

Case? Exploring the Foundations of Social Inquiry, edited by H. Ragin and S. Becker.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Vallas, Steven P., and Juliet B. Schor. 2020. “What do Platforms do? Understanding the Gig

Economy.” Annual Review of Sociology 46(16): 1-22.

Veen, Alex, Tom Barratt, Calleb Goods. 2020. “Platform-Capital’s ‘App-etite’ for Control: A

Labour Process Analysis of Food-Delivery Work in Australia.” Work, Employment

and Society 34(3):388-406.

Wajcman, Judy. 2006. “New connections: social studies of science and technology and

studies of work.” Work, Employment and Society 20(4):773-786.

46
De Witte, Hans. 2005. “Job Insecurity: Review of the International Literature on Definitions,

Prevalence, Antecedents and Consequences.” Journal of Industrial Psychology 4:1-6.

Wood, Alex J. 2018. “Powerful times: flexible discipline and schedule gifts at work.” Work,

Employment and Society 32(6):1061-1077.

Wood, Alex J. 2020. Despotism on Demand: How Power Operates in the Flexible

Workplace. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press.

Wood, Alex J., and Brendan J. Burchell. 2018. “Unemployment and well-being.

Unemployment and well-being.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and

Economic Behaviour, edited by A. Lewis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

234–259.

Wood, Alex J., Vili Lehdonvirta, and Mark Graham. 2018. “Workers of the Internet unite?

Online freelancer organisation in six Asian and African countries.” New Technology,

Work and Employment, 33(2):95-112

Wood, Alex J., Mark Graham, Vili Lehdonvirta, and Isis Hjorth. 2019a. “Good gig, bad gig:

autonomy and algorithmic control in the global gig economy.” Work, Employment and

Society, 33(1):56-75.

Wood, Alex J., Mark Graham, Vili Lehdonvirta, and Isis Hjorth. 2019b. “Networked but

Commodified: The (Dis)Embeddedness of Digital Labour in the Gig Economy.”

Sociology, 53(5):931-950.

Wood, Alex J., Nicolas Martindale, and Vili Lehdonvirta. 2020. Dynamics of Contention in

the Gig Economy: Rage Against the Platform, Customer, or State? Working paper

presented at the Platform Economy Seminar: Oxford Internet Institute, University of

Oxford, 21 April.

Wood, Alex J., and Vili Lehdonvirta. 2019. Platform Labour and Structured Antagonism:

Understanding the Origins of Protest in the Gig Economy. Working paper presented at

47
 the Platform Economy Seminar, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, March

5 http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3357804.

Yao, Yao. 2019. “Uberizing the Legal Profession? Lawyer Autonomy and Status in the

Digital Legal Market.” British Journal of Industrial Relations. Epub ahead of print

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjir.12485

48